Historic Hayti redeveloment cost more than 40-acres and a mule

 

The Biltmore Hotel and the Regal movie theater on Pettigrew Street in 1947

What’s the cost to rebuild Durham’s Historic Hayti community after the freeway bulldozed the once vibrant Black community?

It’s more than 40-acres and a mule.

Hayti expands beyond the 19-acres proposed for redevelopment by the Durham Housing Authority (DHA) at Fayette Place. It spreads down Pettigrew Street connecting to Roxboro Rd. It covers space now occupied by Ponysaurus Brewing and the Durham Police Department headquarters. It extends to property on Dillard Street, the home of The Fruit, an art space and creative playground. It includes Hi-Wire Brewing, Durham Bottling Company, Smashing Boxes and remodeled office space on Ramsuer Street.

Development in Historic Hayti began shortly after downtown redevelopment advanced to alter the face of Durham. The site of lavish apartments, and fine dining eateries, wait for transplants lured by the city’s new reputation. The expansion continues beyond the downtown corridor as developers seize hold of rich opportunities.

What about old Hayti?

In 1982, the editor of the Carolina Times warned of the consequence of impending growth. The paper accused city planners of having their sight on the old Hayti district connecting to downtown Durham. Much of that land remains waiting for future development. Parts already redeveloped add to tension related to what could have been and what should become of the former Black housing and business district.

“This is a battle of power and money. The stakes are high. To city planners, the area compliments plan to rebuild downtown. In their judgment, the old Hayti is fertile ground for planning houses to give the revitalized downtown people a 24-hour life,” The Carolina Times said.

Bull House Apartments occupy space near where the Regal, a 500-seat movie theater built and operated by George Logan in 1927, and the Biltmore Hotel, built in 1923 by Dr. Clyde Donnell stood as monuments of Black pride across from Union Station on Pettigrew Street.

The Pettigrew Street section of Hayti connected with Durham’s downtown, within walking distance of the famed Black Wall Street on Parish Street. To fully understand the life and culture of Durham’s Black community prior to the flattening of Hayti, it’s critical to envision the impact of property beyond the area now designated for Hayti development.

West Parrish Street, along with portions of Hayti on the North side of the Durham Freeway, formed a hub of Black-owned businesses that flourished beginning in early 1900s.

“To-day there is a singular group in Durham where a black man may get up in the morning from a mattress made by black men, in a house which a black man built out of lumber which black men cut and planned; he may put on a suit which he brought at a colored haberdashery and socks knit at a colored mill; he may cook victuals from a colored grocery on a stove which black men fashioned; he may earn his living working for colored men; be sick in a colored hospital, and buried from a colored church; and the Negro insurance society will pay his widow enough to keep his children in a colored school,” W.E.B. Du Bois writes in his 1912 essay “The Upbuilding of Black Durham”.

Hayti encompasses more than the space between Durham Freeway and a few blocks past North Carolina Central University. The sadness regarding efforts to resurrect a once thriving Black community regards the limited scope attached to a once thriving Black community.

Hayti includes the Heritage Square retail center, land close to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Scientific Properties, a company owned by Andrew Rothschild, brought Heritage Square in 2007 for $4 million. In 2019, two LLCs, 401 E. Lakewood LLC and 606 Fayetteville LLC, fronted by investors from Austin, Texas, purchased the property for $12.5 million.

Food World Market and Subway occupy space on the 9.58-acre property. The new owners wait as the value continues to increase on land with flexible zoning that allows for retail, multifamily, office and mixed-use development up to 150 feet high.

Before relocating to New York after a failed attempt to purchase the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance building, Rothchild proposed a mixed-use development promoting a walkable live-work community. Opposition from Larry Hester and delays by the City Planning Commission ended a promising plan. It didn’t help that Rothchild is white.

Corinne Mabry, a member of the planning commission, told a reporter with the News & Observer she “was not going to sell her people down the river,” a recap of Durham’s epic destruction of the Hayti district.

The rebuilding of Hayti involves the allocation of more than 40-acres and a mule. Recovery involves more than acreage currently identifies as the former Hayti district. Hayti redevelopment comprises Pettigrew Street, Heritage Square, parts of downtown Durham and land extending past Main Street.

The damage triggered by a freeway aimed at developing the Research Triangle Park came with the annihilation of more than the 19-acres were the former Fayette Place stood. Conversations involving Hayti should extend beyond the goals of DHA. These conversations should involve the gains made by white led businesses on land in the historic Hayti district.

It's time to address the full magnitude of Hayti’s destruction. It’s time to ponder how city leaders participated in the corrosion of Black prosperity beyond a few blocks named as a redevelopment district. Hayti reborn involves the rebuilding of Black affluence inclusive of Durham’s downtown district.

The price for redevelopment cost more than 40-acres and a mule. Add the cost of interest and the loss of land beyond the reimaged plan of city leaders after the freeway destroyed Black dreams.

 

The complicated history of Durham's Hayti Business District sheds light on lost Black power and a divided community

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It seemed to be a proposal to good to be true. The federal government was offering the guarantee of resurrecting communities across America. Durham’s Hayti district was on their list.

Two-hundred acres in an area labeled blighted was identified by city leaders. It was 1957, and the $600,000 placed on the table was enough to launch the Durham Redevelopment Commission. Robinson O. Everett, who holds the record as the youngest faculty member in Duke’s history at twenty-two, was named the chair. Paul Brooks, who served as Durham’s planning director, was appointed the acting executive director until Ben T. Perry III took the reins in 1962.

The commission managed seven projects. Contracts were secured with mostly white-owned realty, construction, architectural and legal firms. A bond referendum was proposed to support the $8.6 million estimated to complete the urban renewal project.

The people who would lose their homes and businesses were assured they would be fully compensated. The debate was fierce with many people objecting to federal intervention in Durham’s affairs. There was talk about increased taxes to pay for the bond issue.

John Hervey Wheeler, president of Mechanics & Farmers Bank, used his influence as the Chair of the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (now the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People) to lobby in support of the bond.

The bond passed by 3%.

“The bitterness caused by Hayti’s destruction was compounded by the failure on the part of Durham’s leaders to fulfill their promise and rebuild a better Hayti,” Jean Bradley Anderson writes in Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina. “Twenty-five years later the land that had bustled with life was still a wasteland overgrown with weeds.”

The freeway and six other projects cost $41.6 million. The federal government paid two-thirds of the cost. The ultimate price was paid by the 4,057 households and 502 businesses forced to move.

What followed was a ghastly chain reaction that must have felt like karma. In 1966, Southern Railroad decided to discontinue passenger service through Durham. Members of the city council didn’t oppose the decision. Duke University did their best to stop the decision along with the editorial board of the Durham Morning Herald and the Chamber of Commerce.

The old Southern flare that prompted memories of the benefits of tobacco money soon disappeared. It wasn’t just Hayti that was torn down, building by building, block by block, the old was replaced by the promise of something new. The change continued for over a decade with the demolition of the old Washington Duke Hotel striking concerns in 1975.

Beyond the loss of a once vibrant Black community, historical properties and the insertion of a highway connecting Durham to the Research Triangle Park, the pride and power of the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs began to dwindle.

It was a painful miscalculation. Many people blamed Wheeler for supporting the bond.

Asa T. Spaulding, the former president of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance, was interviewed by Walter Wear for the Southern Oral History Program Collection on April 16, 1979. He was asked why Wheeler never ran for public office.

“He likes to succeed in what he’s trying to do and where he’s trying to lead people,” Spaulding said. “And sometimes, even no matter how much ambition you may have, if you’re going to put the good of the people above your own selfish interest, you may have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the people.”

Wheeler seemed to be good at placing the needs of others above his own. In 1968, he was part of an interracial group of businesspeople established to build one hundred single family houses for low-income residents. Durham Investment Company set aside $65,000 to develop units that sold for $10,000 to $12,000. Other members of the group included Mary Duke Semans, J.J. Henderson, Ben Ruffin, Floyd Flecther, and James R. Hawkins.

Spaulding said Wheeler made enemies due to his activism. He was able to harness his power because of his relationship with the Black community.

“You see, you can do some things if you’re independent that you can’t if you’re not. And because his livelihood and means of survival was not dependent on being the employee of a white institution – because his support came from the Black community,” Spaulding said. “I’m talking about economic support. And his base of his political strength was in the Black community. And being a Black, too, and if you’re going to be worthy, sometimes you have to give yourself for a cause if you believe in the cause. And if you don’t do that, then you become a hypocrite, and that soon will show up.”

Did Wheeler and the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs’ support of urban renewal impact relationships with the Black community? Maybe. Is there an opinion among older residents, who remember the days leading up to urban renewal, that class division played a role in Wheeler’s support of the bond issue? Maybe.

We do know the demolition of Hayti was a massive miscalculation.

The Hayti urban renewal project was completed in 1973. Wheeler died on July 6, 1978, at the age of 70. His legacy in supporting Black people and their causes transcends his decision to support the 1962 urban renewal bond. Still, questions linger.

Who made money on the seven projects supported by the Durham Redevelopment Commission? How many of the companies were Black owned?

What about the masses of dreams deferred?

The dust stirred by the bulldozers lingers like ghosts conjuring memories of broken promises. There’s work to be down among those weeds.

Hopefully, the next proposal won’t come packaged with a few acres of swamp land two miles outside of Creedmoor.