THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 10, 1995 TAG: 9507100026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: By the People
An Occasional series on citizens taking steps to build better
communications.
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
Dilworth is a trendy urban neighborhood. Its slightly bohemian residents, most of whom are white, live in 80-year-old homes with big front porches and dine on East Boulevard in some of the best restaurants in town.
Belmont's homes are small bungalows that trace back to the 1920s when Charlotte was a mill town. Its residents, most of whom are black, struggle with crime and drug dealers. Its ``restaurants'' include illegal nip joints.
Both neighborhoods are a mile from downtown's central square. And both are part of an ambitious new organization of inner-city neighborhoods called the Queen City Congress.
It combines areas as diverse as the Hampton Roads neighborhoods of Park Place, Ghent, Olde Towne or Ida Barbour under the premise that they have common interests. They all want more mass transit, crime prevention, and zoning laws that better fit urban neighborhoods. To come together, they are having to overcome traditional barriers of race and class.
The equivalent of the Queen City Congress in Hampton Roads, at least in its initial form, would be if the urban neighborhoods of Portsmouth, Norfolk and Chesapeake banded together and lobbied for more resources and attention from regional planning bodies like the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission as well as from their own cities.
Civic groups in Hampton Roads have made attempts to link diverse urban neighborhoods.
The closest is Norfolk's Inner-City Federation of Civic Leagues. Begun 20 years ago in the interest of older, poorer, mostly black neighborhoods, it has ebbed and flowed in its presence and activism. Its member neighborhoods are still mostly black and poor. But some wealthier neighborhoods are considering joining, said Joshua Paige, the group's president.
``As we make our ways around the city, and other civic leagues understand what we are trying to achieve, I expect they will express an interest in working together with us,'' Paige said.
But the Queen City Congress goes beyond a coalition of civic leagues. It approaches a new form of government.
Numbers of representatives are assigned to neighborhoods on the basis of population. A neighborhood with 10,000 people, for instance, would get twice as many representatives as one with 5,000.
Its leaders say the congress, still in its infancy, is a new form of ``urban democracy'' that is designed to better establish needs with political power.
The organization is based on the concept that neighborhoods, or a coalition of neighborhoods with common interests, are the best place to start solving problems. In years to come, these groups of neighborhoods could form one big metropolitan association.
Traditional cities and counties divide neighborhoods that otherwise might go together. The urban neighborhoods of the Queen City Congress, for example, belong to a half-dozen county districts.
All neighborhoods in the group are within two miles of downtown. About 100,000 people live there. These are the city's older urban neighborhoods, leaders say, within which residents can walk, drive or bicycle at ease.
On May 20 residents signed ``The Queen City Declaration of Interdependence,'' which coincided with a local Independence Day to mark rebellious events in 1775. The declaration read:
``We, the citizens, claim these truths to be irrefutable; that as viable communities, we have the right to determine the future of our properties and homes, establish and maintain a self governing system and hold accountable governments and agencies that act on our behalf.''
It's too early to tell how far the Queen City Congress - just begun this year - will go with its agenda. But its leaders and founders include some of the city's more experienced community leaders, who are plugged into city government and the business community.
Shirley Fulton, a superior court judge, is one of the group's founders. An African American, Fulton and her husband live in Wesley Heights, an older, troubled neighborhood that is gradually gentrifying with black professionals.
``For so long, (African Americans) were told that the American dream was to grow up, move to the suburbs and have 1.2 kids,'' Fulton said. ``That perception is changing now. You need someone who is willing to take that chance'' and move into a poorer neighborhood and start improving it.
Fulton said the neighborhood leaders are already discovering how many problems and challenges richer and poorer urban areas share. They need zoning that encourages stores and offices close to the sidewalk, rather than in strip shopping centers with big parking lots.
With older sidewalks and sewers, they need higher maintenance budgets, but they have less use for new roads that the suburbs clamor for.
``The closer you live downtown, the closer you are to having your (neighborhood street) turned into a four-lane highway,'' said Beverly Padgett, 39, who was shopping one afternoon in a Dilworth natural foods store. ``The city is just promoting the destruction of the inner city when they do that.''
The congress was surprisingly easy to start, said Ron Morgan, a Charlotte architect originally from San Francisco, because both rich and poor neighborhoods saw common interests.
Charlotte is expanding, and the city is sending money to the outlying areas, Morgan said. Both rich and poor inner-city neighborhoods are angry at government.
``For the cost of just one of the interchanges out on the beltway, you could build a whole electrical trolley system to serve the core of the city,'' Morgan said. ``When I talk to the mayor, he says, `We don't have any money for mass transit.' But we just spent $150 million on one interchange!''
Of course, the state built the interchange with state road money. The state does not allow the city to use this money on inner-city transit projects. One reason the Queen City Congress was formed was to break down such barriers that discriminate against urban areas.
Charlotte has marked differences with Norfolk. Although a smaller metropolitan area, Charlotte takes in more territory and people than Norfolk because of North Carolina's liberal annexation laws. It's as if Norfolk extended to Hilltop in Virginia Beach.
To form such an organization as the Queen City Congress, urban neighborhoods in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Chesapeake would have to overcome the barriers of belonging to different municipalities, as well as the physical barriers of water, and the cultural and economic barriers of money, race and class.
The allure of such an organization includes speaking to cities, metropolitan planning groups, business groups and the state with a common voice on common problems, from education to mass transit.
Greta Gustavson, president of the Freemason Street Area Association, whose residents are generally well-off, said her league has discussed working more with Young Terrace, Tidewater Gardens, Berkley and other areas surrounding downtown.
``We're all within walking distance of downtown, and we share a lot of the same facilities,'' Gustavson said.
Morgan said a key is having all urban neighborhoods come together at once under the common identity of a region's urban area. If just one poor neighborhood tries to link with a wealthier neighborhood, there are too many old tensions to overcome.
``You can never make it as one neighborhood,'' Morgan said. ``But if you have 100,000 people saying, `Hey, we want to fix up the inner city, too,' then you have a political argument. We're saying let's put infrastructure into the core of the city, let's densify it, and make it attractive.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
These Charlotte residents are staunch supporters of the Queen City
Congress: from left, Mary Hopper of Dilworth, Shirley Fulton of
Wesley Heights, Chris Burns-Fazzi of Elizabeth and Mattie Marshall
of Washington Heights.
by CNB