Vine City targeted for revitalization

“You’ve got a lot of hard-working, working-class people in these apartments around here,” he said. “What the neighborhood needs is more attention, that’s all.”

A little attention is what it’s getting — along with a little money.

The Atlanta Development Authority recently awarded $3.3 million in grants to the Vine City and English Avenue communities — part of $15 million the agency has given the area over four years.

Bounded by Northside Drive on the east and Lowery Boulevard on the west, Vine City is near enough to downtown to have drawn developers’ interest when the housing boom was strong. But it remains one of the city’s more depressed areas.

About 9,000 people live in Vine City, 41 percent of them below the poverty line. Roughly half the households make less than $22,366, compared to a citywide median of $35,057 and a national median of about $50,000.

The crime rate here is more than twice the city average.

Things don’t look much different just to the north in the English Avenue community.

ADA-funded business ventures in Vine City and English Avenue won’t create hundreds of jobs, but they should create scores. Among the projects funded are a renovation of the old Bronner Bros. building at the corner of King and Lowery, a remake of the police union headquarters on Joseph Boone Boulevard, and a refurbishing of a Rock Street building as a job-training center.

The projects will try to counter decades of stagnation, punctuated by periodic attempts to improve housing or add development.

If it works, the area will see more business growth, job creation, investment and an influx of new residents, said Ernestine Garey, ADA’s interim president. “Our goal is to spur economic growth and job creation.”

Ups — and downs

Just a few years ago, residents watched hopefully as a string of new condos and a Publix supermarket went up along King Drive. Less than a mile to the north, new apartments went up near Jones Avenue. A smattering of new single-family houses sprung up amid others with boarded-up windows.

Then came the slump in real estate, the banking crisis, recession.

“Prior to the bust, we thought we were successful — there were private developers coming in,” said Greg Hawthorne, executive director of the Vine City Health and Housing Ministry. “And then we had a bust.”

The Publix closed last year. Many of the new condos, apartments and houses nearby remain vacant. So the question now is: Can dollops of dollars, dribbled in various places through a depressed community, do enough to make a difference?

The verdict is still out. But certainly the renewed attention is welcome, said Byron Amos, former chair of the Vine City Civic Association.

“One of the things that this neighborhood has suffered from is being given money for one-time only projects and that’s it,” said Amos, now CEO of Capacity Builders, a neighborhood-based nonprofit. “The ADA is putting money into projects that are meant to change the fabric of the neighborhood.”

When the redevelopment of the Bronner Bros. building is done, for example, there will be apartments, a small restaurant and a community meeting area.

As the work nears completion, a brick building is going up across King Drive. The owner, who was unavailable for comment, is said to be planning a pizza restaurant.

But is this a token sign of improvement or a harbinger of renewal?

In need of jobs and money

The area around Martin Luther King Jr. and Lowery boulevards does have a few restaurants, barbershops, a tattoo parlor, some beauty shops, gas stations and nonprofits.

The ADA grants make a difference, said William Smith, owner of Mr. Everything, a restaurant along King Drive. “It’s going to help. It means more business on the block.”

Down the street, Keir Morris, owner of Philly’s Finest Barbershop, approved of anything that brightens the area, but worried that one or two renovations is not enough.

“It makes the block look better, but you still need people to come out and spend money,” he said.

Before 1996, the neighborhood had a dry cleaners, a shoe repair shop, a liquor store and a nightclub. Those places are gone, sighed Kalem Hasan, a shopkeeper at the Su-Bet Beauty Shop.

Nearby, Marshall Lay, who works in a local barbershop, said that the area is improving but its needs are basic. “What the neighborhood needs is jobs,” he said.

Economic engines

The idea behind the small grants is not to make over a neighborhood, said Catherine Ross, director of the Center for Quality Growth & Regional Development at Georgia Tech.

Instead, each project should encourage other businesses to think that the area is improving. Turning an area around can take a long time; just look at Midtown Atlanta, Ross said.

“I can remember when prostitution was the most common profession in Midtown,” she said. “It’s been 25 years — that’s a long time. But you’ve had a real transformation.”

Targeted grants just get things started, she said. “In making investments they have gone where the private sector would not go,” Ross said. “I think of it as trying to start a small bonfire and having the forest catch.”

Even so, the ADA’s goals have been very aggressive — perhaps too aggressive, said Harvey Newman, professor of public management at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. The agency simply expects to accomplish too much, too soon.

“This is one of the most challenging things to do — to generate new jobs and community nodes within neighborhoods. It is a terribly difficult challenge,” he said.

Newman argues that the emphasis in development should be on building a residential base. He cited advances made by Little Five Points during the early 1980s. “It worked because of Inman Park.”

The problem in Vine City is that there are new housing units — but not many new residents.

As for development, that depends on entrepreneurs, said Karen Campbell, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

When it’s tough to find financing, grants are a way “to allow entrepreneurs to try their ideas and begin the development process,” she said.

Ideally, that means drawing in outside capital, she said.

ADA officials say their spending is designed to do that. Redevelopment of the Bronner Bros. building is costing about $1.75 million – agency bonds are contributing $823,000 and the rest is from the developer, Hagar Civilization.

Despite its difficulties and historic disadvantage, the area does have some built-in potential, experts say.

There’s proximity to downtown, the economic engine of the conference center and sports arenas on its border and the access to public transportation — not one but two Marta stops. Perhaps the greatest untapped resource — for both quick impact and long-term economic health — is the cluster of historically black colleges at Vine City’s southern edge.

A generation ago, many urban schools erected barriers in an effort to distance themselves from their neighbors. Yet in recent years, some colleges have reversed course, said Chris Leinberger, visiting fellow in the Brooking Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

Schools such as the University of Pennsylvania have opened up, helping surrounding neighborhoods develop while also looking to them for entertainment, shopping and living space.

For Vine City, “these universities are a tremendous asset,” Leinberger said. “It could play a role like Auburn Avenue did 50 years ago, but it needs to connect to the universities.”

Carlton E. Brown, president of Clark Atlanta University, said he thinks the area and the schools share an interest in development.

The funding needed is beyond the ability of Clark Atlanta — or even all the schools combined.

“We studied Penn, and we studied the University of Southern California and Jackson State in Mississippi, as well,” he said. “It is about the institution seeing itself as an economic development hub.”

By working together with each other and the community, schools can encourage foundation and government spending, and they can nurture private development as well, Brown said.

Merchants say that small things also can make a big different.

For instance, the parking meters that Officer Codrington was checking are an obstacle to economic growth, said Jaseph Moultrie, owner of the Aesthetic Ink & Design tattoo parlor.

This is economic development in reverse, he said.

“You want people to come here,” Moultrie said. “A lot of people are scared to come in here already, and here’s another discouragement.”