Apartment City

Alyssa Mulliger Staff Writer @AMulligerSHJ Spartanburg native Tamela Lyles remembers the exact date she moved into unit No. 310 at Oakview Apartments in the city’s Northside neighborhood. It was Jan. 23, 2004, and she was 19 years old. Lyles lived in the 800-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment with her three children. The family experienced good and bad times at Oakview, keeping mostly to themselves except for associating with some residents a few doors down, Lyles said. Oakview's residents are gone now — the city began demolishing the units last week to make way for the new Dr. T.K. Gregg Community Center . While some former residents say the apartments provided a needed home, they also say moving has brought welcome changes and opened up a new life to them. Built in the late 1940s and early 1950s along Howard Street, the federally subsidized, low- income apartments lacked central air conditioning and had tiled floors and cinder block walls . Over the ...