
DATE: Friday, April 25, 1997                TAG: 9704250668

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: HAMPTON                           LENGTH:   96 lines

COMMUNITY FORUMS BRING ACTION IN HAMPTON NEIGHBORHOOD RESOURCE CENTER, POLICE WILL BE HOUSED UNDER ONE ROOF.

They call it Neighborhood Week.

It's not a summer block party. It's certainly not a city council meeting. But what's happening in Hampton borrows from both - some socializing here, a little business there - during a week of open forums scattered throughout the city's neighborhoods.

The forums get people together and get them talking. And eventually, those people get to acting.

Take the 2315 Resource Center, temporarily named for its address on Victoria Boulevard, to be built in the Wythe section of Hampton. The one-story, boarded-up scrap of a building spent its younger years as a day care and Department of Motor Vehicles office.

Soon it will see demolition crews, before builders transform the site into a neighborhood resource center and police field office. A sign and drawing of the building were unveiled at the site Thursday.

It will be the first time these two functions will be joined under one roof in Hampton: a meeting place and database for neighborhood groups within arm's length of police facilities.

It happened through the persistence of neighbors who found that their voices were louder when they spoke as a unit.

What happened naturally in Hampton has been occurring throughout the country when neighbors rallied together behind a cause.

Local governments began developing neighborhood services departments, where city staff, neighborhood associations and civic groups could lock heads, resources and funds to do more with less. At the same time, police have been establishing outposts.

Police Maj. Tom Townsend said field offices in Hampton will help police develop closer relationships with residents, mirroring a widespread trend toward more interactive policing.

In Portsmouth, for example, residents of the Brighton/Prentis Park area credit two community police officers for helping create a 44 percent drop in violent crime last year. Norfolk neighborhoods have also seen huge dips in crime where community policing is present.

The same year the Wythe neighbors organized, a Neighborhood Office opened in Hampton. The office administers a federal grant program worth $1.4 million. Similar neighborhood offices exist in Virginia Beach and James City County.

At the head of Wythe's resource center project is Andre McCloud, who has been president of the Wythe-Phenix Improvement Association since it formed in 1993.

McCloud had opposed a zoning proposal to build temporary housing for the homeless at the site of the future community center. The Planning Commission advised him to organize with others before addressing the City Council.

Many of McCloud's neighbors were also against the city's proposal. They dreaded a steady stream of transient neighbors and the possible reduction in property values. All agreed they wanted their community to remain zoned for single-family homes.

After successfully blocking the proposal, the residents formed a neighborhood association to help decide the fate of the property. They also began talking about crime and what they could do to make their community safer.

The discussion led to giving police officers space in the future building, to make their presence more felt in the community.

Four other Wythe neighborhood associations backed the Wythe-Phenix group in working with the city's Neighborhood Office, which appropriated a $300,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant to fund the 2315 Resource Center.

Office Director Joan Kennedy said the department is all about stretching resources, including residents' ideas. It is about forming partnerships between neighborhood associations and city leaders, community groups, businesses and churches to create solutions that otherwise would not come about.

On the other hand, ``This isn't just an issue of coming up with a big Christmas list of what a neighborhood wants,'' she said. After the long process of meeting and planning, what surface are projects that are going to ``make or break the quality of life in that neighborhood.''

Like the safety issue that will lead to a police presence in McCloud's neighborhood when the resource center is completed around December.

About half of Hampton's daytime patrol officers will take roll call, do paperwork and generally operate from there.

But the officers will do more than traditional law enforcement, Townsend said. They will assist with zoning, building codes, lighting issues and other situations. ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN

The Virginian-Pilot

An artist's rendering of the 2315 Resource Center on Victoria

Boulevard in Hampton. The center will have a meeting place and

database for neighborhood groups within arm's length of police

facilities.

Andre McCloud, center, president of the Wythe-Phenix Improvement

Association, jokes with other guests at the unveiling of the design

for the new 2315 Resource Center in Hampton. McCloud organized with

neighbors before arguing against turning the building into housing

for the homeless. Instead, they proposed a resource center with a

place for police officers.