GARY | Gary Urban Enterprise Association officially went out of business Friday, but not for lack of assets.

The group, which operated as a land bank for redevelopment, announced last summer it would cease operations after a tidal wave of scandal left it unable to raise funds.

However, balance sheets for the group's final meeting say GUEA had $656,000 cash on hand.

It also was holding more than 600 parcels of real estate when it dissolved itself Friday and handed the land off to the Gary Redevelopment Department.

Officials also will hire an auctioneer to liquidate various office supplies and vehicles next month.

That money, plus the profits from the auction, will be rolled into a public trust administered by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority.

That then will become the seed money for a new organization called the Emerson Neighborhood Residents Council, a nonprofit group legally created Friday that will draw leaders from the area, including the Rev. Bennie Hartfield Jr. of Progressive Missionary Baptist Church.

GUEA was formed in 1985 to use money from local industry to improve economic conditions and eliminate blight in the city's 3-square-mile Emerson neighborhood.

But the organization's board of directors stopped meeting sometime around 2000, allowing some executives and board members to begin looting the group of more than $1 million between 2000 and 2004 without oversight.

Four GUEA officers pleaded guilty to the theft this month, including former Executive Director Jojuana Meeks, and the investigation continues.

Meeks' name came up again Friday, when the board was told shortly before it dissolved that it still had to pay an outstanding balance of $5,000 on Meeks' old GUEA credit card.

The board also had to vote to pay a $26,000 natural gas bill on an Illinois apartment building GUEA had purchased during Meeks' leadership, at 6305 S. Carpenter St. in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. The building since has been sold.

On Friday, GUEA board member Calvin Hawkins said Friday's occasion was sad because the organization had great potential when it was first formed.

"Something happened along the way, and it became an urban nightmare," Hawkins said. "This is not a perfect panacea today. It is just one of a number of things that we are trying to do to end the urban nightmare."