Community revitalization: Hope for tomorrow

As reported by Andrew Barksdale at The FayObserver, Anastasia Vann won’t miss her cramped, two-bedroom apartment in Campbell Terrace.

Staff photo by Octavio Jones
Anastasia Vann, a resident of Campbell Terrace Apartments, will be moving out her home in preparation for the Hope VI project. Watch an interview with Vann at fayobserver.com.

The vinyl floors are faded and gray, The concrete walls painted an egg-shell yellow. The windows look out over identical red-brick buildings.

The public housing complex, built on the edge of downtown in 1953, will be razed early next year. So will its older cousin, Delona Gardens, a block away.

For more than two generations, the housing projects have sheltered Fayetteville’s working poor and penniless. More than 90 percent of tenants today are unmarried women. About half have children living with them.

Beginning this month, they will start leaving as the city embarks on a $119
million project called Hope VI. The two housing complexes will be replaced by more than 550 apartments and 105 single-family homes throughout the Old Wilmington Road area, offering new hope for a blighted community dotted with empty lots and shuttered homes.

Vann, who is 43 and lives alone, has already begun packing, even though she hasn’t found a place to live. She would prefer to rent a house but will settle for a modern apartment. She wants to plant a garden and have more privacy.

“I want a new beginning,” she said.

About 213 families live in the two projects to be demolished. Everyone has two options: move to another Fayetteville Metropolitan Housing Authority complex or find a private apartment or rental house. The housing agency estimates that two-thirds of the tenants will leave public housing in favor of the open market. When they do, they will get federal Section 8 program vouchers to subsidize their rents.

The decision can be difficult for some families, who worry about finding another school for their children or dislike the idea of uprooting after so many years in one place.

“Some are scared, but most of us are excited,” said Vann, a member of the Housing Authority’s residential advisory board.

The residents won’t do it alone. The Hope VI program will pick up the moving tab and pay other relocation expenses, and officials will help them find apartments or rental houses.

The linchpin of the project is a $20 million federal Hope VI grant, which the Housing Authority won last year. As part of the revitalization project, a community center, a day care and a medical clinic are planned. So is a 72-unit apartment complex on Bunce Road on the other side of town.

Everything has to be built by 2013. The first wave of construction is scheduled to begin this summer or early fall.

Getting outside help

To keep the project on track and handle the mounds of paperwork, the housing agency sought an outside consultant last year. The board hired Boulevard Group Inc., an Atlanta firm with experience overseeing other Hope VI projects, to manage this one. More HERE

City of Fayettville receives $20 million Hope VI grant

source: FayObserver.com

Staff writer Andrew Barksdale

City of Fayettville receives $20 million Hope VI grant

The grant will allow the city to replace two sprawling public housing complexes along Old Wilmington Road, and help leverage an additional $93 million in public and private money for a combined $113 million investment.

The project, which could take four years to complete, could be one of the largest and most significant redevelopment efforts in the city’s history.

“This is huge news for this community, not just for the the city,” Mayor Tony Chavonne said Thursday evening. “You are talking about people who have been left behind in that community for decades.”

Officials say the neighborhoods in downtown — bounded by Gillespie Street, East Russell Street and Eastern Boulevard — has one of the highest poverty and crime rates in the city.

“Old Wilmington Road was Fayetteville’s largest African-American ghetto prior to desegregation,” said the application for the grant filed by the city.

With the money, the Fayetteville Metropolitan Housing Authority will demolish the public housing complexes of Campbell Terrace and Delona Gardens, which are about 1,000 feet apart. Their barracks-style buildings comprise 249 units built in the 1940s and 1950s.

A mix of single-family homes, town houses and apartments — 747 units in all — will be built, mostly in that neighborhood but some elsewhere in the city on land that has yet to be identified. Some units will be sold on the open market.

In addition, a new community resource center and a day care center will go up in the neighborhood. Open space and a small business campus for defense contractors would also be developed as part of the plan.

The $20 million grant, known as Hope VI, will come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The announcement came shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday from the office of U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre. The Democrat from Lumberton said he had worked with Fayetteville officials on the application.

“I am thrilled that we have been able to work this out,” he said in an interview. “This is a great opportunity to create positive momentum that will permanently change the lives of many of the families of Fayetteville.”

A similar Hope VI application by the city was turned down a year ago. The city sought the grant a second time last fall, one of 29 applications from around the country. Only four or five are awarded each year.

Calvin Poole Jr., chairman of the housing authority, said one reason the agency won the grant was because it consistently performs well in federal audits. More HERE