DATE: Wednesday, June 18, 1997              TAG: 9706170282

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: NEIGHBORHOOD EXCHANGE

SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   62 lines

YOUNG ARCHITECTS VOLUNTEER TO HELP REVIVE NORVIEW

Last week a contingent of architects teamed with the regulars in East Norview's block-watch patrol.

``We want to know what you look for,'' architect Lisa Moritz told Shorty Hilton of the block-watchers.

Moments later, Hilton nodded toward a car parked between two clapboard buildings. Moritz' gaze followed.

``Drug dealers,'' Hilton said.

Moritz and her colleagues - architects, professors, interns and students - took notes and photos of street scenes as they strolled. It's part of a volunteer effort by the regional chapter of the Young Architects Forum to help revitalize the Norview area, made up of about a dozen neighborhoods near the center of Norfolk.

The group has been working with the neighborhoods for six months.

Key to the endeavor is an intensive community brainstorming and planning workshop scheduled for Saturday. Known in architectural circles as a charrette, the workshop runs from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Norview High School.

The plan is to identify goals and produce guidelines to help the neighborhoods become safer, attract compatible businesses, improve traffic flow and bring neighbors together.

``What we're finding is that each individual neighborhood is sort of inward-thinking. It's sort of a `regionalism' problem,'' Moritz said. ``They're concerned about . . . their particular neighborhood. What we're going to try to do is make them think as a community.''

The volunteers already have garnered some ideas from residents. People noted that children often play in the streets because they lack convenient parks.

And residents have pointed out problem properties, such as a brick duplex nicknamed ``the 7-Eleven'' because, as Hilton said, ``everything you'd want is right here - drugs, prostitution, everything.''

Yet the Young Architects also saw many well-kept houses as well as areas where a small-business resurgence might be possible.

``There's so much energy here,'' said David Levy, 33, a Young Architect member who has led the Norview project with Moritz, 31, and Robert Bell, 31.

``All we're going to do is translate the needs into architectural and planning solutions . . . We're providing them with some more tools.''

The document will be assembled this summer and given to Norview's Five-Point Partnership, a coalition of civic leagues, churches, schools, businesses and police.

Because the Young Architects are volunteers, they cannot be available to every Hampton Roads neighborhood. ``But you don't have to have us involved,'' Moritz said. ``Hopefully other neighborhoods can look at the Five Points area as a catalyst for other grass-roots efforts . . . The citizens of Norview can become mentors.'' MEMO: For information on the planning meeting and Norview's Five

Points Partnership, call Bev Sell, 857-1794.

Ideas for this column? Contact Mike Knepler, 446-2275. ILLUSTRATION: Photos

Lisa Moritz

David Levy

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