DATE: Saturday, June 14, 1997               TAG: 9706140273

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   69 lines

GRANT FOR ATTUCKS THEATRE ON THE ROAD TO REOPENING TRANSPORTATION FUNDS WILL BE USED TO CREATE A WALKWAY.

Plans to restore the historic Attucks Theatre to prominence have gathered momentum with the award this week of a $250,000 grant in federal transportation funds.

The long-empty Attucks, of course, is neither a bus nor a highway - but the transportation grant will help move visitors into the mood of an earlier era when the Attucks was in its heyday.

In the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the Church Street area was the cultural heart of the region's black population.

The Attucks, which opened in 1919 on Church Street between Virginia Beach Boulevard and Princess Anne Road, drew top-name national entertainers, including Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Duke Ellington and Redd Foxx.

The federal money will help develop a distinctive pedestrian walkway around the theater, along with period-style street lamps and markers for other nearby historic sites.

``The grant cannot be used on the building, but this is a grant which focuses on transportation as it relates to historic sites, that recognizes their significance in the community and enhances transportation around these sites,'' said Denise Christian, project manager for the Attucks.

The pedestrian walkway will start and end at the Attucks and include parts of Church, Wide and Henry streets, Princess Anne Road and Virginia Beach Boulevard. It will go past First Calvary Baptist Church behind the Attucks. Historic markers will note the Elmwood, West Point and Cedar Grove cemeteries.

The money comes out of the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, through the state Department of Transportation, with applications approved by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

The current transportation grant will not cover the entire cost of the pedestrian improvements, Christian said. That amount is yet to be determined, but the grant will enable the work to start and be phased with the planned renovation of the Attucks Theatre building itself, she said.

Norfolk was denied a similar grant last year but will continue to seek more transportation funds, Christian said.

The theater is named for Crispus Attucks, an African American killed in the pre-Revolutionary War's Boston Massacre. It is the oldest American playhouse to be financed, designed, constructed and operated by African Americans, according to the National Register of Historic Places.

A nonprofit group, Crispus Attucks Cultural Center Inc., is in the midst of a multiyear effort to raise $2.1 million for the estimated $4.2 million renovation and expansion costs of the building. City Hall has promised to match the remainder.

Construction work is expected to begin in mid-1999 with the hope of reopening the building in 2000 as a cultural arts center.

So far, the nonprofit fund-raising has generated about $700,000 in money and pledges, Christian said.

Other new projects approved in the Suffolk District, which includes Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore, were:

$75,000 to help preservation of Boykin's Tavern in Isle of Wight County. The project involves renovation to create a tourist center, a museum annex and public-use areas.

$200,000 for Accomack County to improve commercial docks on Tangier Island and in Harborton. The Harborton plan also includes a recreational boat ramp and parking. ILLUSTRATION: [Color]

Staff/file photo

The Attucks drew top-name entertainers, including Cab Calloway,

Bessie Smith, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Duke Ellington and Redd

Foxx.

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