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Renewing an area, and some attitudes

In Central Park Village, rich and poor may share a neighborhood with the convenience of an urban center steps away. Can it work? Look to where it has already been tried.

By JANET ZINK
Published October 2, 2005

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The renovation of Central Park Village has the potential to be Tampa's single biggest urban renewal project.

Plans call for replacing a decaying public housing complex with a 60-acre master-planned community that will include both million-dollar condos and apartments for the poor. It could lure thousands o f residents downtown with amenities such as parks, a town center with sidewalk cafes, and a location close to Ybor City and downtown's cultural arts district.

It's a novel idea for Tampa.

It's not so novel for Charlotte, N.C.

Eight years ago, the Bank of America Community Development Corp., part of the Central Park Village transformation team, embarked on a remarkably similar undertaking in Charlotte, home of the bank's international headquarters.

Like Central Park Village, the project replaced about 400 public housing units with a mix of subsidized and market-rate apartments.

Like Central Park Village, it expanded beyond its public land to blend with a neighborhood of high-priced homes.

It required a partnership of the local housing authority, the city, county and private developers.

And it was built on the edge of a downtown that rolled up the sidewalks at day's end.

Do its fortunes hold lessons for Tampa?

Charlotte business and political leaders call First Ward Place a wild success.

"It's an attractive community, a well-designed community, a sought-after community," said Laura Harmon, an urban planner for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission.

But all is not perfect.

There are those who say that some residents displaced from the old Earle Village ended up in even worse living conditions. That overall there are fewer public housing units than before.

Owners of high-priced homes say they don't want any more public housing units built, worrying it will lower their property values.

But even doubters acknowledge First Ward Place is a major improvement over Earle Village for the people living in the 201 subsidized homes.

And those in the 425 market-rate apartments, houses and townhouses love the urban lifestyle.

Jimmy Shaffer, 32, an information technology professional, and his wife, real estate agent Karie Greathouse, moved into a $250,000 townhome next to First Ward Place in 2002.

Their rooftop terrace provides a dramatic view of the city skyline, and from their home they can walk to downtown restaurants, bars and a gourmet grocery store.

Before their baby was born five months ago, it wasn't unusual for Shaffer and his wife, San Francisco transplants, to walk downtown for dinner and spontaneously buy tickets to a show at the performing arts center.

Angela Henard, 26, lives just a few blocks from Shaffer.

She moved into First Ward Place in April, after waiting a year for a subsidized unit that costs her $300 less than the going market rate for the same three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment.

In August, when the school where she works as a teacher's aide was closed, she paid nothing.

Some people pay as little as $150 a month for public housing units.

Bluntly, Henard says she doesn't know why anyone would pay so much when others pay so little.

But she's glad they do. It inspires her.

"I want to be successful like everyone else. I want to be able to pay $1,000 for rent," she said. "If they can do it, I can do it."

She also likes that her 4-year-old son Nathan lives in a mixed-race neighborhood.

"When he was little, he would see white people and just stare at them," said Henard, who is black.

Now he goes to the First Ward Place day care, where many of the children are white.

The leading effort behind First Ward Place came from Bank of America's Community Development Corp., which is partnering to develop Tampa's Central Park Village with Bill Bishop, whose resume includes developing such suburban success as FishHawk Ranch and Westchase, and Don Wallace, who built Lazydays RV Supercenter into an empire.

The bank launched the CDC in the late 1970s as a nonprofit arm to meet federal government community reinvestment requirements.

The company began by building residential units in blighted neighborhoods near Charlotte's urban business core . Then it expanded into Atlanta, then Dallas. Now, the Bank of America CDC funds projects in 15 cities, including Tampa.

"Over time, it became a viable business," said Nancy Crown, a senior vice president for the Bank of America CDC whose degrees include a bachelor's in American studies with an emphasis on race relations.

The CDC now employs 30 people with as much interest in social engineering and community building as in bricks and mortar.

"You don't do this unless you have a passion for it," said CDC senior vice president Miles Vaughn. "You could work in other parts of the bank and make a lot more money."

In 1997, the CDC turned its attention to Charlotte's Earle Village.

With a $41.7-million HOPE VI grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and by working with local governments, the company built First Ward Place.

Those who were relocated during construction were told they could move back, under certain conditions required by HOPE VI.

To get an apartment, Henard had to have a job and good credit and participate in self-sufficiency programs offered by the Charlotte Housing Authority . She also had to agree to give up the unit in five years.

That's okay with her.

The deadline forces people to take responsibility and solves what she sees as the downside to public housing.

"If you know you can stay in an apartment complex as long as you please and only pay $25 a month for it, why would you go? Especially if you have four or five kids," she said.

With 200 fewer public housing units, Bank of America counted on the fact that not everyone would want to come back.

"Mathematically, you know it's not going to happen," Crown said.

In 1999, the CDC began construction next to First Ward Place. It would become the Garden District, made up of high-end townhomes, condos and single-family houses.

It was a risky proposition, Crown said.

Would people want to buy expensive homes next to a community where more than half the units are government subsidized?

The answer was yes.

"It was shocking to everyone. These were all sold before construction began," Crown said.

Single-family homes in the neighborhood now sell for more than $600,000.

The city recouped the $6-million it spent on infrastructure in taxes on increased property values.

Crime is down. In 1995, the area that is now First Ward Place reported 331 criminal offenses. In 2002, there were 46, said Randal Beaver, community safety manager for the Charlotte Housing Authority.

And developments are popping up all around the old public housing complex.

A private Episcopal school was built next to First Ward Place. About a dozen condo towers have been planned for downtown, a sports arena is under construction downtown, and a new children's museum will open next month. On weekend nights, downtown Charlotte hops.

Last year, the Urban Land Institute gave First Ward Place an award of excellence, citing its social and financial successes.

Still, there have been criticisms and conflicts.

The replacement of 410 public housing units with about 200 is a concern, said Charlotte City Council member Patrick Cannon.

But private investors, who are ultimately interested in the bottom line, ended up sacrificing public housing units to make their projects financially sound, Cannon said.

"When you start talking about market demand and what drives it, it can sometimes shake out that way," he said.

It's a criticism frequently leveled at HOPE VI, a program that provides federal dollars to rebuild public housing complexes with mixed-rate housing.

The program has resulted in a loss of 109,000 public housing units nationwide over 10 years, according to the National Housing Law Project.

That's left thousands of people in the lurch.

"I don't know of any public housing authority that doesn't have a waiting list for public housing," said NHLP attorney Todd Espinosa. "It's one of the only types of housing guaranteed to be affordable to people at the very lowest income levels."

The loss of public housing units, said Vaughn of Bank of America, is the tradeoff for building communities that last. The public housing social experiment launched 50 years ago evolved into concentrations of poverty in distressed neighborhoods.

He thinks public housing should be transitional, giving people assistance until they can support themselves and possibly achieve the American Dream of homeownership.

That's how it worked for his family.

Vaughn lived his first 13 years in Harlem in a public housing complex with his shipping clerk father, mother and nine brothers and sisters.

That's a fine idea, Cannon said.

"The downside to that is you may be putting people in a situation who are not yet ready to go into the private sector, who can least afford to pay market rents," he said. "That becomes the rub."

* * *

Sandy Hoagland, 50, president of the First Ward Neighborhood Association, has called this neighborhood home most of his life.

He remembers back in the early 1960s when more than 300 single-family homes owned by black people were torn down to make way for the public housing complex.

For the first 10 years or so, he said, Earle Village was a desirable community.

Then it went downhill fast.

"There was a lot of crime, a lot of drugs," he said.

He recalls returning to his mother's home after being away for several years and seeing someone drop a dirty diaper out an upstairs window.

"I said, "Mom, it has changed,"' he said.

And it has changed again.

Hoagland said he wants to believe this transformation will last.

Yes, there are some tensions between homeowners and renters. And some people who were moved out of Earle Village couldn't come back and ended up worse off than before.

One former neighbor, who uses a wheelchair, had to leave First Ward Place after her five years were up. The housing authority moved her to a rat-infested duplex with bad plumbing and no wheelchair access, Hoagland said.

"She had to take what they found for her," Hoagland said. "What they found for her is not a place I would want to live or where I would want my dog to live."

As president of the First Ward Place Neighborhood Association, Hoagland led a charge to raise property taxes on homes that had increased in value. He's now challenging the Charlotte Housing Authority, which wants to tear down a basketball court built with federal money and sell the land to private developers.

But Hoagland think severyone can benefit from living in a community that's economically and racially diverse.

"I embrace the mixture," he said.

Vaughn is confident the CDC can replicate the successes it has had elsewhere in Central Park Village.

Tampa, though, will have to make do without a $40-million HOPE VI grant.

Vaughn notes the company built Centerpoint, a 392-unit mixed-income community in Baltimore, without one. But Central Park Village is much bigger, with 1,160 apartments and 3,000 condos.

The project here has other hurdles, including the need to get city and county officials to agree on a special taxing district to help pay for new roads and other infrastructure.

In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, former Central Park Village residents will face increased competition for subsidized housing, and developers will face rising construction costs.

The group slated to remake Central Park Village is working with the Tampa Housing Authority on details of the plan. They expect to have an agreement in place by the end of this year.

If all goes as planned, the wrecking crews will start demolishing Central Park Village by the end of next year.

--Janet Zink can be reached at jzink@sptimes.com or 813 226-3401.

[Last modified October 2, 2005, 01:59:10]