Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 22, 1990 TAG: 9003212137
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARIA C. JOHNSON LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Across the parking lot, tires shriek, and Powell turns his head.
"Guess who?" asks his friend, Sharon Riley. She's watching the cleaning process with half-hearted interest, offering a comment now and then.
"Mike," Powell and a buddy answer in unison. All three of them smile. It's just past 8 p.m. and things are starting to pick up at Cruz-N-Park.
"Most people I know come here," says Powell, 20, as he uses one hand to spray the tinted windows with cleaning fluid and the other hand to drag a soft, white cloth across the droplets. "It's something to do on the weekends."
Cruz-N-Park is the brainchild of two Durham developers who hope it's the answer to the problem of teen-age cruising. They'd like to turn the problem into profit, while providing peace of mind to parents and local businesses that chafe at flocks of teen-agers descending on their parking lots after sundown.
At Cruz-N-Park, teen-agers drive up to the gate, take a ticket, and pass under the parking lot-style arm onto a U-shaped concrete pad. They can cruise a half-mile circuit or park - in the open or under cover of a brightly lit metal structure that looks like a drive-in restaurant without the speaker boxes and waitresses.
If their cars aren't shiny enough, they can drive through one of six bays at the on-site car wash. If they're tired of the parking-lot scene, they can go to an on-site snack bar for some nachos and pizza, play a few video games, shoot some pool, or go back outside for a game of miniature golf. A batting cage will be installed in April.
"I feel it's going to be really good," says Ronnie Allen, who runs Cruz-N-Park with his partner, H.L. Riley. "There's not even a day that goes by that parents don't call us, thanking us for taking a chance on doing something for teen-agers."
The idea of controlled cruising is not new.
A couple of years ago, Arlington, Texas, leased a huge parking lot from the University of Texas at Arlington and opened the lot, complete with portable toilets, to teen-agers on Friday and Saturday nights. Thousands of cruisers pass through every weekend.
"We've been real successful with it," says Arlington police spokesman Dee Anderson. The city had tried writing citations and re-routing traffic before it hit upon the idea of leasing a parking lot.
"I've never heard of any private business venture wanting to attract that kind of crowd," Anderson says.
Allen, 40, says he and his partner were inspired by their own teen-age children and by the problems other towns were having with cruisers. Allen's daughter and two sons used to argue about where they wanted to go on Friday and Saturday nights. Would they hang out at a shopping mall? Go to a movie? Cruise one of the main drags? Drive to a teen dance club in Raleigh?
"They didn't really have all that many options," Allen said.
More food for thought came on a return trip from Myrtle Beach, S.C. Just outside the town of Benson, the Allens got caught in a traffic jam. It took 45 minutes to reach Main Street. They thought there must have been a terrible car wreck.
"Came to find out all it was was teen-agers cruising," Allen says.
Meanwhile, he and Riley were reading about the problems in other towns.
In Greensboro, police cracked down last summer by liberally dispensing second-degree trespassing citations. Salisbury banned downtown cruising three years ago after complaints from merchants, non-cruising drivers and police and fire officials on emergency runs. Mount Airy, Burlington and Lexington followed suit.
In Roanoke, business owners and residents of the Boxley Hills subdivision along Williamson Road have been inconvenienced and annoyed by cruisers for years. Attempts at finding a solution have ranged from stepped-up police patrols to proposing an outright ban on cruising. One suggestion has been the development of a city or county-operated teen center.
Allen and Riley decided that, in Durham at least, there was a potential for profit from such an operation.
"Being investors, we're always looking for ways to make money," Allen says. "We saw a need."
He and Riley spent $1.5 million to develop Cruz-N-Park on 5 1/2 acres in a residential-industrial area in east Durham. A church is on one side of the park, a heavy equipment storage lot on the other. So far, no one has complained about the teen-agers, Allen says.
Crowds have been in the 150-to-200-a-night range, and more people are expected when the weather warms up. Park manager Perry Shiflett says students from all of Durham's five high schools have shown up, as well as teen-agers from nearby Raleigh and Creedmoor.
"It's always new faces," says Shiflett, 25.
Raye Adcock, 20, is a familiar face. The first nine days Cruz-N-Park was open, he visited eight times.
"I like it all," says Adcock, a machinist for Research Triangle Institute. He leans on a pool cue and fiddles with the gold chain around his neck. "You don't have to worry about trouble."
He's been cruising around Durham since he was 16. He's seen the tension develop between cruisers and businesses, many of which have asked the City Council to place "No stopping, standing or loitering" signs in their parking lots. The signs enable police to warn or arrest cruisers.
The police also have issued citations to cruisers for careless and reckless driving, littering and fighting, says Cpl. K.W. May of the Durham Police Department. Last summer, a teen-ager was shot while hanging out in a shopping center parking lot.
May's glad to see Cruz-N-Park.
"I think anything new like that is good. I mean, it's worth a try. It may just take them away from the bad environment and take them into a good environment."
Brian Rimmer, 21, a patron of Cruz-N-Park, thinks the business will do "OK," but he knows some people who aren't as confident.
"They don't think it'll stick be cause they won't allow drinking or drugs or playing loud music," Rimmer says as he leans against a basketball-shooting game.
The park's rules are designed to keep a family atmosphere, the owners say. They admit many teen-agers probably will drink or take drugs before coming in, if not try to sneak the contraband into the parking lot.
"There's just so much we have control over," Allen says. "We'll just do the best we can do."
An off-duty police officer patrols the complex, and there are plans to add more officers in the spring.
Allen says he and Riley are interested in opening other Cruz-N-Park sites, perhaps in Salisbury or Benson.
"I wish them luck, but I wouldn't buy stock in it," says Salisbury Police Chief Jeff Jacobs. He says the teen centers he knows have done poorly, probably because of their rules.
Capt. B.W. Ward of the Greensboro Police Department says he'd be open to the idea of something like Cruz-N-Park coming to Greensboro.
"If a business opens up and invites people to ride through . . . they'd be working toward a common goal," Ward says.
Allen and Riley are hopeful about their venture.
They'd like to attract church groups, day-cares and senior citizens' groups during the day to play miniature golf and use the game room where video games occasionally flash "Winners Don't Do Drugs," a message signed by FBI chief William Sessions.
Shiflett says senior citizens are interested in the parking lot, too.
"They come in and walk around the cruise area," he says. 6 1 CRUISING Cruising
by CNB