A special city council meeting on the Rolling Hills/Southside project assumed Biblical proportions this morning, as council members exchanged passages of scripture and finally decided to act on faith.

"Amen," said Mayor Pro Tem Cora Cole-McFadden, one of the six council members who voted to go ahead with the project, and the developer, as planned.

The one nay vote came from Councilman Eugene Brown, who likened the project to a house built on sand that was quickly washed away in the Matthew 7 parable.

Councilman Farad Ali, though, countered with a reading from Hebrews 11, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”; and from James 2, “Faith without works is dead.”

The council vote came only after 31/2 hours of presentation by Larry Jarvis, assistant community development director, and questions, comments, position statements and holy writ by council members in response.

Their approval itself was a statement of policy; some specifics, including the city's conditional commitment of $9.4 million more to the project and a spending plan for about $2 million in federal community development grants expected for fiscal 2012-13 (subject, as Brown pointed out, to budget cutters in Congress), remain to be discussed and voted on at the council's regular meeting May 2.

Today's vote, though, did endorse a continuing role for the St. Louis firm McCormack Baron Salazar as the project's developer. MBS has managed project planning since 2007 and has devised a $48 million plan that includes 211 new apartments, most for rent to low-income tenants, on the Rolling Hills site at South Roxboro Street and Lakewood Avenue; along with 40 to 45 new or rehabilitated homes for sale to low-income owner occupants in the adjacent Southside neighborhood.

For months, nonprofit agencies and private citizens have raised objections to the project, particularly a financing plan based on borrowing against future federal grants. Jarvis, though, convinced the council that proceeding as planned would bring more benefits than two suggested alternatives: to land-bank the Rolling Hills site while proceeding with housing rehabilitation in Southside, or to let local nonprofits redevelop the Rolling Hills site where two previous developers have failed to complete the residential subdivisions they had proposed.

“In many ways, it’s not a perfect plan, but I believe it is a plan we can move forward with,” said Councilman Mike Woodard, who added a scripture.

“My contribution to our Bible study today is Psalm 127,” he said: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

And Councilman Howard Clement concluded, “Let’s get it on.”

People who deal in services for the poor and homeless don't like the city's idea to finance the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment with an advance against future federal grants.

That idea may have another reason soon to think again: the U.S. Congress.

The National League of Cities is warning its members that the federal Community Development Block Grant program, which is providing Durham $2.1 million for low-income housing and other services in the current fiscal year, could be at risk from budget cuts in Washington. (See link below.)

Current federal regulations allow cities to borrow money and dedicate future grants, to which Durham and some other cities are now entitled, to paying it back. Last year, city staffers suggested taking such a loan to cover $9.4 million needed to get construction started at Rolling Hills and Southside.

But if Congress trims or eliminates the CDBG program, that money will have to come from somewhere else.

"If the City Council continues on its course [of taking the loan], it could be in a very bad position," said Ryan Fehrman, director of the Genesis Home shelter. "They would have to figure out how they're going to pay that back."

The city has made a conditional commitment to provide the $9.4 million if the project receives $1.3 million in state tax credits, which may be sold on an open market. Durham won't know until late summer whether the N.C. Housing Finance Agency approves the credits; in 2010, the agency turned down a similar application.

In a report to its members, the National League of Cities describes the perceived threat to CDBG and urges local officials to lobby Congress against cutting or killing the program. Durham's community development department forwarded NLC's report to its mailing list Monday.

"Newly elected members of Congress, especially those with no background in local government and little understanding of the program, may be particularly susceptible to supporting CDBG’s critics," the NLC wrote.

"In the current deficit-conscious environment in Congress, this criticism could prove to be especially damaging to local efforts to preserve CDBG funds."

As yet, it's hard to tell how serious the threat is, said Larry Jarvis, assistant community development director.

"I don't think anyone knows just now," he said. "There have been proposals over the years to eliminate the program or reduce the funding. ... With the recent election, a lot of things are on the table."

Fehrman and others have claimed that tying up CDBG money for years with Rolling Hills/Southside would cripple nonprofit agencies to which the city has passed federal money along for services such as community kitchens, food pantries, credit counseling and emergency shelter.

Fehrman said he expects the federal government will keep CDBG alive, but "cuts of 5 to 15 percent could be coming down the pike pretty soon."

Documents:

Twenty-five citizens let the City Council know Monday night they want to keep federal-grant money going to nonprofits serving the city's poor.

Their message was one expressed repeatedly since last spring, when the city's community development department recommended redirecting money previously granted to nonprofit agencies serving the city at large into the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment project.

"It ain't right to be robbing Peter to pay Paul," said Michael Kelly, a past beneficiary of nonprofit services to move from homelessness to owning his own home.

Rolling Hills/Southside is a proposal to rebuild a failed subdivision near downtown Durham and revitalize the depressed Southside neighborhood that adjoins it. The city has made a conditional commitment to funding in support of an application for state tax credits for the project. That funding, it was suggested last year, by borrowing against anticipated future grants from two federal programs for low-cost housing and services to alleviate and prevent homelessness.

In the past, some of that money has been passed on to nonprofit agencies including Habitat for Humanity, Urban Ministries of Durham, Teen Court and the John Avery Boys and Girls Club.

Last May, the City Council directed City Manager Tom Bonfield to investigate alternate sources of money for such agencies. A report was expected in September but has not yet been produced.

Community Development Director Mike Barros and Mayor Bill Bell pointed out that the city has made no decisions on how to use grants it expects to receive for fiscal 2011-12, and won't make any until April.

But some council members and citizens said it appeared that decisions had already been made, and the customary process of applications, public hearings and comment leading up to the city's application to Housing and Urban Development is only going through motions.

Bell, after a public hearing that ran almost two hours, told social-service nonprofits hoping for money from the federal grants to apply before the Jan. 27 deadline, even though community development officials had told them in December their applications would not be considered.

"Go ahead and apply," he said. "Ultimately we [the council] will deal with it, so by all means go ahead and apply."

For the current fiscal year, Durham received about $3.6 million through the federal programs. Local agencies sharing in the money typically must match their grants from other sources.

The InterNeighborhood Council wants the city and county governments to commit themselves to continued funding for low-income housing and services before committing any more money to the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment project.

"We feel the City Council has an obligation to spread the resources according to need," said INC President Tom Miller, "and tying them up in Rolling Hills isn't very effective."
 

Four years after City Hall and consulting developers set out to revitalize redevelopment in the twice-failed Rolling Hills subdivision and adjacent Southside neighborhood, the project has a Website of its own and a group of opinion-takers are hitting the streets to see what residents would like to see revitalized.

The Website, "Southside Consensus" (www.southsideconsensus.com) went live Tuesday night; the boots-on-the-ground part starts with an orientation meeting this afternoon for volunteers who are to "walk the streets and listen for community concerns ... look for ways to keep people engaged," said Mayme Webb-Bledsoe, who is in charge of the canvassing effort.

Webb-Bledsoe and her canvassing effort was presented Tuesday to the Rolling Hills/Southside Steering Committee by Sandra Moore, president of Urban Strategies, a community-development affiliate of Rolling Hills redeveloper McCormack Baron Salazar.

“'The steering committee. pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed for Urban … to get folks here in town, working on the ground every day and we now have that team in place,” Moore said.

Webb-Bledsoe is on loan to the Rolling Hills/Southside project from Duke University's community-affairs office, where she is the senior neighborhood coordinator.

Last night, the City Council moved the Rolling Hills/Southside uplift ahead, clearing the legal way for new apartments to go up along Lakewood Avenue between Roxboro and Fayetteville streets.

Next week, citizens can tell Mayor Bill Bell what they think about it.
April 14 at 6 p.m., Hizzonner sits down for an "Ask the Mayor" session at the Hayti Heritage Center.

Bell has made the project a high priority of his administration. The 125-acre project area, just south of the Durham Freeway and near the American Tobacco complex, is "one of the most prestigious sites in our community," Bell said at a 2007 meeting with area residents. He enphasized it again in his 2010 "State of the City" speech:
"We can ill afford as a city, to allow this neighborhood to remain blighted. There is too much of our city’s history tied to this area, and it is one of the most prominent sites adjacent to downtown."

Monday night's council vote incorporated about 7 acres of the 20-acre Rolling Hills site into the "downtown tier," allowing for high-density development and mixed residential and commercial uses in that zone.

Rolling Hills' frontage on Morehead Avenue faces the Heritage Square shopping center, which Durham development firm Scientific Properties purchased in 2007 with the intention of eventually rebuilding it for a mix of retail, office and residential occupants.

Scientific Properties has not revealed specifics of its plans, or a timetable. Company executive Gary Kueber would only say the project is still in Scientific Properties' plans.

The city's community development office has said the Rolling Hills/Southside project could nudge Heritage Square's redevelopment along, along with that of the former Fayette Place apartment complex nearby, which is owned and was recently razed by the Philadelphia firm Campus Apartments.

Departing from past practice, Durham's community development office has set two priorities for spending an expected $20 million over the next five years:

• Neighborhood revitalization
• "Special needs" housing

The first priority means, "A lot of our resources are going to be focused on the Rolling Hills/Southside area," said assistant director Larry Jarvis.

Toward the second, "The primary population we're intending to serve are formlerly homeless individuals," he said. That means particular funding toward a primary goal of the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness in Durham.

Jarvis announced the priorities yesterday, in a public meeting on the city's comprehensive plan for using money coming through three programs of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department. Writing a plan is a HUD requirement.

In years past, Jarvis said, the city has taken a "shotgun approach" to using HUD's money. Concentrating on two priorities acknowledges, he said, "We cannot be all things to all people."

Mayor Bill Bell aimed a barb at some critics of the Rolling Hills/Southside project in his State of the City speech tonight.

"There are those who would criticize for the sake of criticism, and
whose only goal is to kill or stop the development from moving forward," he said.

Larry Hester, from whom the city repossessed the 20-acre Rolling Hills site for delinquent loans in 2003, has been the project's most vocal critic recently. Hester and his wife, Denise, have said the project could mean the city's taking property by eminent domain, and that residents of the area involved have not been adequately informed of the city's plans.

Bell, though, said the 125-acre project area "must be revived," Bell said. "There is too much of our city's history tied to this area."

The Durham Planning Commission declared the Rolling Hills/Southside area to be legally "blighted" Tuesday night, but its deliberation was dominated by "eminent domain."

As a result, what was in essence a formality in the process for organizing rehabilitation in the run-down and crime-plagued area off the Durham Freeway gained approval by only a 6-5 vote.

"I'm not sure what we've done," commissioner Jackie Brown said after the vote.

City Hall and its consultants are pressing ahead with the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment project. A survey sent to the City Council this week illustrates the reason why.

Of 319 residential structures (single-family houses, duplexes and apartment buildings) in the 125-acre project area between Fayetteville Street and the American Tobacco Trail, 274 are in pretty sorry shape — structurally unsound, unsafe or beyond repair. Of those, 108 were deemed currently unfit for occupation.