Southside Neighborhood Association President Marie Hunter thanked the City Council this afternoon for its attention to her community, but she took issue with a city report indicating a decline in crime there.
"We don't know what to do," she said. "We talk and talk and talk and the same things are going on all the time."
With the City Council about to consider a formal "development agreement" with the St. Louis firm McCormack Baron Salazar for rebuilding the twice-failed Rolling Hills subdivision, Durham developer Bob Chapman has weighed in to suggest that City Hall think again.
In an email this morning to council members and Mayor Bill Bell, Chapman laid out an economic argument against the agreement, which is on the Council's work-session agenda this afternoon.
His email reads:
The City Council is due to contemplate committing about $17 million for rebuilding the twice-failed Rolling Hills — a.k.a. "Southside East" — at its work session Thursday, but it hasn't forgotten the neighborhood's other part.
"Southside West" – or Southside proper, the neighborhood of that name – is subject of a progress report at Thursday's work session, including some cost estimates for home-building there.
The Southside neighborhood covers about 100 acres, south of the Durham Freeway between South Roxboro Street and the American Tobacco Trail. Its revitalization has been paired with redeveloping the adjacent Rolling Hills tract in the city's plan, though to date Rolling Hills has received the greater part of the city's attention and money.
Besides connecting Southside residents with social services such as job training, the neighborhood is due for city-backed housing rehabilitation – one house done, two under way, bids in for two more, according to the report – and building new homes for sale to owner occupants on 45 lots owned by the nonprofit Self Help.
The report estimates site preparation for the first 35 lots at $1.4 million, the city to cover with anticipated federal grant money or a dedicated rise in the property tax; it also recommends $4.4 million in aid for low-income home buyers, to be paid from the same sources.
Southside and Rolling Hills constitute Census Tract 23 in Durham, and according to the 2010 census there are 1,331 residents and 481 residential units, 59 of which were occupied by their owners. The neighborhood has a history of high poverty, unemployment and crime.
Links to sections of the update are below. For the latest on Southside East (a.k.a. Rolling Hills), see Wednesday's Durham News.
Meeting this afternoon, the Rolling Hills/Southside Steering Committee endorsed the idea of a "summit" meeting on low-cost housing, neighborhood revitalizing and public money -- then handed off to City Hall.
Whether City Hall carries the idea anywhere remains to be seen.
"A request has been made and we heard it," said Larry Jarvis, assistant community development director.
Lorisa Seibel (right), interim director of the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition, raised the idea earlier this month. She has been among the most vocal opponents of a city plan to dedicate future federal grant money to Southside/Rolling Hills.
Seibel is also chairwoman of the Rolling Hills/Southside Steering Committee's housing subcommittee, which submitted the summit proposal for today's agenda.
Ray Eurquhart, a Southside resident who has actively promoted the revitalization project and served as the Steering Committee's co-chairman has also called for a summit.
Seibel did not attend today's meeting and Eurquhart attended only long enough to announce his resignation.
"I'm going to work on other things in Durham and the [Southside] community," Eurquhart said. "But I'll be around, I'm not dropping off the face of the earth."
A group affiliated with the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition has produced a 60-page report highly critical of the city’s financing plan for the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment project. According to the report, “What’s At Stake: Housing for Low-Income People in Durham/Durham’s Plans 2010-2020,” the Rolling Hills plan would cut the number of low-cost residences the city and nonprofit agencies can build in the next decade from 812 to 197. “This is an alarming reduction, one that none of us can settle for,” said Terry Allebaugh, director of the nonprofit Housing for New Hope. Allebaugh presented the report at last week’s City Council work session. Here is a link to the report:
Larry Hester, the would-be developer from whom the city repossessed the unsold part of Rolling Hills for delinquent loans, spoke up at Thursday's City Council work session on redeveloping the 20-acre site and adjoining Southside neighborhood near the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
He objected.
Construction costs and financing for the city's contribution to the Rolling Hills/Southside Redevelopment are points of misgiving for some members of the project's local steering committee.
Concerns about a lack of money allocated for developing "human capital" in the depressed, crime-plagued area also came up during a conference call this morning among committee members, city staffers and developer McCormack Baron Salazar.
The call was in preparation for a special City Council work session Thursday on the Rolling Hills/Southside project, which covers an area of about 125 acres just south of the Durham Freeway near downtown.
It's going to take about $53 million to build the first phases of Rolling Hills/Southside's redevelopment, consultant Karl Schlachter said Tuesday.
How much of that Durham taxpayers will be expected to pony up has yet to be determined, he told the project's steering committee.
Schlachter, a vice president of prospective developer McCormack Baron Salazar, said cost estimates are still under review, but a financing presentation needs to be ready for the City Council's May 3 meeting in order to meet a deadline for state tax credits hoped to cover some of the costs.
First- and second-phase costs include:
The Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment project got a much different reception from the Durham Planning Commission tonight than it did a month ago.
Where a request to accept a "blight" report brought sharp criticism at the commission's Jan. 4 meeting, a rezoning and plan amendment for part of the Rolling Hills site won unanimous approval and warm words for the project overall.
"I really feel like this is the time for this area of Durham," said commissioner Wendy Jacobs. "It's going to happen, it's going to happen now. We need to really get behind this project and support it."
The City Council's unanimous approval for a new, improved downtown
zoning system opens the way for another step along the way of Rolling
Hills/Southside's redevelopment.
But City Councilman Eugene Brown says it's time to reconsider.
This particular step would be developer McCormack Baron Salazar's
request to bring eight acres of the 20-acre Rolling Hills tract under
the downtown umbrella, thus allowing the company to put buildings along
Lakewood Avenue that can serve as either residential or commercial
units.
