DATE: Saturday, November 15, 1997           TAG: 9711140007

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   43 lines

NORFOLK: REVIVALISTS AT THE INVITATION OF THE FIVE POINTS PARTNERSHIP, THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM THIS WEEK RECOMMENDED 44 WAYS TO UPGRADE NORVIEW

Enhancing the safety, appearance and economic health of Norfolk's Norview is the Five Points Partnership's mission.

Since the citizen coalition came into being a couple of years ago, community-building activity in Norview has spread, crime rates have come down, interaction between Norview and City Hall has increased and homecoming at Norview High School has returned after decades of absence. Civic leagues, businesses, public schools, police and City Hall are working together to improve the area.

Now the Young Architects Forum, a committee of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, has recommended 44 ways to upgrade life in Norview.

The recommendations are the fruit of hundreds of hours of effort donated by the young architects. The architects collected information and suggestions from property owners, businesses, educators and clergy, police and others. About 100 people, including city officials and staffers, turned out for the architects' presentation on a recent evening at Norview Presbyterian Church.

Among the recommendations for public and private improvements: a pathway connecting neighborhoods, awnings on businesses, recruitment of eateries that would be gathering places, sign control.

Urbanologists talk about ``recycling'' cities whose populations became smaller, poorer and older as more and more middle-income Americans opted for attractive suburbs with little crime and public schools containing few disadvantaged youngsters.

Many old center cities - Norfolk and Portsmouth among them - have a chance to regain ground economically and demographically in the 21st century if significant numbers of residents organize to defeat destructive forces. That more and more citizens are mobilizing to create better cities in Hampton Roads and elsewhere in the United States is cause for optimism.

The Five Points Partnership is one of several grass-roots-revival groups in Norfolk between Berkley and Ocean View. Like other urban activists, the partnership has a tough assignment - but not, in its eyes, an impossible one. And that's the spirit that overcomes.

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