DATE: Tuesday, September 30, 1997           TAG: 9709300267

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ADAM BERNSTEIN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   98 lines

FAIRWOOD HOMES' DEMISE WELCOMEDSOME NEIGHBORS OF THE DEVELOPMENT FELT THREATENED BY THE SECTION'S RESIDENTS.

Life in Bide-a-Wee Manor got so bad within the past few years that Peter G. Shackley packed a Beretta semiautomatic handgun when he tended his backyard garden.

Shackley, a 52-year-old Beazley Drive homeowner, said he routinely had been harassed by tenants at nearby Fairwood Homes, a low-income housing community with many transient renters. Once, Shackley said, a man tried to stab him while he was in his front yard.

But Shackley retired his weapon this summer.

About 180 families that had lived in Fairwood Homes have been moved to other sections of the housing community, said James Meade, the business manager for W.H.H. Trice & Co. Trice is the property-management arm of Williamsburg-based Bush Cos., which owns all of Fairwood.

Of 854 homes in the livable sections, about half were unoccupied, Meade said.

Another 109 families living in the now-vacant section of Fairwood either were evicted for habitual nonpayment of rent or were transient renters and left voluntarily.

A total of 657 homes will be destroyed on the property near Bide-a-Wee Manor.

The land will be turned into a commerce park of offices. Twenty-five acres next to Bide-a-Wee Manor will remain dormant for now, to let the area ``stabilize'' economically, said Johnna R. Whitaker, a deputy city manager and the city's chief financial officer.

``It's an outstanding thing,'' Shackley said about the removal of Fairwood homes closest to him. He described how at one point he installed a video camera in his front bay window, and he claims to have taped five drug deals at a stop sign across the street.

But recently, ``I went out and bought an 18-speed bike,'' he said. ``Me and my wife go for a ride every night with our granddaughter, and I don't even pack my gun anymore.''

Most of Shackley's neighbors also are venturing outdoors again, sitting on porch swings, going for walks and bike rides.

``It's so much better,'' said Jimmy Jenkins, 72, of the 600 block of Normandy St.

Jenkins, who retired from the Army in 1966 and since has become a security guard, sometimes felt alarmed when he would return from work at 10:30 p.m. or 7 a.m., depending on his shift.

``When you open the car door, and they see you alone, and especially if you have a little age on you, they ask you for a cigarette, a little bit of money, or change,'' he said, adding that he never was harmed.

Those situations became routine, he said, and kept him and his neighbors indoors.

But now, Jenkins said, his neighbors ``are walking up and down the street, riding bikes. Prior to this (demolition at Fairwood), you never saw residents of Bide-a-Wee Manor riding up and down the street.''

Or at least not for the past 15 years, when Bush bought the former Academy Park, previously known as Alexander Park.

Built as temporary World War II housing, Alexander Park was bought, in the mid-1950s, by philanthropic Beazley Foundation, which renamed the property Academy Park.

Many residents stayed in the small, white, no-frills row houses, some paying $45 a month in rent well into the 1970s.

When Bush, a for-profit concern, bought the property, rents rose into the $100 range and have inched up ever since.

The few remaining sections of Fairwood look like a squalid ghost town across from the green-lawned homes of Normandy Street.

The neighborhood revamping is ``fantastic,'' said Elizabeth Satterfield, 54, of McLean Street. She says objects were sometimes thrown at her car when she drove through Fairwood.

To visit her daughter, who lives near Tower Mall, she would take a longer route to avoid Fairwood.

Harold Satterfield, Elizabeth's husband, said he often rides his bike through Fairwood now.

Others never encountered any problems.

For example, a 32-year-old housewife with two children said she ``never experienced a problem'' and has ``never been bothered.''

``There were people I got to know and like,'' said the woman, who has lived on the 600 block of Normandy Street for five years.

But she added that she imagines most others are happy the nearby section of Fairwood is vacant.

``You couldn't even get pizza delivered out here, because it was next to Fairwood Homes,'' she said.

Don Artis, the postman who serves the area, said no one ever bothered him.

Although many Bide-a-Wee Manor residents say they were fearful, they did not move away because they did not want to give up on their neighborhood.

Shackley, a retired Norfolk Naval Shipyard pipefitter, said he was twice wounded in Vietnam and was determined not to be driven away in his own country.

``It's so quiet now, it's actually keeping me awake.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MARK MITCHELL\ file

Fairwood Homes...

Color photo

Peter G. Shackley

Map

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