Fayetteville Street Planning Group

Vision Statement

                                            The Fayetteville Street Planning Group is a coalition of residents, concerned citizens, business and property owners who are dedicated to preserving the history, existing neighborhoods and local businesses along the historic Fayetteville Street corridor.

    Our vision is that the Fayetteville Street corridor be a safe, livable, sustainable and affordable cultural destination — and one that supports vibrant residential neighborhoods, thriving neighborhood shopping districts, fully-utilized parks and recreation facilities and national heritage tourism.

    In creating this vision, we respect the value of human capital alongside that of economic capital in developing a community of citizens who can participate in and benefit from the growing economic prosperity of Durham and the Research Triangle region. 

Thank You!

    The Fayetteville Street Planning Group appreciates the time and energy that so many citizens have given toward creating this vision. We appreciate your commitment, determination and sharing spirit in restoring our community to a position of prominence, respect, health and wealth. Thanks to everyone who attended our weekly meetings, public hearings and forums as well those who attended meetings with the Durham city council, planning commission, city staff, consultants and other agencies involved in the planning process. 

History Lives on Fayetteville Street

    Fayetteville Street has a history worth preserving. Besides being a major north-south surface route through the city and county of Durham, a gateway into downtown and home to several national historic landmarks, Fayetteville Street and its surrounding business districts and residential neighborhoods are some of Durham’s oldest.     

     The synergy between the business and residential districts along Fayetteville Street created a culturally unique African American community known the world over. Fayetteville Street’s dual legacy of business and culture are a testament to the men and women who developed this community over a century ago.

                                                         

       African Americans have made a significant contribution to the Durham community and it is only right that our history be preserved and celebrated as our city moves forward into the future.

  
 

  

 

 Working Together for a Brighter Tomorrow

   Creating our vision for a brighter tomorrow demanded an in-depth assessment of the area’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — along with input from the area’s stakeholders. Residents, concerned citizens, business and property owners recognized the need for a comprehensive strategy to reverse the decline of the Fayetteville Street corridor and its twelve surrounding neighborhoods caused by urban renewal and followed by decades of inadequate public investment.

   Our vision, outlined in the Historic Fayetteville Street Neighborhood Master Plan, was presented to the Durham City Council and other city officials in August of 2005. The Fayetteville Street Plan called for beautifying
the Fayetteville Street corridor from NC 147 to Cornwallis Road, enhancing public safety with walking and bicycle patrols, preserving and restoring homes in the corridor’s twelve historic neighborhoods, increasing traffic for business owners, providing more public parking and access to historic landmarks and creating job opportunities for local residents.

   The initial funding request was made to the City of Durham for physical infrastructure
improvements from NC 147 to Cornwallis Road and included a streetscape to create the safe and attractive environment so critical to the area’s development.

    Streetscape features included buried utility lines, wide sidewalks with more space for pedestrians, street trees, historic facades for homes and buildings, historic street lights at regular intervals, wrought iron fencing, brick crosswalks for greater pedestrian safety along with landscaping, benches, banners and signage to make the area more hospitable. 

    A redesigned Linwood Avenue intersection would include a bus bump-out for better traffic flow, an historic park commemorating Lincoln Hospital and public parking for corridor businesses.

      These and other public improvements would
encourage residents and business owners throughout the corridor to improve their properties to complement the new look. Ultimately retail shopping, services, tourism, entertainment and arts would thrive once local government signaled its interest in making the entire corridor as successful as downtown and other neighborhoods targeted for revitalization. And existing stakeholders would be the first to benefit from the reinvestment of their tax dollars back into their own community.

   The Fayetteville Street Plan was created with sustained and detailed community involvement. Its recommendations were affirmed by hundreds of Durham citizens who participated in the planning process and who felt that this historic corridor could be revitalized with a focus on community-driven objectives and historic preservation — for the benefit of stakeholders now on the corridor and throughout its surrounding neighborhoods. Our approach emphasized community self-determination and capacity-building in renewing the commercial and residential districts along the Fayetteville Street. Our approach also affirmed our inherent community assets – local ownership, historic architecture, key locations and cohesive community – that would serve us well during the rebuilding process

A Tradition of Caring for Our Community

   These requests are not new. Almost a decade ago community members began the arduous task of rebuilding this once-thriving community that had fallen on hard times after urban renewal killed Hayti’s economic engine. Since that time group members worked collectively and implemented many citizen-led initiatives that held promise for reversing the area’s decline.

   In addition to planning, zoning and land use actions taken on behalf of our community, the Fayetteville Street Planning Group has made and continues to make regular appearances before the city council at budget, bond and other public hearings to advocate for public improvements and policies to benefit the existing business owners and residents throughout the Fayetteville Street corridor. Read about some of our community-led initiatives below:

• Fayetteville Street Local Historic District
  
  

     In 2000 members of the Durham Business & Professional Chain and other community supporters created Durham's first and only African American local historic district -- the Fayetteville Street Local Historic District -- from Umstead Street to Nelson Street to help preserve the area’s heritage and distinctive architectural styles.

     As a result of this historic designation, cerrtain exterior changes to properties located in a local historic district in Durham would now require a public hearing and approval by the Durham Historic Preservation Commission. Exterior changes also included any demolition of structures in the local historic district.

     Members felt that a local historic district would spark the rebuilding process by first preserving the area’s structures and then regulating the exterior appearance of homes and buildings along the corridor. Housing rehab and restoration along with adaptive reuse of commercial structures are cornerstones of the Fayetteville Street Plan.

                                                              Fayetteville Street Planning Group members advocated for the preservation of the Rivera House at 1712 Fayetteville Street to prevent its demolition by North Carolina Central University. Members felt that the Rivera House was ground zero for efforts to forestall the university’s destruction of homes in the historic district.

    The group, along with other local historic preservationists, has appeared at Durham's Historic Preservation Commission to object to the demolition of the house which was home of three notable Durham families – one of whom was the Edwards family whose patriarch, Gaston Alonzo Edwards, lived in the home in the 1920's and the Rivera family, whose patriarch Alex Rivera is a world-renown photojournalist.

   The North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office’s designation of the home as having statewide historic significance in 2008 will prevent its demolition at the current location. This ruling was supported by the Fayetteville Street Planning Group's first having created the local historic district where the property sits.   

      Fayetteville Street preservationists hope this designation will lead to a mutually beneficial arrangement for the community and the university regarding the preservation of historically significant properties in the Fayetteville Street Local Historic District.

• Community Policing for Fayetteville Street Corridor

     A coalition of merchants called the Greater Southeast Durham Business District gathered over 600 signatures in 1999 and petitioned the city council for nine walking and bicycle community officers for the corridor, which is the same crime deterrent credited with helping Ninth Street and downtown combat crime and perception-of-crime problems. Although two officers were allocated in 2001, group members have made a request for additional community police officers each year since 1999 at the city’s budget hearings. Group members also meet regularly with PAC 4 officers to coordinate solutions to public safety issues.

• Fayetteville Street Master Plan

     In 2005 hundreds of community stakeholders and neighborhood groups along the corridor created the Historic Fayetteville Street Neighborhood Master Plan to guide our community’s development over the next twenty years. The plan reflects months of research, meetings, workshops and planning sessions with neighborhood stakeholders, government and planning agency officials, architects, engineers, consultants and other professionals. Recommendations from the plan have been incorporated into city-paid studies such as the RKG Economic Development Assessment, the Targeted Commercial Neighborhood Streetscape RFP and the DurhamWalks Pedestrian Plan.

• Community Seminars

     The Fayetteville Street Planning Group regularly provides information to our community because we believe that knowledge is power. Seminars and forums are provided to the community to ensure that residents and business people have access to information to enable them to preserve the equity and wealth in their homes and businesses -- and to preserve historic structures and landmarks throughout the corridor.

      The group has sponsored a Medicare seminar for community elders and a seminar on Durham County’s property tax exemption for qualifyed home owners (those over age 65 and those with a disability who are also under the state income limit). The group also sponsored a voter registration forum to update citizens on registration guidelines for new voters, same-day voters, voters who have moved and voting rights for ex-felons.

• Community Forums

    In November 2006 the Fayetteville Street Planning Group held the first “State of Black Durham” community forum at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Durham. The forum was attended by over 300 people who discussed challenges and solutions for our community. The group was also a sponsor of  “The People’s Forum” candidate forum” in October 2007 at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church which allowed citizens to query candidates on issues of importance to the surrounding neighborhoods.

    The group also regularly hosts seminars with local and state elected officials on land development, transportation and zoning issues affecting the Fayetteville Street Corridor. See the section"What's Up?" for up-to-date information on upcoming events of interest to residents and business people in the Fayetteville Street corridor.

• Preservation of Single Family Neighborhoods

    In 2005 over 300 community stakeholders requested that the Durham City Council remove compact land use from over 235 acres in southeast Durham to preserve the existing affordable single family neighborhoods between NC 147 and Lawson Street.

• DurhamWalks Pedestrian Plan

  
    The Fayetteville Street Planning Group has pushed for sidewalk improvements for Fayetteville Street since 1998. A study by the group showed that, according to the 2000 census, the percentage of homeowner households without a vehicle was 3 to 5 times higher in the Fayetteville Street corridor than in the City of Durham.The percentage of renter households without a vehicle was 2 to 3 times higher in the Fayetteville Street corridor than in the City of Durham. And the two census tracts with the highest percentage of no-vehicle households in the entire city were located in the Fayetteville Street corridor.

    In 2006 group members provided input on the Durham  Walks Pedestrian Plan.  Sidewalks were replaced on both sides of Fayetteville Street in 2007 along with several hundred feet of new sidewalks from NC 147 to Homeland Avenue. Group members attended public meetings and hearings on the pedestrian plan and supplied the city's staff and consultant with pictures and a video of broken and missing sidewalk sections.

    Plans are now underway to build a pedestrian bridge on Fayetteville Street south of Pilot Street where Third Fork Creek crosses under Fayetteville Street. This missing bridge was cited as a safety concern in the Fayetteville Street Plan for school children and other pedestrians who have to walk out into Fayetteville Street's traffic when crossing the creek. The bridge work was funded through the Safe Routes to Schools Program.

• North Carolina Central University BRITE Center Rezoning  

       In 2006 the Fayetteville Street Planning Group along with the Old Hillside Neighborhood Association and the C. C. Spaulding Neighborhood Watch Association opposed a roundabout planned at Fayetteville Street and Lawson Street as part of the university’s rezoning application for the BRITE Center (site of old Hillside High School). Although the group was not opposed to the BRITE Center, members expressed concerns about transportation, safety and business impacts that we felt would harm businesses and neighborhoods throughout the corridor. The roundabout was removed from the university’s rezoning request and other neighborhood concerns were addressed  — including the location of handicapped parking, increased landscaping and buffering and replacement fencing at the rear of the BRITE Center.

• Downtown/ Neighborhood Zoning

    In 2003 group members helped define the downtown zoning overlay (DDO-3)as the appropriate transition zone from high-density development in the city’s central business district to less dense development in our neighborhoods. Our members were instrumental in designating Downtown Development Overlay 3 (DDO-3) as the appropriate downtown zoning district to be located adjacent to neighborhoods in the City of Durham.

    DDO-3 was also designed to protect residential neighborhoods from large residential and commercial encroachment by placing limitations on density, height and land uses. Portions of the Fayetteville Street from NC 147 to Piedmont Avenue were placed in DDO-3 to limit the height of future buildings, density of residential units and types of commercial uses that would be allowed in this neighborhood commercial district.

• Heritage Square Rezoning
  

     Years before Heritage Square was rezoned and before the Durham 2030 Comprehensive Plan was completed, stakeholders in the Fayetteville Street corridor had already anticipated the need for zoning restrictions to protect  residential neighborhoods from downtown expansion. In 2003 group members helped craft the zoning laws that dictated how our city would grow from the downtown core to the adjacent residential neighborhoods — since many of these neighborhoods were historic communities with historic landmarks.

     The Fayetteville Street commercial district from NC 147 to Piedmont Avenue (including Heritage Square) was zoned DDO-3 in 2003 to ensure that any future development in this area would be neighborhood-friendly and in scale with the adjoining residential neighborhoods. Density and height restrictions were created to limit the impact of commercial development near residential neighborhoods. These zoning overlays were unanimously approved by the city council in 2003 with DDO-1 and DDO-2 zoning located in the downtown core and DDO-3 zoning located next to residential neighborhoods.

    The request to rezone Heritage Square from DDO-3 to DDO-2 represented a reversal of the community’s wish to protect its neighborhoods from the higher-density development that the city had established for the downtown area — and a reversal of the council’s vote in 2003. The proposed six-story project would be almost five times the maximum density allowed in the DDO-3 overlay and taller than the majority of the existing buildings in downtown Durham.

     In response, community stakeholders recommended that Heritage Square maintain its existing zoning of DDO-3 which would allow a center three times the size of the existing center and three stories in height — giving the project a sizeable increase in size while maintaining compatibility with the surrounding historic neighborhoods.

   Neighborhood stakeholders also objected to the city council’s not requiring the developer to assess the impacts from the almost one million square foot center before the rezoning — particularly impacts on the area’s transportation network which might trigger massive street reconfigurations to handle to additional traffic from the new center. Neighborhood stakeholders were also concerned that the rapid increase in land value along with rapidly-increasing property taxes would result in the gentrification of stable and affordable residential neighborhoods and displacement of residents. Other concerns on the rezoning included:

   Despite the objections of over 100 residents and business owners against the rezoning, the city council rezoned Heritage Square on December 5, 2006 without assessing any of the potential impacts in advance before approving the rezoning. Neighborhood stakeholders did secure a height reduction from 7 stories to 6 stories as part of the rezoning. The Heritage Square rezoning is now in the site plan stage where the City of Durham is reviewing the developer’s plans for the new center. A copy of the developer’s plan and all city department review comments can be viewed by asking to see a copy of the developer’s plan file at the Durham City/County Planning Department (lower level of City Hall).

• North Carolina Central University master plan

      Fayetteville Street Planning Group members in conjunction with other neighborhood groups and concerned citizens opposed the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) master plan as being hastily approved without assessing impacts to the surrounding community or considering alternate locations for expansion.  The following concerns, particularly those affecting elderly residents, were shared with Chancellor Nelms and university officials in a February 28, 2008 letter to the chancellor:

• Displacement of elderly and financially-challenged residents
• Adverse and unknown transportation impacts
• Adverse and unknown environmental impacts
• Economic impacts
• Parking impacts
• Zoning impacts
• Coordination with city, county and state agencies
• Reduction in affordable housing
• Lack of notification and information to all affected residents
• Competition with local business corridor
• Effect of student attrition on underlying assumptions used in the plan
• Failure to consider satellite campus and parking in the master plan
• Destruction of Fayetteville Street Local Historic District

     The NCCU Board of Trustees approved the master plan on April 23, 2008 over the objection of hundreds of citizens who presented a petition on the day of the vote.

     Since that time, concerned citizens met with Chancellor Nelms on August 11, 2008 to ask that he make a recommendation to the trustee board to rescind or amend the master plan until impacts and alternate locations have been carefully evaluated. Fayettevile Street Planning Group members were among the eighty persons who attended this meeting.

     During the meeting, Nelms revealed that the following factors had not been considered in the master plan. Group members felt that these factors might reduce the amount of land required for the university's expansion if they had been factored into the master plan:

• The master plan did not take distance learning students in account. These are students who use the internet to take classes and have no need for dormitory or parking space.
• The university would not state whether student attrition (those who drop out before graduating) was factored into the enrollment figures presented in the plan
• The university would not state how the university planned to meet the requirement for additional instructors for the new students when a teacher shortage has been cited as a statewide problem
• The master plan did not take satellite campuses into acount which might reduce pressure for land from the surrounding neighborhoods

What We Do  

   The Fayetteville Street Planning Group routinely evaluates planning, zoning, land use and economic development issues affecting the neighborhoods and business districts surrounding the Fayetteville Street Corridor. Contact Denise Hester at 919-680-2878 for more info.

Contact Us Today!

Contact us at info@fayettevillestreetgroup.com.