THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 5, 1995 TAG: 9506050030
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 133 lines
Councilman Paul R. Riddick, 46, remembers Church Street when it was the center of black urban life and lined with stores, theaters and offices.
``Church Street used to have a certain flavor,'' Riddick said, as he stood at Johnson and Church Street next to Carolina's Restaurant, one of the remaining small businesses. ``I used to like to get up on a Saturday morning and just watch the street unfold.''
As a councilman from the Church Street ward, Riddick would like to make that happen again. He wants to revitalize the businesses there and build up others around them.
Threatening Riddick's plans is a $12 million city highway project that would raze many, if not most, of the surviving small businesses and convert the street, one of the oldest in Norfolk, into a suburban boulevard similar to those in Virginia Beach.
Following Virginia Department of Transportation guidelines, the road would swell from two to four lanes and include a wide median strip. On-street parking would be prohibited, and any future businesses would be set back behind parking lots in strip shopping centers. The new street would be 130-feet wide - three times the current width.
Several council members, including Mayor Paul Fraim, support Riddick in opposing the project as currently designed. Fraim and Riddick say the state, by using standard guidelines, is forcing city highway planners to turn an urban street into a suburban boulevard.
Fraim and Riddick point to Colley Avenue and 21st Street as examples. There, to re-develop and enhance that area, planners have encouraged the type of things they are destroying on Church Street: businesses close to the street, on-street parking and a narrow, more intimate road.
``This is the same problem of VDOT imposing standards on us that are more appropriate for rural and suburban areas,'' Fraim said. ``On Colley Avenue, you can park your car and walk to a drugstore, a restaurant or some other shop. The VDOT standards don't work well with an urban city.''
The concerns over the road's design raise questions about why the street is being widened at all: Is the work needed or is it designed just to get state highway money? John Keifer, public works director, says the state will not fund the project unless the road is widened. Under the state's logic, Keifer said, only a widened highway with increased capacity meets the criteria for using money from the state's gas tax.
``I don't think it will draw more capacity,'' he said, ``but to be eligible for funding, that's what it is intending to do.''
Keifer says the street has no serious traffic problems now and that he does not expect an increase in the street's traffic once it is widened.
At a council meeting last month, when one councilman supported on-street parking, Keifer suggested the city build the new Church Street with four lanes, then, after the road was finished, city workers could take out one lane and put parking lines in.
``We can stripe a street anyway we want to,'' Keifer said.
But Scott Hollis, state urban engineer with VDOT in Richmond, when asked a general question on such an idea, said any such action would violate a written agreement that a city must sign with the state before the project.
The community is not of one mind on the project's design. Some businesses and residents believe the widening will revitalize the area.
Bea Jennings, executive director of the Olde Huntersville Development Corporation, said many people, including herself, see the road widening as clearing out a run-down, commercial street that now depresses property values and puts off investors.
``I think it's long overdue,'' said Jennings, whose group develops low- and moderate-income housing. ``What you have now is a corridor that for some reason, either because of the type of businesses there now or for some other reason, are attracting the wrong people and undesirables.''
At a public hearing Thursday, more than 70 people showed up to give their comments either in writing or to a stenographer. The City Council must approve any plans, which it has yet to do.
The proposed highway would be widened along 1.25 miles from Goff to Granby streets, cutting from side to side along the current street. In some sections, all the businesses along the east side would be taken out; in others, all the businesses along the west side.
Keifer says the path of the widened road jogs to miss property owned by the Housing Authority and property that might have environmental problems, and thus be expensive to demolish for a roadway.
But Riddick and some business people believe the highway wipes out black-owned businesses and property while leaving those owned by non-African Americans.
The plans to widen the road would take out 24 businesses, say city staff. In one section alone, they include the Acey Ducey restaurant, the Goody-Goody Barbershop, Graves Funeral Home and Simpkins Wholesale Confectionary.
Yvonne Watkins operates Simpkins Wholesale Confectionary, which has been on Church Street for almost a half century, she said. Rufus Holley Jr., has a flower shop that has been there for almost 30 years. Henry McIntosh operates the Square Deal barbershop, which past urban renewal efforts have forced him to move twice.
On a recent afternoon, Watkins, Holley and McIntosh leaned over a VDOT map spread across the plastic seat of a couch in the Square Deal barbershop.
They followed the pale blue lines to see whether their locations would be destroyed.
``We've been here when it was fashionable to leave and move to the suburbs,'' Watkins said. ``We never left.''
The city has no plans to relocate any of the displaced businesses. Store owners could get some relocation advice or assistance but would have to find another space on their own, said Clarissa McAdoo of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
The Redevelopment Authority may eventually build a shopping center at 18th and Church streets, but that is years away, after the new Church Street is built, McAdoo said.
One problem seldom given consideration, Riddick said, is that most business people along Church Street lease space. They do not own land or buildings. The property owners are often well-compensated by redevelopment plans while business owners are left high and dry.
But the road as currently designed may be in trouble. Councilmen Fraim, Riddick and Herbert C. Collins all spoke against the design. The Rev. Joseph N. Green Jr., part of a committee that came up with the design, seemed surprised by the criticism and said the committee would re-examine it.
Earl Cochran, state location and design engineer with VDOT, said the department has altered some of its standards in recent years because some planners now favor a type of highway design less focused on moving traffic.
Cochran said state road designers were now prepared to allow narrower roads, with on-street parking and tighter turns, in new developments. But he said the state had less experience with allowing such a road in an existing area, and in allocating state funds for it.
``If you start from the ground up, you have a lot more latitude than if you start with an existing facility,'' he said.
Councilman Mason C. Andrews said the Church Street design already had existed for several years before he joined the Church Street committee three years ago.
He said the design should not be changed without forethought and planning.
Councilman Collins said the council would delay a vote on the project until some of the concerns raised about the highway's design were answered.
``The merchants have been kind of frustrated and left out of the process,'' Collins said. ``We are going to hold this up and look at it, so all the parties can have a chance to participate in it fully.'' by CNB