DATE: Sunday, June 15, 1997                 TAG: 9706150031

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW DOLAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   37 lines

PLANNERS OK NEW STREET PLAN FOR CAMPOSTELLA SQUARE PROJECT

The last of the ramshackle homes in the once-distressed neighborhood of Campostella Square were razed a couple of weeks ago. The next step toward improvement, housing officials say, is to tear up the streets.

``We are going to completely lay out the streets again and create a new kind of community for Campostella Square,'' said Douglas Falkner, executive director of Chesapeake's Redevelopment and Housing Authority, ``to prevent a flow-through of traffic, which brought in some of the crime, drugs and violence.''

Revitalization of the public housing project, purchased by the authority in 1988, moved ahead last week when the city Planning Commission recommended approval for rezoning Campostella's approximately 100 acres and the street closures.

The City Council will make the final determination on the commission's recommendations at its July 15 meeting, City Planner Tim Howlett said.

On May 30, the last of the 1,600 World War II-era multifamily housing units in Campostella Square were demolished, Falkner said. The neighborhood between Campostella Road and Border Road, once known as Foundation Park, had been chronically neglected, succumbing to drugs, crime and arson.

The proposed rezoning would provide lots to accommodate the building of 155 low-income, single-family homes costing from $55,000 to $70,000 and a 12-acre area to be dedicated to the city for development of a 24,000-square-foot community center, ball fields and athletic courts. Each new homeowner would have to complete a self-sufficiency course run by the housing authority, and the resident would have to be employed for at least a year to qualify for home ownership, Falkner said.

The closed roads include all of Shelter, Friend, Heath, Pasture, Oxford and Wagon roads, and sections of Wingfield Avenue and Fireside Road.

The first houses should be completed in 1999, Falkner said.

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