After nearly a year leading the Lakeland Community Redevelopment Agency as its interim manager, Alis Drumgo got the “interim” removed. His promotion to manager of the anti-blight agency was announced in an after-hours post on Facebook today.

Drumgo, 38, succeeds Nicole Travis, who was promoted last June to lead the city’s Community and Economic Development Department.

The CRA coordinates efforts to eliminate blight and encourage development in much of the urban core — Dixieland, downtown and the Midtown district that takes in much of the area between downtown and I-4.

Some of its bigger recent projects include planning the redevelopment of 10 vacant areas north of Lake Mirror into apartments and townhomes, revitalizing the commercial corridor around Massachusetts Avenue near Parker Street and the conversion of a former crime-ridden apartment complex into affordable single-family homes near Lincoln Avenue Academy.

Drumgo, who has a masters degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers University, came to the CRA in January 2017. Previously he had been a land-use coordinator for the city of Tampa, a reading teacher in Houston, a downtown development official in Newark and a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force.

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Barry Friedman founded Lkldnow.com in 2015 as the culmination of a career in print and digital journalism. Since 1982, he has used the tools of reporting, editing and content curation to help people in Lakeland understand their community better.

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