
DATE: Tuesday, September 30, 1997           TAG: 9709270129

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SERIES: Church Street: What was lost ...

        Part 3

SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 367 lines

[CHURCH STREET]: TODAY THERE ARE TWO CHURCH STREETS The southern end boasts new bricks houses and apartments, shopping centers and sleek churches. But the northern end, with its decay and social ills, awaits the bulldozer - and the prospect of a new, as yet undetermined, life.

Customers at M.N.M. Seafood & Subs, a small takeout perched on Church Street where it funnels down from four lanes to two at Goff Street, are served food for thought with their fried fish and crabs.

Keep Hope Alive! reads a hand-painted message on the glass door.

Herman Manley put it there five years ago, hoping to uplift the neighborhood teens and the drugheads and hookers who loitered nearby when his family opened the then Ocean Delite.

Manley's daughter, Monica Newkirk, took over three months ago, renaming the place M.N.M. But she kept her dad's message.

Bodies and crack are no longer for sale on the corner, she said.

``I feel like I'm amongst family here,'' said Newkirk, 22, who knows the street for friends there, a place where her dad for years has moseyed over to the Goody Goody for a haircut.

The street's unsavory reputation as a crime zone where the major attraction is easy drugs and sex is undeserved, she said.

``I want Church Street to be a place that people don't think about as something bad,'' she said.

Keep Hope Alive! the sign says.

Present day Church Street is an unfinished puzzle. The 2-mile-long artery travels complex emotional and social ground, at once the source of pride and disappointment.

The southern half of the street, widened to four lanes with a tree-lined median, reflects the budding progress of two decades of urban renewal: Veritable slums have been replaced with brick homes and apartments, shopping centers, office space, sleek new churches.

Its northern half, still a narrow two-lane avenue, bears the scars of the street's long slide into decline: Shabby buildings run down by age and neglect shadow a community struggling to overcome blight wrought by illegal drugs and other social ills.

For the city's African American community, the storied street is a historic lifeline, its social, economic and cultural soul, where blacks once juked and jived in the ``Harlem of the South.''

Today, life is a struggle for many in the inner-city neighborhoods along the street's corridor.

The communities house approximately 11,000 people, about 98 percent of them African American, city records show. Nearly half of the households, 48 percent, earn less than $10,000 annually, compared to 19 percent citywide. Unemployment hovers near 20 percent, more than double the citywide rate.

While many residents say crime is overblown by the media, it is a palpable concern. For good reason: Serious crime in the neighborhoods, including robberies, burglaries and larcenies, is more than twice as high as the city's overall rate.

Still, it is a place where friends gather on porches to talk, where business is transacted amongst their own, where people attend funerals, celebrate school graduations and make a go of life as best they can.

Shaped by its history as a segregated downtown and more recently by the disruption wrought by urban renewal, the street is a focal point in the dynamics of modern race relations in Norfolk.

Black political leaders, particularly, have decried the uprooting of dozens of black merchants and hundreds of residents in the name of progress. As a result, the city-backed revitalization efforts, which have targeted more than $60 million in private and public funds to revive the street, have spawned both optimism and resentment.

As plans proceed to widen the northern end of street, from Goff to Granby Street, the fate of displaced blacks is again at the forefront.

Just this month, a worn out strip of shops in the 1700 block, including the once famous Plaza Hotel - a stopover for the likes of Louis Armstrong and Nat ``King'' Cole, who toured the East Coast ``black'' club circuit in the days of segregation - was razed.

For many, the loss was painful.

This final phase of street work, covering 1.2 miles and costing an estimated $18.2 million, will complete four-laning of the road - some 20 years after the city first laid asphalt on the southern end.

Ensuring the street's health ultimately will be a measure of the city's own well-being, black leaders say.

``Church Street strikes at the heart of every black citizen in this city, and it can't be taken lightly,'' said Joshua Paige, president of the Inner-City Federation of Civic Leagues.

Sean Cooper thinks Church Street is headed for a renaissance.

Cooper, 25, a fine arts graduate of Old Dominion University who works in telemarketing, shares a two-story brick house with his mom, Alma Cooper, in Attucks Square West. His mother, 68, now retired, ran a barber shop on Church Street next to the Top Hat Restaurant & Lounge, a few blocks from their house.

The 4-year-old house fronts Church Street, across from Mt. Carmel Baptist Church. The privately developed subdivision of about two dozen homes, like the church, sprang up as part of the street's revival.

From their fenced and neatly landscaped front yard, the Coopers can see historic Attucks Theatre, once the thriving center for black entertainment but now vacant and waiting for a new life.

Community plans to renovate the theater, an icon of the street's glory days, excite Sean Cooper.

``I see Attucks Theatre being almost a center of everything,'' he said. ``It gives more support and backbone to the community, showing off our culture and art and the visual and performing arts.''

The Coopers are pioneers, the first to arrive at Attucks Square West, where houses range in price from $65,000 to $95,000. But more have followed.

``People talk about Church Street like it's the same old place, but it's a different street in a different era,'' Alma Cooper said. ``We chose this spot because I wanted the world to know I wasn't afraid and wasn't ashamed to live on Church Street.''

While some fret that progress has come too slowly, improvements have occurred.

Plenty of money has been dropped there. The Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, a primary force in the street's renewal, estimates that $26 million in public funds and at least $35 million in private dollars have been pumped into the corridor since the late 1970s.

Some of the improvements documented by the housing authority:

Nearly a mile-long stretch of the street widened to ease traffic congestion.

About 107 acres of blighted property bought and razed to make way for new homes, businesses and other institutions.

Well over 1,000 jobs created.

To date, 320 privately built housing units, including nearly 100 low-to moderate-income single-family homes.

New office space and two new strip shopping centers, including a full-service grocery store, and retail and service shops, all involving black merchants and developers.

A 112-unit mid-rise for elderly and disabled residents; a 180-bed nursing home; and a new central U.S. Postal Service distribution center just off Brambleton Avenue.

Many blacks whose fortunes are tied to Church Street are optimistic about the future.

Diane Mack is one. She and her husband, James, opened the D&J Mack-5 Restaurant in the Church Street Square shopping center, a low-slung red brick strip of shops built during the first wave of revitalization in the 1980s.

The Macks' eatery is famous for jumbo chicken wings. On a Saturday evening in late August, every table was taken. Customers ranged from teen-age girls eating sandwiches to middle-aged men sipping bottled beer and sharing laughs.

``You run into people who say Church Street is gone, but we're reviving it,'' Mack said.

She and her husband live in Barberton, developed in the mid-1980s, a block off Church Street near Princess Anne Road.

``I know a lot of people who say, `Why would you live in this neighborhood?' '' Mack said. ``I say, `These are my people.' ''

Mabeleen Suiter, 53, is another of the faithful. A beautician by trade, she lives near the Coopers in Attucks Square West, close enough to work to walk. The bus stop is convenient. She shops at the Be-Lo grocery located in Church Street Crossing, the second shopping center built as part of renewal.

``I don't know of no other place I'd want to live,'' Suiter said. ``It used to look more like a ghetto to me. I'd say the city has done a marvelous job of developing it like it is.''

One drawback, she said, is that some pizza places, fearing crime, won't deliver to her home.

Keep Hope Alive! the sign says.

Tiara Wilson, 14, is a member of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church and lives in the Attucks Square subdivision, built in the late 1980s, about two streets behind the church. She spends a lot of time at Mt. Carmel, but doesn't linger much on Church Street.

``It's a good neighborhood and stuff, it's just boring,'' she said. ``We need more things for children, like video games, a small mall, like movies. I usually stay off Church Street. There's not much to do, unless you're a prostitute.''

That's a far cry from the old days, when parents slipped their children pocket change for a show at one of several movie theaters or to spend an afternoon window shopping. Now many parents are afraid to let youngsters walk alone on the street.

Tiara says prostitutes are easy to spot at night, including men dressed as women looking to pick up johns.

Many say outsiders, including whites, who come into the neighborhoods seeking drugs or sex cause many of the problems.

Crime seems concentrated around the street's deteriorated northern end past Goff, said Anthony Jones, who lives near the corner of 26th Street.

``This is a danger zone,'' said Jones, a 30-year resident of the street. ``I've seen a lot - murders, drugs, you name it. We need a change bad.''

Police statistics show the problem: The rate of serious crime in 1996 in neighborhoods along the Church Street corridor was reported at 106.5 crimes per 1,000 residents, compared to 41.6 crimes per 1,000 residents citywide.

Still, the redevelopment creeping up the street has made it safer, residents and police say. As a rookie cop in the mid-1970s, police spokesman Larry Hill recalls walking the beat.

``Violent crime is way down compared to what it was,'' Hill said, ``I think because a lot of the bars are gone, and a lot of the blight has been torn down.''

The arrival of more churches along the corridor also has made the street safer, residents said. Members of Mt. Carmel Baptist say the climate has changed for the better since the church opened a dozen years ago. Shortly after opening, members recall, deacons once chased down thieves who attempted to steal the T-top off the pastor's Corvette car. That would be rare now.

But church officials remain security conscious. On a recent Sunday, Deacon Tyronne Williams, chairman of security, scanned the church's parking lot, a Radio Shack walkie-talkie in hand monitoring the lot to guard against car break-ins.

Keep Hope Alive! the sign says.

The United House of Prayer for All People has been on the street since 1942. In the old days, to get around city zoning codes that restricted the street to commercial activity, the church's widely loved and resourceful national leader, Bishop Charles ``Daddy'' Grace, built two stores to front the church on the street: a cafeteria and a confectionery. Next door was a beer joint, which the church eventually bought to expand.

After extensive renovation in 1989 and in 1995, the church now has a sleek masonry finish with gold angel figurines that sport afros. People walk in off the street to eat at its popular public cafeteria. Diners who can afford to pay make cash donations, members say, but nobody is turned away.

``If you tell me you're hungry and homeless, we'll feed you,'' said Wheeler Wynn, an elder, who runs the cafeteria.

On summer weekends, church members sell ribs and steamed and fried crabs in the church's side parking lot. A wooden sign advertising the feast is often propped up on the street median.

The lot, pungent with barbecue-seared smoke, hops with people well after midnight some Fridays and Saturdays.

Across the street where abandoned houses once stood, the church built an apartment complex called McCollough's Paradise Gardens. Dedicated in 1989, it houses a mix of young singles, married couples and the elderly.

``The church is going to have to be a force to keep the community together,'' Wynn said. ``It's going to have to be a joint effort with the city, the churches and the neighborhood.''

These days, the street might be called church row. Nearby is the glistening new Garden of Prayer Temple, known for drawing gospel groups and visiting ministers that locals ordinarily wouldn't have a chance to hear.

Next door, Mt. Carmel Baptist has grown from about 35 active members to a congregation of 5,000 since building on the street. On Sundays, parked cars line blocks of neighborhood streets near the church.

Koritta Sawyer, 16, who lives in nearby Attucks Square, is busy doing something at Mt. Carmel nearly every day. The church sponsors car washes, skating parties, bowling outings and other activities.

``It's somewhere positive to be,'' she said.

Junius ``Bones'' Thompson, owner of the Goody Goody Barbershop on the west side of the 1700 block, has been on Church Street for 37 years. Twice before, redevelopment has uprooted him.

Soon, he'll be moving for the third time as the final widening claims his store, a creaky storefront adorned with a faded wooden political sign from an unsuccessful run for City Council. ``Bones THOMPSON Bones'' and ``Accountability'' it reads.

He is angry at what he sees as a history of unfair treatment of black businesses on the street.

``Each time we've had to play the role of the rats and roaches and find someplace to go,'' he said. ``It's a replay of the whole system of Norfolk when it comes to black people: `We don't care what your contribution is - you just don't fit.' What we had ain't coming back like that no more.''

During urban renewal and street widening in the 1970s and '80s, 113 businesses located on or near Church Street were displaced, according to the redevelopment and housing authority.

Of the 82 black-owned businesses involved, 37 never reopened and 45 moved to other locations.

``They've just destroyed all the history of Church Street,'' Thompson said. ``The future I see now is of McDonald's and 7-Elevens, of which blacks don't own.''

Some suspect the motive behind street widening is to create easy access to the $300 million MacArthur Center mall under construction downtown and to the zoo off Granby Street, also undergoing a multimillion-dollar expansion. That may benefit tourists and upscale shoppers but not the black-owned businesses along the way, they say.

Norfolk officials say they're sensitive to concerns.

``We have made a concerted effort to ensure that the black community was involved in the rebuilding of Church Street,'' said Pat Gomez, head of community development for the redevelopment and housing authority and also a participant in the street's revitalization since 1977.

The widening, he said, has nothing to do with the zoo or MacArthur Center, but is meant to improve traffic flow and access for residents and commuters. State transportation studies estimate that traffic will increase from the current 14,000 vehicles daily to 24,500 by year 2000.

``When we first agreed on the need to improve Church Street it was in the late 1970s, many, many years before anyone envisioned MacArthur Center or improvements to the zoo,'' Gomez said.

Ulysses Turner, co-developer of the Church Street Square shopping center, said economic reasons that go beyond race explain why many of the uprooted merchants haven't returned to Church Street. Many had been paying extremely low rent - $2 a square foot in some cases - in buildings deemed substandard.

They couldn't afford to pay the average $9 a foot he charges, still below the average citywide rate for retail space, Turner said.

``I developed what I think is a first-class, community-based strip shopping center,'' he said. ``You cannot develop a center like that and charge the rent those merchants were paying.''

Complicating matters is that Church Street merchants serve an area where a majority of customers are low-income. Businesses must price their products to sell, resulting in thin profit margins.

Many haven't made it, Turner said. Of the dozen or so businesses in the center, including restaurants, barbers, a laundromat and a jazz lounge, only a couple have been there since it opened.

But what the city needs to do to redress the situation, many blacks say, is to create a pool of money to help displaced businesses get back on their feet. Most are tenants who rent, and say the money they've gotten for relocation expenses doesn't go far enough.

``We still need some Mom and Pop shops,'' Henry McIntosh, owner of Church Street's Square Deal Barbershop, said. ``We got to make a living, too. If you take them out, you hitch them back up.''

About two dozen black merchants are being forced off the street by the latest widening. One of them is 30-year fixture Claude ``Jimmy'' Brooms, owner of the Acey Ducey Restaurant at the corner of Church and 17th.

Brooms was introduced to the street in January 1943, a teen-age Navy recruit on his first liberty from boot camp at Norfolk Naval Base.

He had $10 in his pocket and the world at his feet. He marveled at the street's life: the slow-clanking trolley, the biting cold of the night air, the bright lights of the clubs, and the pretty ladies, beckoning, offering warmth.

``Let me see the eyes of the Navy!'' he remembers some ladies calling to him from a house porch.

Brooms never forgot his first walk down Church Street. He came back to stay in 1967, opening a small shoeshine. He named the place Acey Ducey, after a club he knew at the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.

The old Plaza Hotel was just up the street, sailors were still a good customer base, and there were a string of stores and several nightclubs and barbershops within sight.

Over the years, he added on: A jukebox. A pool table. A permit to cook short-order foods. By the early 1970s, he began selling full meals.

The Acey Ducey became known as a place to get down-home, soul food.

Now it's time to move on. He's losing not only a work place but a home. He and his wife, Ernestine, had lived in a second-story apartment above the eatery since the early 1970s.

But he's not giving up. He plans to set up shop at the Downtown Plaza, which backs up to Church Street on its southern end. He and his wife have found an apartment in Virginia Beach.

``Hopefully, they'll rebuild this street and bring back life to the city, to this area,'' Brooms said. ``People want to drive by and see life. You take the life away and there's nothing left, just cold, hard asphalt, a cold, hard city.''

Keep Hope Alive! the sign says.

While talked about for years, the reality of the final street widening finally hit home earlier this month. Heavy machinery tore at the old Plaza Hotel and a strip of vacant shops in the 1700 block.

``There goes Church Street,'' said Nellie Babb, 62, who grew up on the street and resides in an aging duplex across from the old Plaza. Babb will have to find another place to live, too: The city's housing agency plans to buy the row of duplexes, raze them and make the land available to commercial developers.

Like many who watched the demolition, Babb agreed the buildings were beyond salvaging.

Still, it was like watching an old friend die.

William A. Crockett felt the pain. Since he retired as a city mechanic, he has often walked from his Huntersville home to pass time with friends on the porch of a two-story apartment building near the Goody Goody and the Acey Ducey.

Residents had wedged a plywood board and an old couch cushion into a first floor window to cover broken panes.

It was decrepit, but it was a home.

``A person who never lived on Church Street couldn't have the feeling like I do,'' Crockett said. ``The place does look condemned, it does need to be fixed up. But it's not the luxury of a place - it's the memories of a place.''

Babb said rebuilding the street and restoring its pride will be up to the next generation. She can draw inspiration from Herman Manley's hand-painted sign on the glass door of the M.N.M. Seafood & Subs.

``There's always hope,'' said Nellie Babb. ``When you give up your dreams and stop hoping, there's nothing left.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by Ian Martin/The Virginian-Pilot

Junius Thompson cuts Marcia Smith's hair...

Photos by Richard L. Dunston/The Virginian-Pilot

Monica Newkirk of M.N.M. Seafood and Subs...

Church Street's House of Prayer For all People.

Claude Brooms, owner of Acey Ducey Restaurant...

Junius "Bones" Thompson, owner of the Goody Goody Barbershop

Out with the old: Old businesses are demolished...

In with the new: Attucks Square West near Church Street.

Attucks Theatre...

Steve Earley/The Virginian-Pilot

1997: Church Street, looking north.

Graphic by John Earle/The Virginian-Pilot