CHA Suspends Cabrini Property Management Firm

The Chicago Housing Authority announced on July 8, 2008, that it has "suspended the management contract of Urban Property Advisors (UPA) at the Cabrini-Green Rowhouses until the completion of an investigation into an incident on June 27, 2008."

The incident CHA referred to was the untimely death of 3-year-old Curtis Cooper, who lost his young life after he was crushed to death by a so-called "security" gate attached to iron rod fencing around some row houses at the Chicago Cabrini-Green public housing complex.

Curtis was on his tricycle playing near the "uninspected" 7-foot tall black steel metal gate, located between the 900 block of North Cambridge Avenue when it allegedly on its own fell off its "rotten" hinges killing him, according to news reports citing a relative that day.

Talk from management officials shortly after the accident was that some other children at the time of Curtis' death had been swinging and playing on the gate which made the gate come off on top of him.

While at the scene of the incident on July 10, an unidentified man, who spoke to Residents' Journal about the incident, said the gate was already unstable and leaning off its hinges, and faulted the private management company for the young boy's death.

He said their failure to do something about that gate created "an accident waiting to happen."

"They didn't inspect nothing," the elderly man said angrily.

"And nobody was playing on that gate. That gate just fell on the little boy when he was playin and ridin his tricycle," he added.

The private management firm, which has managed the CHA property for the past two years, is run by Cullen J. Davis, a licensed attorney and real estate broker and the son of Allison Davis, a highly influential city developer.

CHA stated in their press release that "for the present the Cabrini-Green Rowhouses will be managed by the H.J. Russell & Company, which currently provides management services for other areas of the 60-yr-old Cabrini-Green complex of buildings, as well as other CHA properties."

CHA spokesman Derek Hill told RJ on July 11 that the public housing agency couldn't respond to any of their questions about UPA's suspension from managing the development or anything else since they are in litigations with the relatives of Curtis.

"I can't talk about it. It's under legal. I can't talk about legal matters. The family who lost the child had an attorney the next day. So I can't talk about that. I can't talk about UPA at all."

Gate that killed Cabrini youth Curtis Cooper on June 27.