ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606250025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY CAMPAGNA-HAMLIN
YOUNG FOLKS in Roanoke may not remember the not-so-distant history of Henry Street in the Gainsboro community. But with all the hullabaloo these days about the city's plans for the old "Yard," maybe we need to refresh our memories.
The "Gainsboro Neighborhood Action Project: A Comprehensive Revitalization Plan" was compiled and assembled by the Gainsboro Project Area Committee in 1980-81. The result was a concise 169-page report, not including the appendix.
The report, consisting of 19 individual action projects, was the brainchild of an entire community. It was presented to Roanoke City Council in July 1981 with the full backing of the community planning office and the planning commission.
Both council and the housing authority unanimously approved the plan and voted in separate hearings "to adopt the citizens' chosen course of strategies and activities for the revitalization of Gainsboro."
"This document presents the findings and final recommendations culminating the citizen and consultant efforts spanning over a year," wrote George Heller, president of the Project Area Committee in 1981. "We feel that it appropriately answers the question as to what kind of community Gainsboro should be, and wants to be."
Incredibly, the money for the ingeniously devised plans, supposedly to come from federal Community Development Block Grants, was never applied to them - and interestingly, that's about the time the Coca-Cola (later, Wometco) plant project was initiated by the city via the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Gainsboro Neighborhood Action Project, which included commercial goals and objectives for areas such as Henry Street, pre-empted a string of revitalization plans dating to the 1960s, when federal urban-renewal programs began to destroy urban areas.
Like so many close-knit black communities that had blossomed before the '60s, Gainsboro began to decay and die, having been wrenched apart by the black "clearance and removal" paradigm of urban-renewal programs directed by local housing-authority boards.
The Neighborhood Development Plan, originated in 1962 and directed by the housing authority, reflected the ethos of a coterie of largely upper middle-class white men on the local authority's board. But it drew harsh criticism from the Gainsboro community.
Helter wrote in 1981, "We have found that a severe deterioration in community spirit has come to afflict the neighborhood due to the disruption and fragmentation resulting from the inadequacies of previous redevelopment program direction and activities. This neighborhood spirit and a sense of social cohesion must be rebuilt in Gainsboro, and to do so demands more than a conventional approach to planning: The study program has been designed to generate visible activities during the course of investigation and to establish a strong 'interactive environment' for neighborhood participation to ensure that this plan cannot be placed back on the shelf."
Yet not only was the plan immediately shelved, but it apparently was forgotten by city officials. Very soon, the housing authority in Roanoke will be delivering its new agenda to the community concerning Henry Street.
If community leaders do not begin to direct their energies toward a community plan of response and vision regarding Henry Street, then the authority's plans will be accomplished - whether or not residents of Gainsboro, and Roanoke as a whole, approve.
Community activists Evelyn Bethel and Helen Davis approached the authority with a series of questions concerning the authority's Henry Street proposals. As of last week, the women had still received no response.
Citizens must unite now to focus on this most urgent issue, before it's too late. The "Gainsboro Neighborhood Action Project" might be a place to begin. That notebook of precious research and information is available at the Gainsboro Library.
Mary Campagna-Hamlin of Elliston is author of "Gainsboro: The Destruction of a Historic Community."
LENGTH: Medium: 76 linesby CNB