ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
IF THOSE WHO spoke out at Tuesday's workshop had their way, the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority would have nothing to do with Henry Street.
Keep the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority from building new headquarters on Henry Street, force the authority to sell the street back to the people who owned it before, and please, Roanoke, don't think of a rebuilt Henry Street as just another tourist draw.
That was the gist of what residents had to say at the first of three workshops on plans to construct two blocks of offices, restaurants and shops on what used to be Roanoke's central avenue of black enterprise.
Just as they did in meetings last winter, black Roanokers expressed deep resentment Tuesday night about how the authority managed to acquire the Henry Street properties from families over the last 20 years. The street, once lined with drugstores, dry cleaners, restaurants and bars both legal and illegal, now consists of one functional building and two vacant ones.
The city's Henry Street Revival Committee and the housing authority's board of commissioners have proposed building new authority headquarters on Henry Street along with a string of new nightclubs, restaurants and shops. The original idea was to lure college students, tourists and guests at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center to an entertainment district, but chief city planner John Marlles emphasized Tuesday that the city is open to other ideas as well.
"There's not one place to buy even one aspirin or a bottle of milk," complained Vernice Law, who said that shops and community centers for the Gainsboro neighborhood be built there.
She wants the authority to sell the former Hotel Dumas - now the Henry Street Music Center - back to her son and daughter-in-law, Wilton and Darthula Lash of Fairfax Station. She said the Lashes have received no reply to their April offer to purchase the hotel for use as a community center.
About 40 residents - and almost as many city administrators and authority staff members - turned out at the hearing at the Roanoke Civic Center. Marlles split the audience into four groups that dictated their responses to the plan - pros and cons - to city employees who wrote them on flip charts.
Throughout the workshop, people expressed resistance to the notion of the housing authority, now based at the Lansdowne Park public housing complex in Northwest Roanoke, moving to Henry Street.
"We first of all want to know how the housing authority got the ownership of all the property," said the Rev. Edward Mitchell. In years past, he said, "they didn't even want to come to Henry Street, and now they want to move to Henry Street."
He and many others blame the housing authority for the demolition and decline of most buildings on Henry Street and in the historic Gainsboro neighborhood. Mitchell said the authority is only interested in Henry Street now because for the first time, with the reopening of the Hotel Roanoke, it's considered a bona fide part of downtown.
Dr. Walter Claytor, a retired dentist, said the housing authority ought to be shut down for all the destruction it caused in the black community, Henry Street included. "You go down to New Orleans," he said. "They didn't tear down the French Quarter."
Most at the workshop were keen on minority participation being strong in all aspects of any Henry Street redevelopment - architects, engineers, general contractors and business owners.
Leroy Lowe, a Roanoke Valley black entrepreneur, is proposing for one building on Henry Street a theater honoring the pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, who filmed a movie in the Henry Street area in the 1920s.
Several black people cautioned, however, that Henry Street can't be segregated this time around. "You can't have all blackness or all whiteness," warned Ethel Duckett, who lives nearby on Gilmer Avenue. "We can't live in the past."
The next workshops on Henry Street will be Sept. 10 and Oct. 3, both from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Roanoke Civic Center Exhibit Hall.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB