MACON, Ga. — Macon-Bibb County and Green Meadows Townhomes are still waiting to hear whether the Georgia Court of Appeals will lift a court-appointed receivership on the apartment complex.
Last August, a Bibb County Superior Court judge placed the complex under the receivership — temporary court-appointed management — in the hopes of reducing crime and violence.
"We hear gunshots, wake us up in our sleep gunshots," Alisha Clopton told 13WMAZ a few months before the suit.
Problems like the gunshots Clopton spoke about are exactly what the county wanted to stop when they took Green Meadows to court. They cited 133 shootings between March 2022 and June 2023, and 1,800 emergency calls to the complex over three years.
In September, Green Meadows' lawyers tried to appeal the decision. Before the case made it to oral arguments last week, the appeals court issued a stay on the original trial decision in Bibb County Superior Court. That placed the original management back in control of the complex while the case goes through the system.
"They ran a business that was so terrible that they endangered 155,000 residents of Macon-Bibb," Senior Assistant County Attorney Michael McNeill argued last week.
Green Meadows' attorney, Harold Melton, argued the county didn't give his clients enough notice to resolve issues before going to a judge.
The county points to the crime numbers before the receivership and a drastic drop after. Their records show crime around the complex dropped about 90% under the new management. Tenants like Courtney Lester noticed.
"It feels peaceful because we don't hear shootings in here every day. You don't have traffic just zooming by every day. You don't have to worry about, 'Oh are the children going to get hit?'" Lester said.
Lester and several other tenants say they didn't notice a difference when the appeals court installed the original management again. She says starting last fall, the complex kicked people out who caused problems and invested more in security. Lester says those trends have continued since the Green Meadows owners took over.
"The maintenance are the original maintenance, but now they're able to actually do something because she's actually ordering the materials. They're actually able to get their hands on things to fix up the apartments like they need to," Lester said.
So far, there's no word on when the appeals court will render a decision.