‘Downtown’ Renewal : Black Strips: Can Glory Be Revived?

In its heyday, it was “Second Street to none”--an economic and cultural Mecca for blacks throughout the Jim Crow South. Just strolling past its rows of thriving black-owned banks, insurance companies, office buildings, theaters, nightclubs and restaurants filled black Richmonders with immense pride.

“When you walked down Second Street,” recalls Clarence L. Townes Jr., 60, a prominent civic leader and economic development specialist whose father founded one of the pioneer black insurance firms here, “you knew you were somebody.”

Not any more. Across the nation, from Second Street in this city’s historic Jackson Ward neighborhood to Basin Street in New Orleans to Central Avenue in Los Angeles, America’s traditional black business strips have been devastated by the forces of change.

Entire Blocks Razed

Desegregation robbed them of their captive markets as once-restrictive white commercial areas opened up to black customers and black entrepreneurs. Downtown freeways sliced through them like tornadoes. Urban renewal schemes often razed entire blocks in the name of progress but left only a bitter legacy of shattered dreams and broken promises. “Urban renewal means Negro removal,” blacks used to quip grimly.

Now, the scene along these once-vibrant arteries is most often one of crime-ridden welfare hotels, boarded-up storefronts, abandoned office buildings and rubble-strewn vacant lots. The few remaining businesses usually are a depressed assortment of barbershops, beauty parlors, cafes, bars, record stores and pawn shops.

In recent years, efforts have grown to rescue these historical commercial districts from the decades of decay and neglect and to return them to their former glory.

See Marketable Assets

Despite the devastation, many urban planners and economic development specialists say, these areas still have some highly marketable assets: They often are strategically situated in or near the central business district; they have a rich social and cultural heritage with potentially strong tourist appeal, and most of them are not so far gone that, with the right help, they could not be brought back to life.

“Conceptually, these places offer great opportunities,” said John Young, a Virginia Commonwealth University urbanologist and director of the school’s Richmond Revitalization Project.

Translating these concepts into reality, however, is another matter. As with urban revitalization efforts in any other part of town--black or white, commercial or residential--formidable obstacles abound. For example, although there is unanimous agreement that something must be done to save these districts, there is often bitter contention over exactly what that something should be and whom it should benefit.

“Bringing these old streets back is a long, hard process. One should have no illusion about that,” said Billy J. Tidwell, research director for the National Urban League.

Perhaps the biggest problem is forging a new identity for the old thoroughfares. There is widespread recognition that--given current demographic patterns, consumer tastes and suburban competition--they can never be returned to the days when they offered a dazzling array of goods and services, catering to almost any taste and pocketbook.

“On a Saturday night in the ‘30s,” said Dr. Francis M. Foster Jr., a black Richmond dentist who still practices in the old Second Street neighborhood, “you could go down on Second Street and have dinner at Slaughter’s Hotel, catch a movie at the Globe or a stage show at the Hippodrome, go dancing at Johnson’s Hall and get yourself a drink at any one of a number of bootleg ‘nip joints.’

“And, if you died from a heart attack after all that, you could have your body laid out at A. D. Price’s funeral home right around the corner on Leigh Street and be buried from one of the many black churches in the neighborhood.”

Loaded With Controversy

But reaching agreement on what more specialized economic function these aging black “downtowns” might serve nowadays is loaded with controversy.

Richmond, for example, is exploring the idea of transforming its historic black business district into a cultural and entertainment center geared to a 1930s and ‘40s jazz era theme. “We think this would be a natural for Second Street and would complement other developments in the downtown area . . . “ said Albert G. Dobbins III, associate director of Richmond Renaissance, a nonprofit, biracial group that fosters downtown redevelopment.

But the proposal has met with stiff resistance from the major owners of property in the Second Street area--a handful of black businessmen and professionals who have never given up hope on the old neighborhood and have amassed their holdings for more than two decades in hopes of one day cashing in big.

They believe it is only a matter of time before development turns toward their territory and they will be able to get top dollar for their holdings.

“I didn’t buy these properties for my good health,” said Dr. William Thorton, a podiatrist who owns several key parcels of real estate on Second Street. “For 25 years, we’ve been talking about doing something on Second Street. I say let’s tear the street down and put up some high-rise office buildings and parking decks.”

Expectations Seen as Unrealistic

Richmond Renaissance’s Dobbins contends that these property owners have unrealistic expectations. And, he adds, while they continue to hold out, the neighborhood continues to stagnate.

“We’re our own worst enemies,” said Dobbins, who also happens to be black and has been involved in efforts to revitalize Second Street for the last five years. “Those blacks with considerable property in the area think they’re sitting on a gold mine. Their expectations as to what the value of their property is far exceeds the fair market value.”

But among those who are unconvinced by that argument is James Stallings, a real estate investor who owns several choice Second Street properties. “I’ve been through experiences where the city has taken my property and not only didn’t give me a fair return on my investment but turned right around and sold it to someone else at a higher value,” he said.

Along with the obstacles in finding a new identity for black business strips, cities run into problems of finding new investors--especially if they are trying to promote minority entrepreneurship as part of their redevelopment efforts.

Birmingham, Ala., is a case in point. Almost a decade ago, a nonprofit agency known as Urban Impact was created to spearhead revitalization along a three-block strip of Fourth Avenue that formed the core of the old black “downtown” in this one-time steel town.

Image a Problem

But it took the first three years of the agency’s life to get any prospective black investors to look over the financial possibilities, largely because of the street’s image problem.

“The street had a reputation as a haven for pimps and prostitutes,” said Nathan Hicks, Urban Impact’s director. “You couldn’t get an investor to even step foot down here, much less to consider putting any money here. One of the easiest ways to insult a black person in this town used to be to say you saw them on Fourth Avenue.”

Since then, with the aid of city-backed financial incentive programs to stimulate private development, the street has managed to attract about $8.5 million in new investments--about 90% of it from blacks, Hicks said.

In an effort to help turn the strip around, the federal government placed a glittering new $30-million courthouse square on the thoroughfare that occupies an entire square block.

But the street still has a long way to go in its struggle to restore its old vitality. In those days, as Hicks recalls, there was so much business activity and sidewalk traffic that “you had to push and shove your way from one block to the next just to get down the street.”

Several major landmarks--such as the old Carver Theater with its Art Deco-style marquee--still stand lifeless. And even though Fourth Street’s image problem has dramatically improved, attracting black capital remains a problem. Here, as elsewhere in the nation, black entrepreneurs and investors tend to favor prospects with fewer risks and higher financial returns.

“Black investors are no different from white investors in that regard,” said Thomas D. Moore, a business management professor at the University of Alabama. “Revitalizing these areas is always a big, big gamble.”

Another steep barrier to development efforts along these strips is the fear of the surviving merchants and residents that they will be forced from the businesses and homes that they long have occupied as the areas become “gentrified,” attracting crowds of tourists and driving up property values.

Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than on Atlanta’s battered Auburn Avenue, which is just east of downtown Five Points and was described by Fortune magazine in 1956 as the richest black street in America. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born and reared on the street and is now buried there.

In 1980, Congress designated a nearly four-square-block area surrounding King’s birthplace and grave as a national historic site, and city officials joined with the National Park Service to study plans to preserve and develop a much larger part of the area.

Since then, real estate speculators, some of them white, have bought up choice commercial properties on the street, including both Henry’s Grill and the Royal Peacock--two nightclubs where black performers such as Ray Charles and Sarah Vaughan once performed. White investors also reportedly have purchased at least two homes adjacent to the King historic site, which is at the eastern end of the street. In some parts of the neighborhood, landlords have doubled rents in recent years.

Activity Creates Doubts

Such activity has created doubts among many business people and residents in the area about their future, and they have grown increasingly adamant in their demands that they share in any benefits from redevelopment.

Earlier this year, for example, the Auburn Avenue merchants’ association forced Atlanta’s predominantly black County Commission to back down from plans to raze the Palamont Motor Lodge at the intersection of Auburn and Piedmont avenues and build a three-story black history research library on the spot.

“It’s crazy to destroy a black family’s business for something that nobody around here would get much use from,” said Dorothy Clements, owner of the Auburn Avenue Rib Shack, a small barbecue restaurant and carry-out. “If there are going to be any improvements in this area, the merchants who have been here 30 years or more want to be part of it. We don’t feel like we should be moved out to make way for other people when we’ve suffered through all the bad times. We want to enjoy the good times, too.”

Patricia Wilson, senior program associate with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Center, which is working with local political, business and community leaders in Atlanta to revive the Auburn Avenue neighborhood, admits that displacement is a real problem for such areas.

“It’s difficult to generate support from the established businesses and residents for revitalization when they wonder if they might not be revitalizing themselves right out of their communities,” she said.

‘Hard Point to Sell’

However, she added: “I don’t think a neighborhood has to go upscale completely to be revitalized. But that’s a hard point to sell to the people who are still working and living there.”

Just ask residents of the Overtown neighborhood in Miami. More than 700 households and 40 businesses have been relocated as the city has begun a massive renovation of that historic black area north of downtown and the adjacent Park West neighborhood, a decaying warehouse and industrial district.

When the $1-billion, 218-acre project is completed, it will transform the severely blighted area into a community of 9,000 moderate-income apartments, condominiums and townhouses, complemented by more than 1 million square feet of commercial space, said Matthew Schwartz, director of the Overtown-Park West project.

Only two square blocks in the Overtown district will be preserved as a “historic village.” It will include such structures as the old Carver Hotel, once a favorite stopover for black entertainers and sports figures, and the Cola-Nip bottling plant, which used to be a thriving black-owned enterprise.

Whether the old flavor of black business districts can or should be restored is another issue.

The Beale Street historic district in Memphis, Tenn., is most often cited by blacks across the country as a case in point of what not to do.

Fell Into Decay in ‘50s

Beale Street, which was made famous by blues musician W. C. Handy, fell into decay in the 1950s. Buildings began crumbling and were condemned. Urban renewal leveled virtually the entire surrounding residential area.

With federal and state aid, the city bought up the property in the late 1970s and began renovation. Most of the work was done by a local white development firm, which became the management and leasing agent in 1982. In 1983, a restored two-block area was opened as a nightclub and entertainment center to the public. A third remaining block is now undergoing renovation.

Although the strip now draws more than 500,000 visitors a year--whites as well as blacks--and is without question the most successful renovation of a historic black commercial district in the nation, critics contend that it lacks the soul and spirit of the Beale Street of memory.

“When you bring back African-American history, you must bring it back correctly,” said David L. Acey, a black Memphis State University professor of theater and communication arts. “The African-Americans on the original committee to renovate Beale Street wanted it to be renovated in that spirit, but the money interests and the commercial interests prevailed.”

Blacks were also outraged when a now defunct country and Western bar on the street--the Blue Suede Shoes--used a Confederate battle flag as a backdrop for the bandstand.

Like a Hollywood Set

The district nearly lost its historic designation last year after a National Park Service official claimed that too many of the old buildings were gone and too many new ones had been put up. To many black critics, the result is something resembling a Hollywood set, especially since the adjacent residential blocks have been leveled, depriving the street of its natural context.

Davis Tillman, marketing director for Beale Street Management Inc., which oversees leasing and marketing of the historic district, feels such criticisms are undeserved.

“There’s no way to recapture a period in a time capsule,” he said. “When we started on this project, a lot of the buildings had decayed beyond the point of normal restoration. But what you can do is try to reignite the spirit that existed, and that’s what we have tried to do.”

Besides, he added: “A lot of the old flavor nobody would want today. Among other things, this was a gambling and red-light district. So what you want to do is re-create the good aspects.”

Sam Myers, a black Mississippi-born blues harmonica player who often performs on Beale Street, underscored Tillman’s observations: “You can never bring these places back the way they were. But I think they’ve done a pretty good job on Beale Street. Besides that, it’s providing a whole lot of work for black musicians.”

Times researchers Edith Stanley in Atlanta and Lorna Nones in Miami contributed to this story.