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May 2003
12
Park Avenue Folks Buy into Reclamation Efforts
BY MARK WINEKA
SALISBURY POST
May 12, 2003
Lou Manning pounds on Rowe Honeycutt's front door.
"You about got to break the door down to get him to hear it,"
Manning explains. "I have to go through this every time."
Manning decides that Honeycutt must still be in bed, so he
walks off the front porch and around the side to Honeycutt's bedroom window,
where he does some more shouting and pounding. It's about mid morning.
Manning finally sees signs of life and motions Honeycutt to
the front door.
"Where've you been for so long?" Honeycutt asks his visitor
back on the porch.
Earlier this year, Manning and other members of the Park
Avenue Redevelopment Corp. volunteered their time, money and brawn to repair the
elderly Honeycutt's small Clay Street home, directly across from the refurbished
Cannon Park.
Manning describes how the porch roof was sagging and the
floor was rotting. City inspectors had written up Honeycutt for the poor
condition of his block retaining wall next to the sidewalk. The home's
foundation also was in bad shape.
Once a carpenter and contractor, Honeycutt could no longer
fix the house himself or afford to have the repairs done, so Manning and the
others decided to make it their own little civic project.
Now Honeycutt's home has a good foundation, repaired roof and
porch, a new front railing and a plan to fix the retaining wall. Manning also
secured some shutters and bolted plastic chairs to the porch floor.
"I like it all right, but I kind of wanted it painted,"
Honeycutt says of all the new, treated lumber.
Honeycutt apologizes for his raspy voice, the result of a
sore throat.
"The next time you come, bring a doctor with you," Honeycutt
croaks as Manning presses on.
For as much time as he spends in the Park Avenue
neighborhood, you'd never know that Manning doesn't live here.
His two grown daughters do, however, and Manning has made
improving this part of Salisbury his personal challenge in recent years.
So has the city. Salisbury City Council has provided this
targeted area a multitude of services and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
to revitalize what long ago was a unique combination of upscale homes and mill
village.
On one end, professionals used to live in significant
turn-of-the-century homes. On the other end, working-class people populated the
mill houses and made the Cannon Mills plant on Boundary Street their lifetime
careers.
The neighborhood's golden years eventually gave way to
neglect, changes in ownership, decay and crime.
To start a reclamation, city officials first looked for a
commitment from the people who remained. Manning immediately bought into the
city's effort as a property owner and became head of the community-based Park
Avenue Redevelopment Corp. The residents and other stakeholders devised a plan.
Manning believes the dividends already have been great:
A completely reshaped Cannon Park. The handsome Tar Branch
project. Five new homes built for first-time homebuyers by the Salisbury
Community Development Corp.
Reclaimed, renovated houses on troubled Cemetery Street.
Private investment in properties with incredibly bad reputations.
A district police office. Black and white churches sharing
members and services.
On the horizon, the city will completely renovate two
abandoned stores at Park Avenue and Boundary Street to provide a community
center, vocational training and various city offices, including the police
substation.
Manning says the vacant mill building has strong potential
for residential development.
"It's just a challenge, and it's gone great so far," Manning
says. "There are 13 great people on the board who are willing to work."
Manning loves to serve as tour guide, and the Tar Branch
project is on the tour.
The banks of this small creek in the Shaver Street area once
held a kudzu jungle filled with discarded appliances, shopping carts and trash.
Today it's a terraced, natural amphitheater of sorts with a
gravel path, stone walls, boulders, trees and foot bridge.
A few discarded shopping carts have returned to the creek,
but otherwise the new Tar Branch hasn't attracted the loitering or vandalism one
might expect. Instead, it cries for a jazz concert or spring festival.
"My philosophy is that if you really have something that
looks nice, people will take care of it," Manning says. "That's evidently what
happened here."
A tall, lean Pamela Cleary knows the Park Avenue
neighborhood's geography as well as anyone. For the past three years, she has
walked the sidewalks five days a week as the neighborhood's mail carrier.
Her route follows exactly what the Park Avenue Redevelopment
Corp. considers as its territory: from Innes Street to Bringle Ferry Road and
from Long Street to Interstate 85.
"The first and third of the month, I'm most popular," Cleary
says, referring to the arrival of various government checks for the residents.
Cleary, who moved here from Long Island, N.Y., seven years
ago, still speaks with the distinctive accent of a New Yorker. She takes about
six hours to deliver mail to 726 stops.
"People out here are nice," she says.
Margaret Connor has lived in her handsome home on Clay Street
for 26 years, and she's not quite ready to declare the neighborhood's
revitalization a complete success.
"Things are still happening," says the retired KoSa employee.
"There's still room at the top."
Connor belongs to the Park Avenue Redevelopment Corp. and
strongly supports its projects, such as the Tar Branch improvements and the
Cannon Park makeover.
"I should go up and walk everyday," she says of her proximity
to the park, "but I guess I'm lazy."
In retirement she worked at KoSa for 27 years Connor spends
her days paying bills, driving to the grocery store, going to church, visiting
friends and attending club meetings. She has attractively decorated her home,
toasty in the cool autumn morning, with all kinds of knickknacks and
conversation pieces.
In one corner sits a beehive-looking lump adorned with
polished stones. The base material is the residue from one of the
tire-cord-making processes at the KoSa plant, she explains.
Just one of her conversation pieces.
Standing by his pickup in the parking lot next to his
apartments, Dick Pallmore doesn't know where to start.
"This whole area was completely awful," Pallmore recalls.
"It's hard to explain to you how bad it was."
Pallmore remembers parking at the Long Street convenience
store across the street and seeing drug deals take place. Police officers openly
told him they considered this spot, then called Simon Court, one of the worst
drug areas in the city.
Pallmore and his wife, Amy, had a significant investment in
other properties in the Park Avenue neighborhood, and they decided to pursue
buying the rundown, 14-unit apartment complex as a means of protecting that
investment.
It took an understanding bank (F&M) and cooperation from the
city to pull it off. Pallmore says he and City Manager David Treme literally
prayed together to make the project a reality.
When Pallmore finally started the cleanup and renovations, he
couldn't believe his eyes.
Tenants had destroyed wallboard and torn apart toilets in the
apartments. Pallmore had to replace all the doors, sinks and flooring.
"They had actually crapped on the floors," Pallmore says of
former occupants.
Renters had left behind all kinds of clothing and furniture.
In one upstairs bedroom, he found 28 televisions and 15 stereos.
Pallmore's dumpster bill alone ran up to $5,000.
Pallmore spent months renovating the inside of the units. On
the outside, he bought the adjoining vacant lot, cleaned it up with the city's
help and made a parking lot. He added a decorative brick and metal fence in the
apartments' front yard that will soon have a security gate to allow entry and
exit by tenants only.
The apartments also received a new name: Park Place, as in
one of the higher-priced properties in Monopoly.
Pallmore paid $200,000 for the apartments and spent $250,000
on the renovations.
"That's why I'm broke," he says.
After much of the renovations were complete, Pallmore's main
concern became finding new residents for the apartments. Given the place's past
reputation, who would be interested?
"We didn't want to put back the same kind of people that were
in here," Pallmore adds. "But we had a heck of a selling job to do."
Today, Pallmore couldn't be happier with the tenants he has
found. He describes the renters as a diverse group, ranging from college
students to senior citizens.
Only two of the units have not yet been rented.
Shirley McShore says a friend talked her into renting at Park
Place.
"She said you really ought to look at it, if you're looking
for an apartment," McShore remembers. "I like it a lot. We have a lot to do, but
I like it a lot."
McShore listens to a daily gospel program on the radio while
getting ready for her water aerobics and floor exercise programs at Rufty-Holmes
Senior Center. Her apartment and others in the complex have upstairs bedrooms
and 112 baths.
Pallmore plans to extend his outside fence to provide a
secure area in back for children. It will include a picnic area and play
equipment. More landscaping and lighting also are planned.
He calls the whole project a work in progress with the
emphasis on "work."
Dido Jenrette, a city employee, comes to Cannon Park once a
week to mow. Every other day, she scoops up trash.
But she has plenty of help with the litter patrol. A police
officer on foot and twin sisters who live across from the park pick up bottles,
cans and paper all the time.
"I have some angels over there," Jenrette says of the twins
and their husbands. "We call them our angels our guardian angels."
Jenrette, who has a college degree in horticulture, also does
the pruning, watering and trimming in Cannon Park, which now has some 80 trees
and 24 decorative lights.
The park features Bank-Shot Basketball, a large central
gazebo, playground equipment, skateboarding paths and brick sidewalks spreading
from the center.
Future plans call for the addition of a splash pool and
shelters. The park is one of the city's unique recreational locations. It takes
up the entire city block bounded by Clay, Liberty and Boundary streets and Park
Avenue. All the houses on those streets face the park.
"There's one of my regulars," Jenrette says, nodding toward a
woman strolling away from the gazebo. "She usually has a walking partner."
In the summer, children help Jenrette when they can. She
recalls fondly the day they helped her to carry a heavy water hose from one
corner of the park to another.
"She becomes the Pied Piper," Manning says.
Miriam and Jim Clary walk roughly 2.5 miles a day in Cannon
Park.
They take morning and afternoon jaunts and report that four
times around the perimeter equals 1.25 miles. They know, Jim says, because they
once had a police officer roll his measuring wheel around the park for them.
The park sits right outside their front door and beyond their
picket fence on Park Avenue.
Miriam and her twin, Marie Cuthrell, the guardian angels Dido
Jenrette had spoken about have lived here all their lives. Miriam simply
describes it as "many years."
The twins have seen most everything in the Park Avenue
neighborhood the good, the bad and the good again.
Miriam recognizes that the days when some of the city's more
affluent citizens lived here aren't likely to return soon. Neither are the
long-gone days of the strong independent grocers, identified with names such as
Rufty, Whitaker, Morgan and Hartman.
The mill has shut down, and renters still outnumber the
homeowners. Public housing dominates the end of Park Avenue near the interstate.
But the neighborhood has its pluses plenty of churches, new
investment spurred by city officials and, of course, the park.
"The park is a great place for children to come and play,"
Miriam notes.
It's not bad for guardian angels out for a walk, either.
The name Cemetery Street seems appropriate for a former drug
house being demolished and carted away.
"You have to get a picture of that," Manning says. "That's
one we're getting out of here. This house here was full of drug people, and the
police threw them out."
William Chambers sees the crowd gathering to watch the house
come down. He reeks of alcohol and is carrying some plastic bags full of raw
fish. Chambers seems agitated.
"The city of Salisbury is tearing down housing when there's
homeless out here," complains Chambers, who identifies himself as a homeless
person. "Write it down."
Chambers says he knew a man, now dead, who used to stay in
the vacant house. He also registers complaints about the homeless shelter for
giving out wet shoes and Salisbury Police, who run the homeless away from places
where they're just trying to rest, he says.
"Everybody needs a rest," Chambers adds. "I'm about sick of
this."
Manning notes that a boarded-up house on the other side of
Cemetery Street also will be coming down. He credits a strengthened city
ordinance on vacant houses for addressing problem spots in a timelier fashion.
"Right now, a vacant lot there is better than a vacant
building," Manning says.
The memories of the way Park Avenue used to be flood back for
Mildred Collins.
Folks used to walk "uptown" to the stores. Fire trucks often
came to a nearby corner on a hot summer day and turned on the fire hydrant for
children. Kids walked to school, either to A.T. Allen or Boyden High.
Collins misses the noise and lights of the Cannon Park
ballfield sometimes. She remembers a clubhouse on Boundary Street where women
taught knitting or were members of an active mothers' group. Everybody knew
everybody else and took turns looking after each other's children.
Collins' husband, an overseer at the Cannon Mills plant,
walked to work for 45 years. The couple raised three children here and, as
Collins sits in her living room off Boundary Street, she counts off the years
she has lived in the neighborhood.
Could it be 66 years?
"I wouldn't take anything for it," she says. "I'd be more
afraid someplace else than here."
The top of Collins' piano is filled with family photographs,
including her husband in his Navy uniform. He died in 1986, when the
neighborhood already had started its decline.
But things look brighter these days. "It's amazing what has
happened in the past five years," Collins says.
Still, there's a hint of regret.
"It won't ever be like it used to be," she says.
In November: a walk through Gold Hill.
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263, or
mwineka@salisburypost.com.
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