Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 3, 1990 TAG: 9005040649
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH COX SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Stanley Avenue is a graceful street shaded with old, aristocratic trees and lined with big, expensive brick homes.
Laurel Street, up the hill from Roanoke Memorial Hospital, is part of a fine old residential neighborhood with trimmed lawns, neat houses, baby strollers and Volvos.
Yellow Mountain Road looks like a section of the Blue Ridge Parkway: woods, sharp curves and tranquillity. It will soon boast Mill Mountain Estates, a Fralin & Waldron development with homes projected to cost about $200,000 each.
Garden City Boulevard winds from Yellow Mountain Road to Riverland Road and Ninth Street. Residents of the middle-class, modest neighborhood say they have one of the lowest crime rates in the city.
Farther down Ninth Street, the Riverland neighborhood is much the same. Its biggest project this year is to obtain new playground equipment for Piedmont Park.
The Roanoke Industrial Center, site of the old Viscose plant, is nearby. Farther down Ninth Street is Jackson Middle School and Buena Vista Recreation Center, formerly Buena Vista estate, once one of the most important plantations in the Roanoke Valley. The house was built by George Tayloe in 1849.
Southeast also is home to the City Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army. The Golden Horseshoe bar and Polumbo's are popular nightspots where the whining strains of country music are heard.
But Southeast is like a crazy quilt of soft velvet and rough cotton patches. Except the rough cotton patches aren't quite as rough as is popularly believed.
"Southeast has a black eye anyway as far as the rest of the city is concerned. It has such a stigma," said Danny Brugh, a former resident of the neighborhood around 14th Street.
"Years ago, especially more so than now, when you said, `Southeast,' people thought you were on the bottom of the scale," said Brugh, who now lives in the eastern part of Roanoke County. "I've lived in all sections of the city, and I've always liked Southeast the best - the people are warmer there and friendly."
In the last 10 years, the section of Southeast that encompasses Wise, Jamison and Tazewell avenues and Sixth through 14th streets has experienced changes.
In 1985, the Southeast Action Forum asked Roanoke City Council for help in getting industry to move onto the Viscose property. When the Kroger store on Ninth Street closed, the neighborhood's older residents rallied to get another grocery. The IGA has taken its place.
Jamison also has gotten its share of businesses - Dominion Bank, Advance Auto, Hardee's, Pizza Transit Authority.
Marie Pontius, grants administrator of Roanoke's Grants Monitoring Office, said trees have been planted along the Ninth Street median strip. Curbs, gutters and sidewalks have been added on Tazewell and Bullitt avenues.
Members of the Southeast Action Forum and other volunteers renovated Belmont Firehouse No. 6 into a community center. Since 1981, the volunteers have installed a new fence, floor, plumbing, electricity, windows and a furnace and have painted the old white brick building that is sandwiched between two houses on Tazewell Avenue.
"When I came in as leader [of the Southeast Action Forum], the old firehouse was left abandoned," said Hilary Lantz. "Somebody used it as a storage house. It was a huge mess with grease pits."
Southeast also is home to the Roanoke Water Pollution Control Plant and the Roanoke Valley Regional Landfill.
In the early 1980s, the sewage plant, built almost 40 years ago, was one of the major complaints of the residents. They complained until the city made changes in its handling of sludge. Roanoke now pays $800,000 to $1 million a year for a company to dispose of the waste.
Another sore point with Southeast residents is the regional landfill. Residents say truck traffic to the landfill creates too much noise.
The city, says Assistant City Manager Earl Reynolds, has responded to the needs of the people of Southeast.
He said the city provides the technical assistance neighborhood groups need to establish goals to solve their problems.
"We can't go in and do it for them. There isn't enough money and staff. From 1979 until now, the image and livability of the Southeast community has been improved tremendously - 200 or 300 percent - because of the dedication of neighborhood groups. We did things because they were showing us the way," Reynolds said.
However, Lantz, the forum president, doesn't see it that way.
"We don't get the help down here they get in other parts of the city," Lantz said. "We just don't have anybody in the city that represents us - the councilmen up there live in other parts of the city and they just don't do it. Our housing situation is our biggest problem.
"What's hurting us is the older people passing away and leaving houses. Jackleg real-estate people come in here and cut them up and turn them into apartments," Lantz said.
Reynolds said rental property is a problem in Southeast, mainly because maintenance and rehabilitation take energy and money.
"The Southeast Action Forum says that the city doesn't pay as much attention to them, but they don't come forward with the projects," said Pontius, the city's grants administrator.
"Each neighborhood thinks that it's the worst off," she said. "In actuality, Southeast doesn't have quite as many problems." Pontius said other neighborhoods are trying to combat rental property problems they say plague Southeast.
The neighborhood groups have been getting small grants from the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership to help spruce up Southeast. For example, nearly 15 houses have been spruced up under the Southeast Action Forum's paint program. In some cases, homeowners furnish the paint.
Another project being used in Southeast is the Home Purchase Assistance Program, in which state and federal funds are used to help moderate-income families buy homes. The city acts as a broker and matches vacant houses with potential owners, Pontius said.
Roanoke has obtained options on three or four houses that can be purchased with 3 to 4 percent loans, plus a 4 percent state rehabilitation loan. The program is open to families who have incomes of $25,800 or less and meet other guidelines.
"The city has traditionally concentrated on home ownership because we believe that you have an equity in the neighborhood as well as the homes," Pontius said.
Habitat for Humanity also has purchased several lots on Miami Street, said Stephanie Fowler of the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership.
Riverland Road residents recently applied for funds to install playground equipment in Piedmont Park. The city's flood-reduction program will widen the banks of the Roanoke River, build retaining walls and add a bike path and walkway in the park, said Kathy Hill of the Riverland Alert Neighbors group.
The crime watch program in Riverland has been a success, Hill said. "The crime has changed. We don't have as much as we had before. Our crime watch signs alert people who come into the neighborhood."
The program started with 125 members. It now has more than 300, who also participate in the Roanoke Neighborhood Partnership's Eye Sore program, in which residents pick up trash and weed empty lots. The group also sponsors Halloween and Christmas parties and Easter egg hunts, mostly at Riverland Road Baptist Church because there is no community center.
Garden City residents have planted flower beds and tried to spruce up the general look of the neighborhood, Pontius said. Parks in this area also have been upgraded in the last 10 years.
Charles Hancock of the Garden City Civic League said his neighborhood looks better all the time.
"Some people come back to the area and say, `Why, this hasn't changed in 20 years.' But a lot of houses have been remodeled. Police tell us this is one of the lowest crime areas in the city. We tried to start a crime watch, and most people said they didn't see why, because none of us have anything for anybody to steal. We look after each other."
Southeast residents say the area has undergone some changes.
Brugh, the former resident, said there has been an influx of younger people taking advantage of the lower rents. But, he said, some of the property isn't cared for. A duplex built next to his former home has a yard filled with junk cars.
When Don Bartol became principal of Jackson Junior High School in 1970, the school was under a fed Bartol eral court order to integrate.
Bartol said he took the up-front approach.
"I decided to knock the crap out of everybody - white, black, green or blue. Everybody was entitled to an education. Within two years, we were THE school in the city."
Police detective Richard Arrington, who lived next to Jackson Junior from 1983 to 1987 and patrolled the neighborhood from 1984 to 1989, said he moved away only because he wanted to rear his family in the country.
"I've found that the people who live [in Southeast] now are the sons and daughters of those who lived there before . . .."
Arrington said that one thing that's changed about Southeast is that it is more desegregated. "Years ago you wouldn't have seen that. There are Vietnamese, Laotians, blacks and Hispanics now."
And, he said, he thinks the transition from all-white working class to an amalgamation of races has been relatively smooth.
"Years ago, a black person couldn't even walk down the street. If a black got caught in the neighborhood, he was dead meat," Brugh recalled. "But now, even the hard-liners have softened up, and there's been quite an influx of different races."
Bartol said the earlier blue-collar, working-class Southeast residents, many of whom came from Southwest Virginia and West Virginia, looking for jobs at the Viscose plant, believed in the school system, were cooperative and "always paid their bills."
Southeast, he said, is in many ways the same as any other neighborhood. "There are a lot of one-parent families. But this happens all over . . . there's been a tremendous improvement [in Southeast]. I feel as though there's an upswing. I think those people deserve a break."
The longer he stayed at Jackson Junior, Bartol said, the more the attitudes of Southeast changed. "Today, I would say that kids are not interested in working and acquiring money, because parents give them money."
He said more kids hang out on the street corners and get into trouble. "Kids have gotten right bodacious."
But many of the students he worked with have moved up and out and are outstanding citizens, Bartol said. "One is a vice president of a bank downtown, and one is extremely successful in the real-estate business.`
Maybe they never left Southeast at all. Maybe they just moved to Stanley Avenue.
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on May 10, 1990 in all Neighbors editions\ Correction
Because of an editing error, a word was left out of a quote from Don Bartol, former Jackson Junior High School principal, in a story on Southeast Roanoke in the May 3 editions of Neighbors. The quote should have read: " . . . Within two years, we were the quietest school in the city."
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Memo: correction