Almost Four Decades of Effecting Change in Durham

Tour inner city Durham, those neighborhoods, north , east and southeast of the Durham Expressway (NC 147), and you will see numerous examples of the work of UDI/CDC, if you know where to look.

UDI/CDC traces its history back more than 40 years to an organization that began as United Durham, Inc. During four decades, this organization--first as United Durham, Inc. and now as UDI/CDC--provided numerous inner city development projects, using a combination of funding from private organizations as well federal, state and local government grants. Under the guidance of R. Edward Stewart, it's long time president and executive director, this organization continues with a vision that constantly expands, seeing inner city Durham as a viable part of the world-class Research Triangle region.

First, consider several definitions: Inner City--neighborhoods populated by mostly low-income residents, many of them African Americans, where commercial companies seldom invest in improvements. These neighborhoods are often characterized by high unemployment, low wages, blight and often a pall of homelessness. UDI/CDC--a a not-for-profit organization--specializes in creating job opportunities, improved wages and quality of life conditions in the inner city. According to a recent national study of Community Development Corporations, they " . . . promote re-investments by communicating accurate market information to investors and by demonstrating through their projects, that neighborhoods are market-worthy . . .The conclusion: 'Policy interventions of the sort represented by CDCs' community development investments can product real results that are scientifically measurable."

Planned, staged and consistent growth defines urban centers, such as Durham. While growth provides possibilities, it also produces prices, both of which affect the lives of urban residents. For example, in Durham, what local residents recognize as an expanded downtown where the County Detention Center, the Durham Bulls Stadium and the Performing Arts Center stand within a stone's throw of each other was once known as "cross the tracks, or Hayti. This was an inner city residential and commercial district populated exclusively by African Americans. Urban renewal destroyed Hayti--the price--so that Durham's downtown could have room to grow--the possibility.This change--from Hayti to the eastern section of downtown Durham--represents the tip of an iceberg of change that has slowly transformed Durham.

This tour of UDI/CDC's impact on Durham begins at the corner of Mangum and Corporation Streets, commonly called Old Five Points, one of this city's principal gateways off I-85 where this organization sparked and sponsored the renovation of a 25,000 square foot building that years ago housed a laundry business. Through its Youth Build program, UDI/CDC also renovated several houses in this North Central Durham neighborhood.

Continue the tour, this time into Durham's southeast quadrant, where on the corner of Fayetteville and Umstead Streets stand the city's first modular building built more than 30 years ago in the organization's modular home plant. Keep going down Fayetteville Street where St. Joseph's Place stands just behind St. Joseph's AME Church. Working in partnership with the Church, UDI/CDC developed this senior housing apartment complex. Continue to Fayetteville and Pilot Streets where Earle Village, the organization's newest community development project opened in 2008, anchored by a Food Lion Grocery. In one of those rare examples of impeccable timing, something that the UDI/CDC leadership seems to make a habit, this store opened just weeks before the other other chain grocer in southeast Durham announced its closing.

No! We're not through!

Continue along Fayetteville Road, where just beyond the Martin Luther King Parkway, and just 1.5 miles from Research Triangle Park, sits UDI/CDC's "gemstone," a 91-acre industrial park, one of Durham's first such developments.

"We've brought more than $70 million into this community," explained R. Edward Stewart, President and Chief Executive Officer of UDI/CDC. "We've helped to redirect the lives of more than 120 young people through our Youth Build programs. Our industrial park has an asset base value of $50 million, and the leadersthip skills that we've developed in the lives of people who have worked here continue to serve this community."

While that comment summarizes a major aspect of this organization and its predecessor, United Durham, Inc., it doesn't tell the whole story, a tale that began during the turbulent 1960s. This organization has confronted daunting challenges throughout more than four decades of existence. Even today, similar challenges confront this community development corporation. Finding money to finance continued economic development always provides the principle challenge.

Today, as UDI/CDC looks to its future, other challenges loom large, such as creating viable partnerships with ever-more conservative local governments and with large commerciali companies to continue to close the economic gap in Durham; developing a long-term succession plan so progress is not stunted by leadership changes; staying on the visionary cutting edge with development ideas that continue the organization's spectacular contributions. These challenges for UDI/CDC's future are also part of this organization's story.

Stories like this do not happen in a vacuum. Rather, these stories reflect issues of life, events, circumstances, conditions and situations interconnected financially, socially, politically and personally, often in strange, new ways. Frequently, these seemingly unrelated issues set the stage for change.

In the late 1960s, Durham, like most southern cities, reeled in the throes of the final gasps of legalized segregation. The Bull City--Durham's nickname and marketing brand, based on its financial foundation in the cigerette manufacturing industry--didn't explode in the violence that characterized similar stuggles throughout the nation. Nevertheless, tension reigned. Sit-ins, marches, demonstrations, and sustained boycotts of many of Durham businesses that would not hire African American employees, or respect these same residents as quality customers, slowly shook the strength out of southern-style segregation. Even as tensions simmered, boiling over from time to time throughout the state, a five-year anti-poverty initiative launched by then North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford created a fortuitous confluence of circumstances that would have far-reaching impact throughout North Carolina. Sanford launched the initiative--The North Carolina Fund--in 1963 and arranged grants totaling $9.3 million from the Ford, Z. Smith Reynolds and Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundations. The Fund, a non-profit organization, designed to operate for just five years, was to create experimental projects in education, health, job training, housing and community development. Headed by George H. Esser, the NC Fund also had Durham native, Nathan Garrett as its Controller. The Fund's original office was in Durham. The organization received 52 proposals from across the state and selected 11 projects to fund. These circumstances set the stage for change.

One year later, then President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his now famous, though largely ineffective over time, "War on Poverty" during his 1964 State of the Union message. In part, he said: "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort. It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice and we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. One thousand dollars invested in salvaging one unemployable youth today can return $40,000 or more in his lifetime. Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organizational support. But this attact, to be effective, must also be organized a the State and local levels, and must be supported and directed by State and local efforts."

A few months later, Johnson added another piece to the developing puzzle of change when he unveiled his vision of the Great Society in a speech at the University of Michigan: "The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of his body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community . . . But most of all the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge, constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor."

Congress passed the federal Economic Opportunity Act in August 1964, officially launching this so-called war on poverty, part of Johnson's dream for the Great Society. When Johnson announced this proposed legislation, the nation's poverty rate hoovered around 19 percent, down from 22.4 percent in 1959.

The key pieces for change were in place--federal financial support, commitment from the state governments and the energy of local organizations, advocates for the grassroots.

Back in North Carolina, the Fund provided financing for projects in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Asheville, Macon, Craven and Nash/Edgecombe counties, along with two multi-county projects--one in the mountains and one in eastern North Carolina. The Durham project--Operation Breakthrough--one of the state's original community action agencies, went to work energizing the city's poor, principally African American residents, and the Bull City became poised for change.

After working as Controller and Deputy Director for the NC Fund from 1964 to 1967, Garrett launched an anti-poverty program called the Foundation for Community Development. "The purpose of this organization was to provide support for selected community organizations around important issues," Garrett explained. The Foundation spearheaded development of United Durham, Inc." According to Garrett, the idea of a for-profit company to serve low-wealth communities developed from conversations about how to meet people's personal and family needs as they used boycotts as an effective tool for social change. "We knew that poor people needed access to qualityfood at rasonable prices, and they needed access to affordable housing," Garrett explained. "Therefore, we launched United Durham, Inc. to build and operate a grocery store and a modular home factory."

In Part two of this three part series, we will examine how United Durham, Inc. fransformed into UDI/CDC