ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 1996 TAG: 9610220072
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
THE IDEA that the city of Roanoke should sell the old Dumas Hotel in Gainsboro to its former owners, for the price they were paid in 1987, is absurd - so absurd that it's reasonable to assume this is more a gesture to make a larger point than a proposal to be seriously entertained on its merits.
The trouble is: The proposal's absurdity tends to obscure the larger point, which might not be so absurd.
In 1987, when the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority bought the building for $24,700, it had been closed for a decade. The authority had initiated condemnation proceedings, but the owners accepted the authority's offer without forcing it into the courts. A building of significant historic interest, as a center of black Roanoke life during the segregation era, it was by '87 an empty, boarded-up structure on a street of empty structures.
Today, the building has been saved, though not completely renovated, and is owned by Total Action Against Poverty, the Roanoke Valley's nonprofit community-action agency. TAP uses the kitchen to prepare 1,375 meals daily for children in the Head Start program; the building is used for jazz concerts and community meetings and rented out for other functions.
Now that nearby Hotel Roanoke has reopened with a new conference center adjacent, the old Dumas Hotel has potential for being of even greater value - if, that is, agreement can ever be reached on a Henry Street revitalization plan.
To finish renovating the structure would cost an estimated $1 million. But the renovations so far have cost almost as much. The main funding source was a $600,000 competitive federal grant won by TAP in the mid-'80s. Some $109,000 in Head Start money has been spent for the commercial-grade kitchen. More than $200,000 was supplied by the city for asbestos removal.
Can you imagine the public outcry - and with good reason - if the city were somehow to get the building back from TAP and, after the investment in it of nearly $1 million in taxpayers' money in one form or another, return it to a private interest at a tiny fraction of its renovated value?
To be sure, not so readily dismissed is the lingering resentment toward the city, and specifically the housing authority, by some current and former residents of the Gainsboro neighborhood. In razing much of what had been Roanoke's black neighborhoods three decades ago, the city often acted insensitively and arrogantly, and with little input from the residents of those neighborhoods. The seeds of that arrogance still bear fruit.
Still, it's time the Henry Street district was regarded more with an eye toward its future, and less toward a past that can never be recovered - indeed that, in the case of a segregated community, no one should want to recover. The protest over an unreal issue doesn't advance the neighborhood's cause in having its real interests - and grievances - taken into account in shaping Henry Street's future.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB