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

DATE: THURSDAY, October 12, 1995                   TAG: 9510120044
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GROUP FIGHTS HOMES' REMOVAL

For several years, residents of Old Southwest in Roanoke have watched churches tear down some of the neighborhood's most distinctive houses and turn them into parking lots.

A neighborhood organization draws the line today, when the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia will ask the city for permission to remove two old homes on First Street Southwest so the diocese can expand its offices.

"It would really just destroy that street to do this," said Old Southwest Inc. board member Petie Cavendish. "Piece by piece, we're being destroyed, and pretty soon we're going to be like Gainsboro - there's going to be nothing left."

Gainsboro, a neighborhood just north of the railroad tracks from downtown, lost hundreds of homes and businesses during decades of city-directed urban renewal.

Cavendish and other Old Southwest leaders will be in City Council chambers this afternoon at 4, when the diocese asks the city Architectural Review Board for permission to move or tear down two buildings next door to diocesan offices. The diocese wants to create larger spaces for conferences as well as a new resource center, guest suite and alley parking.

At stake are the Moore House at 1014 First St. and the turreted Bishop Marmion Resource Center at 1010 First St., which houses Christian education materials for parishes and the Conflict Resolution Center, an independent organization.

Alan Boyce, diocesan deputy for administration, said Wednesday that the diocese has offered to give Old Southwest the two houses and $35,000 toward the cost of moving them.

By the diocese's own estimate, it would cost about $75,000 to move each of the houses. Cavendish figures it would take another $80,000 to restore them.

She said there's no way the neighborhood group could pay a total of $230,000 for such a project. Even if it could afford it, she said, "then you've got a house that you've put so much money in, it's not marketable."

So, Cavendish called the diocese's offer of $35,000 "kind of a joke."

First Baptist Church recently offered Old Southwest Inc. two buildings it eventually tore down at Marshall Avenue and Franklin Road. Again, the neighborhood group couldn't afford to move them. Such an offer "sounds real good," said Cavendish, "but it's a cheap shot."

Two other Old Southwest churches, St. John's Episcopal and St. Mark's Lutheran, also have torn down buildings in recent years.

by CNB