
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995                   TAG: 9501310072
SECTION: STREET BY STREET                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE LOSS STILL STINGS

It seemed at times like everybody was grappling for control of Gainsboro - City Hall, the housing authority and the Gainsboro Neighborhood Development Corp.

Lawyers for the authority warned in 1985 that Gainsboro land was being acquired improperly by the development corporation.

Jack Place told City Attorney Wilburn Dibling in an April 4, 1985, memo that he knew of at least one instance in which a development corporation representative told a property owner that his land would be condemned if he did not accept the development corporation's offer. Place reminded the city that only the housing authority had the power to condemn, not the development corporation.

"If, in a condemnation suit," Place wrote, "evidence were introduced: that [the development corporation] obtained appraisals; made an unacceptable offer to the owner; requested the City to direct the Authority to condemn and the Authority did so condemn under the City's directive, I feel that we would be on very thin jurisdictional ice."

George Heller, the development corporation's Gainsboro-born executive director at the time, says most of the time, his group had a good working relationship with the housing authority. He wishes, though, that the city and the authority had given citizens more power over the project in the 1970s.

A decade ago, his group ran into trouble when it tried to redevelop Gainsboro's Henry Street. The organization spent $100,000 on plans; then-Mayor Noel Taylor took over the project and the plans were discarded. The Henry Street redevelopment has been slow; the authority announced last November it wants to build its headquarters and some retail shops there.

Heller said the citizens' group would have saved many of the old Henry Street buildings that have been torn down.

Margaret Turpin, who became director after Heller, said Gainsboro was an embattled turf. "The housing authority had its hands in the pie, and the city had its hands in the pie. It was a pie-eating contest."

by CNB