DATE: Monday, October 6, 1997               TAG: 9710060094

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   57 lines

NEIGHBORS' EFFORTS HAVE GIVEN PARK PLACE NEW PRIDE

Across the street from Walter Combre's flower-rimmed 32nd Street home in Park Place, garbage overflows from big household containers in front of a four-unit apartment building.

A small, pink chair lies next to a legless doll, and other toys are strewn about near the road - a reminder of how things were on the narrow residential streets of this neighborhood not so long ago.

Combre, a 58-year-old retired shipyard woodcrafter and community activist, spends time each week canvassing his neighborhood, looking for trash. Cleaning things up is part of a joint effort by the city's waste management department and the Park Place Civic League.

The list of litterers is now much shorter than it was a year ago, said Combre. He used to need several pages of paper on his drive-through forays; now the names and addresses of offenders take up only half a page.

More restrictive zoning and collaborating with more integrated and wealthier neighborhoods nearby also have helped make things better, says Combre.

``Park Place has changed a lot,'' says the 30-year resident. ``People here are more conscious, have a higher level of pride.''

Combre adds a historical perspective to the pendulum-swing changes in Park Place:

Once, the neighborhood was predominantly white. ``It was in the early '60s things began to change,'' says Combre. Following the ``white flight'' to the suburban sections of Virginia Beach and other surrounding cities, Park Place became a rental community, he says.

Nearly 75 percent of the neighborhood's residents are renters, and about 26 percent are homeowners, according to the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Combre chuckles to himself and says that now many of those who fled Norfolk's downtown neighborhoods realize ``they made a mistake and want to come back.'' And, he says, the city sees rehabilitation as financially prudent since ``poor people don't generate money'' in taxes.

Combre credits Park Place Civic League President B.J. Stancel for many of the changes he sees.

Stancel is excited about her neighborhood and says that it is a combination of many pro-active efforts that have made the difference.

The newly formed Park Place Boys Choir, an active Police Assisted Community Enforcement program, mayoral workshops, active block security and programs to promote home ownership all have combined to make things better, she says.

``We're reaching out,'' says Stancel. ``Some may not agree, but partnership is the key to getting ills solved.

``All one needs to do is take a drive through the community,'' she says. ``Our community is no different than any other - Ghent, Berkley or Ocean View. There is more concentration of African Americans and a tendency to think the worst, but we're working extremely hard to make a difference.''

A major change Stancel and others point to is the rise in home ownership, something made possible in part by the increasing rehabilitation of single-family homes.

``Our goal is to change the percentage of rentals,'' says Stancel.

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