
DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711090025

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   86 lines

ARCHITECTS WIN AWARD FOR DIGGS TOWN MAKEOVER NEW LOOK HAS MANY RESIDENTS FULL OF PRIDE AND DESIRE TO KEEP HOMES NICE.

On your list of upcoming holiday social engagements, Mary Cowell would like for you to include a visit to her neighborhood.

``During the holidays, everybody fixes their porches up,'' Cowell says, her 75-year-old voice tinged with the excitement of a child. ``Oh, it's so pretty, especially at night. You really ought to come on out here.''

Cowell wouldn't have issued that friendly invitation a couple of years ago. She lives in Diggs Town, a public housing neighborhood off Campostella Road, near the Norfolk-Chesapeake line.

Then, the community was decorated more with drug dealers, street gangs and the flashing blue lights of police cruisers responding to complaints of domestic violence, muggings or gunshots.

But things have changed in Diggs Town since Cowell moved there as a young mother in 1955. Then, it was the latest thing in public housing, characterized by large ``super block'' street patterns with a common front yard between military-style, barracks-like buildings.

Credit the changes - in part - to landscaping.

When the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority decided several years ago to renovate its 5,000 units of public housing across the city, it hired consultants who eventually hired CMSS Architects of Virginia Beach to landscape.

The first thing the landscaping firm was asked to do, said Dennis Richardson, director of design and construction services for NRHA, was to change ``the barracks-like community with no common space and no defined yards'' into a neighborhood.

With plantings, patios, porches and play yards, CMSS did it so well that the firm will receive a national award of merit in Atlanta this week from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

It is one of about 25 awards handed out by the organization, which represents more than 3,000 landscape architects and design /planning professionals.

Working with CMSS ``was a very positive experience,'' Richardson said. ``They helped by letting us know what they thought we needed. It has had a positive effect on the lives of the people who live there. They're taking better care of their homes.''

It was a challenge to create a sense of security and a sense of ``pride in ownership'' in tenants of rented, public housing property, said John Corica, CMSS's director of landscape architecture.

``We were attempting to change the physical environment of Diggs Town,'' Corica said. ``We were hoping to bring about social changes. We wanted to give people more of an identity of being part of a neighborhood.''

CMSS did all of that by creating clearly defined private space in clusters of 20 to 40 housing units by using fences, trees, patios and plantings.

According to the organization's announcement of the industry-wide award, ``Front porches and picket fences give all of the residents private front yards and tall fences around back yards shared by three to six buildings where children can play.''

Through site observation and workshops with community residents, housing authority staff and local law enforcement officials, the design team used the concept of ``defensible space,'' to address the problems of Diggs Town, Corica said.

Through landscaping, CMSS worked to give residents a back yard, a front yard, a porch - everything a neighborhood should have.

The plan included using large trees to discourage destruction. High-branched trees were used for security reasons, so that neighbors could see neighbors across the way. Plantings around foundations were intentionally omitted to encourage residents to plant and maintain their own gardens.

Trees and porches haven't changed everything about Diggs Town, Cowell will tell you. When she takes her chair on her front porch on sunny days, she takes it back into her apartment at night.

``I don't want somebody to steal my chair,'' she says.

But now, she has yellow, lavender and white mums growing beneath her living room window.

And she's looking forward to seeing the lights again - the twinkling white ones, not the flashing blues.

``It just feels better around here,'' Cowell says. ``I'm very proud of where I live. Others are, too. It's nice.'' ILLUSTRATION: ROCHELEAU photos

The Diggs Town Community housing project, above, was built in the

1950s to house 1,200 people. The Norfolk Redevelopment Housing

Authority hired CMSS Architects of Virginia Beach to redesign the

barracks-like housing into a neighborhood, shown at left. Their

success has won the firm a national award of merit from the American

Society of Landscape Artists and changed the outlook of many

residents. Front yards, back yards and porches were added to make

each unit feel more like a home.