DATE: Thursday, September 4, 1997           TAG: 9709040421

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   81 lines

MEMORIES GIVE WAY TO CHURCH STREET'S FUTURE

Russell Coleman watched glumly Wednesday morning as a huge metal bucket took a bite from the back of what was once Big G's garage, for years a mainstay of social and business life for the city's black community on Church Street.

``That was my hangout,'' Coleman, 73, said, as he sat across the street at Simpkins' Texaco, recalling the days he and friends gathered around an old coal stove in the garage to play dominoes.

``That's history there,'' Coleman said as the yellow machine reduced the place to splintered wood and broken bricks. ``It's just tearing down old memories.''

Before the week is out, the former Big G's and a strip of old, worn-out buildings on the west side of Church Street's 1700 block, including the old Plaza Hotel, will be razed by a contractor working for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The buildings - among the last remnants of Church Street's heyday - are being demolished to widen the road from two lanes to four, a plan that has been discussed for nearly three decades but is finally happening.

The work will run between Goff and Granby streets, a 1.2-mile section of the street's northern end, and will include a tree-lined median. When finished, the entire length of Church Street will be four lanes. The southern end of the street was widened in the late 1970s as part of a city redevelopment project.

Construction work on the final segment isn't scheduled to begin until summer 1998, VDOT officials say. But buildings in the path of the new lanes are being razed now so utilities can be installed and to prepare for the eventual roadwork, officials say.

The buildings going down this week, including Big G's, have been vacant for months. But they house rich memories for many old-timers.

The former Perry's Lounge anchors the strip at the corner of Church and 18th Street, with a big crab and hand-lettered ``Crabs Steamed Fried'' in faded paint on the front. The building, at one time a floor or two taller before a fire, housed the famous Plaza Hotel, home to black entertainers of the likes of Nat ``King'' Cole, Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald as they traveled black clubs of the East Coast during the days of segregation in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

``It's a sad day - we feel like we ought to have a funeral,'' said Junius ``Bones'' Thompson, who runs the Goody Goody Barbershop, separated from Big G's by a weedy vacant lot.

The structures housing the Goody Goody, as well as the Acey Ducey Restaurant - the last two businesses still in operation on the west side of the 1700 block - will be the next to go. Their demolition is expected within the next few weeks, officials said.

While many merchants and residents voiced sadness at watching a part of their past disappear, many also said change was needed. The old buildings were eyesores and had become havens for drunks and drug users, they said.

But they said that when the clearing and widening is over, they hope black businesses can return to the west side of the street.

``They need to tear this down, but they need to rebuild, too,'' said Melvin Lashley, 44, a resident of the adjacent Huntersville community.

``When things get dilapidated and all, you just like to see nice buildings over there,'' said Celestine McAllister, a store clerk at the Shop 'N Go, located across the street from the row of doomed storefronts.

The Shop 'N Go and other businesses now operating on the east side of Church Street between the 1300 and 1700 blocks are not in the path of the planned widening and will not be disturbed.

The City Council last month rezoned about eight acres on the west side to make space for new businesses or to relocate existing ones, including Graves Funeral Home, which will be razed for the widening.

``We hope this will serve the community better, but we don't know yet,'' said Henry McIntosh, owner of the Square Deal Barbershop, located across the street from Acey Ducey.

McIntosh, who plans to remain in his spot on Church Street, stood on the sidewalk Wednesday watching the yellow machine taking apart Big G's bite by bite.

``You hate to see it happen,'' he said, ``but it's progress.'' ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot

Buildings are being demolished along Church Street in Norfolk to

make room for widening the historic thoroughfare from two lanes to

four and adding a tree-lined median. More than a mile of the street,

from Goff to Granby, will be remade, with most work beginning in

summer 1998.

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