THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410300039
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 244 lines
Denise and Gary Gray didn't know they were moving into such an historic house in May.
They only thought it was brand-new.
But that was the point.
The Grays were the first family, in maybe 50 years, to develop their own new house in Norfolk's Olde Huntersville, a neighborhood with a mix of renovated and abandoned properties.
To residents such as Beatrice Jennings, the Grays' arrival was one payoff for 10 years of hard work to revive this inner-city neighborhood.
A decade ago, Jennings helped organize the Olde Huntersville Development Corp., a nonprofit spinoff of the neighborhood civic league.
The company, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, has built 40 houses and renovated eight others, selling the homes at affordable prices to low-income families. It keeps costs down by helping buyers tap government loan programs.
The Grays built their $80,000 house without the corporation's assistance. But they say the work of the organization helped them decide to move to Olde Huntersville. And it wasn't just because of the neighborhood's physical improvements.
Throughout Olde Huntersville, residents talk about increased motivation and self-confidence for themselves and the community.
They've won battles at City Hall and outlasted gangs of drug dealers. Some have started businesses, others are climbing corporate ladders. They've created a neighborhood flag that many families fly from front porches. When they join for meetings, they often sing the Olde Huntersville theme song.
``All the neighbors look out for each other,'' said Denise Gray, 35, a medical office receptionist. ``Several neighbors even sweep the street everyday. You see them with their brooms and buckets. It was just the place I wanted to be.''
Gary Gray, 37, an electronics technician, added: ``When I first came to this area, I kind of had my doubts. I did see a decline in the area, but I've started to see an upward trend. I feel a certain amount of pride growing here.''
Jennings, executive director of the Olde Huntersville Development Corp., was part of a tight group of friends who planted seeds for the neighborhood's revival in the early 1980s.
Jennings, 66, had grown up in Olde Huntersville, then known as North Huntersville. The neighborhood was a major spawning ground for many members of the region's black middle class and for civic leaders.
But in the 1960s, blacks joined whites in the flight from core cities to increasingly integrated suburbs. Jennings and her family were among them.
By the early 1980s, Jennings and her oldest daughter, Beatrice Garvin, started thinking about the neighborhood they left behind and opportunities for buying handsome old houses at affordable prices. With friends, they discussed their ideas at twice-monthly rap sessions in Jennings' rented Virginia Beach townhouse.
Soon, about 10 families began selecting houses.
``Bea Jennings made us aware that this was a neighborhood that wasn't in the best of shape but had a lot of potential. From the very beginning, our minds and hearts just started blending together,'' said Walter ``Rob'' Turner, 40, whose family was among the first wave of suburban blacks to move to Olde Huntersville. ``The key to it was that it was affordable, but at the same time we would have an opportunity to shape it.''
It wasn't an easy choice.
The Turners, who were not from Norfolk, were taken aback when they first saw the neighborhood, especially its blighted Church Street corridor, the community's western boundary.
``I was eight months pregnant and wanting a house to start a family in,'' Marleen Turner, 38, recalled. ``Here, I was seeing houses that weren't cared for, a lot of boarded up homes, uncared for lawns, couches and refrigerators all out in the street, not many kids around, people who have lost hope.
``I was like, `Wait! We could do better than this.' ''
They thought of friends who focused on building their careers, accumulating credit cards and looking for homes in Virginia Beach.
But Bea Jennings kept saying, `` `Let's go in together and try to make a difference. Give it a chance,' '' Walter Turner said.
In late August 1982, the day Marleen Turner gave birth to the couple's first child, daughter Ebony, the Turners closed on a four-bedroom house on Anderson Street. They paid $28,000.
The Turners rarely look back now.
``For us, the value has basically tripled,'' Marleen Turner said. ``I'm looking in the future and I'm like, `Yes! Good move!' Downtown Norfolk is going to bust wide open and we're in a prime real-estate area within walking distance. It's just been a blessing.''
The average price of a single-family house in Olde Huntersville has been $38,994, based on 33 sales since Jan. 1, 1993, city assessor records show.
Within a few years of moving to the neighborhood, the new and returning families had reactivated the civic league. In 1984, the organization launched the Olde Huntersville Development Corp., perhaps the first grassroots community development corporation in Hampton Roads.
In recent years, more neighborhoods throughout Hampton Roads have developed similar companies.
In Olde Huntersville, the corporation's purpose was to attract more working families to the neighborhood. Low-income households were among target groups, and the development corporation scrounged for good deals on building materials and low-rate government mortgages and down-payment programs.
The first houses sold in the $20,000 range. New ones now sell in the $60,000 to $70,000 range, but the assistance programs still make them affordable to low-income working families, Jennings said.
Over the decade, the corporation also started summer youth programs and neighborhood gardens on vacant lots. Its activities have won national and state awards and gained attention in Newsweek magazine and on the ``60 Minutes'' television show.
But the corporation also almost folded several times, and some stalwarts, like Jennings and the Turners, had frustrating brushes with crime.
``It was crazy. You couldn't even put plants out. Even if they were planted in the morning, they'd be out of the ground by the next day,'' Walter Turner said. ``The pride and everything had just gone down. I think there was a sense of hopelessness.''
For Jennings, the neighborhood bottomed out about four or five years ago when several gangs of crack dealers infested Olde Huntersville.
``I never thought about leaving the neighborhood again,'' Jennings said. ``But my children feared for me, especially when the drug dealers took over the block.
``I had to duck to the floor on several occasions. I don't think they were shooting at me, but (it was) just from hearing the gunshots so close.''
But the Olde Huntersville Civic League began winning battles at City Hall, such as tightening zoning standards and building partnerships with city agencies, including the Police Department. It also received help from Signet Bank and NationsBank and from philanthropies such as the Enterprise Foundation, headed by Waterside developer James Rouse, and the Campaign for Human Development, established by the Catholic bishops of the United States.
Norfolk targeted the neighborhood for one of its first community policing actions, known as PACE, or Police Assisted Community Enforcement. With that, housing code inspections stepped up and more dilapidated buildings came down.
For example, since 1990, 73 houses and apartments have been razed in the 60-block neighborhood.
``We have a few pockets of problems,'' Jennings said. ``But we don't any longer see people on a corner all night. We don't see people taking over a block. I think what you see now from the Church Street corridor is some prostitution that might infiltrate some areas. But that comes and goes and it's certainly not what it was.''
Throughout it all, the Olde Huntersville Development Corp. continued to build and renovate affordable houses.
Something else happened.
``With all of the hard work and the things we were doing, rehabbing houses and the like, that it was almost like you didn't realize you were becoming a leader in the neighborhood,'' Walter Turner said. ``It has helped me become more outspoken. It has increased my leadership abilities.''
Those leadership skills carried beyond the neighborhood. Turner said he became the first black president of the apprenticeship association at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and a trustee at his church. He also established a part-time accounting and tax service.
The Enterprise Foundation in Maryland helped train the Turners and other early Olde Huntersville activists in community organizing, long-range planning, developing a board of directors and hands-on skills such as inspecting houses.
The lessons have become self-perpetuating through in-house training programs and a conscious effort to rotate residents through a variety of positions in the civic league and on the development corporation board.
``The more that I did it, the more confident I became . . . that I could make a difference in someone else's life and in the community,'' Marleen Turner said.
In recent years, Walter and Marleen Turner each have served as a development corporation president.
Like most Olde Huntersville activists, the Turners are wary of getting too much government help. ``We think the community spirit that's been built up would go down,'' Marleen Turner said, shaking her head at the thought.
But the test of leadership in Olde Huntersville isn't necessarily becoming an officer in the civic league or the corporation.
``I'm not a meeting person,'' declared Marty Batey, 40, who renovated a Johnson Avenue house with his wife, Letitia.
Batey said he helps by coaching a Bantam League basketball team at the Huntersville Recreation Center, giving youngsters odd jobs at his home and hiring out-of-work men for his growing painting contracting business, Batey Enterprises II.
At 7 every workday morning, three of his five employees meet at his house and ride with Batey to the job. These days, it's often to Pinewell-by-the-Bay, a new upscale subdivision in Ocean View.
``It makes for better neighbors and a better community to give them jobs,'' Batey said. ``I guess that makes it kind of selfish. But I really think the key to this whole thing here in this community is for people to look within their community to grow.''
Across the street from Batey's home, Thomas Simonton, 71, a retired mason and plumber, usually is found on his porch repairing small appliances and bicycles.
It brings a few dollars, Simonton said, ``because there ain't no living on Social Security.''
But after a lifetime of work, he still likes keeping busy, Simonton said. And, he added, ``I don't try to charge an arm and a leg.''
Sometimes, Simonton said, he's put together bicycles from junk parts and given them to children whose parents cannot afford to pay.
``We need more helping of each other,'' he said. ``That's the way it's at.''
Almost every morning, Geraldine Johnson, 74, joins longtime friend Jacqueline Williams for an hour of sweeping sidewalks and gutters along their block on B Avenue.
``I can't stand paper all over the street,'' explained Johnson, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1958. The litter, she said, is dropped by careless customers of a neighborhood convenience store.
Bea Jennings said she believes Olde Huntersville has reached such a critical mass of neighborhood enthusiasm that the development corporation is ready to take on more projects.
A neighborhood gospel choir is among them. It's a way, she said, to entice even more residents to help out.
Jennings started talking about a neighbor with a drinking problem.
``But, ahhh, what a beautiful voice,'' she said. ``I told him we're going to form a gospel choir and we want that voice.
``He said, `I'm going to start working on it. I think I might go back to church.' ''
Jennings smiled at the thought.
``You never know what the incentive is for a person,'' she said. ``We want to have something for everyone to get involved with.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Clara Bynum sweeps the sidewalk in front of the house she has rented
on B Avenue in Olde Huntersville for 22 years. Almost every morning
close-knit neighbors on her street meet outside to sweep sidewalks
and gutters along their block.
Gary and Denise Gray moved into their brand-new privately built home
in Olde Huntersville in May.
File photo
Rundown apartment buildings such as these in the late 1970s are
becoming less common.
Photos
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/Staff
Beatrice Jennings, above left, and her daughter Beatrice Garvin
stand inside the headquarters of the Olde Huntersville Development
Corp.
Walter Turner, left, and his wife bought their home in August 1982
for $28,000, and it has just about tripled in value. The Turners fly
a neighborhood flag.
Graphic
Map
STAFF
THE NEXT DECADE
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB