Almost Four Decades of Effecting Change in Durham

Nathan Garrett, former Controller and Deputy Director for the NC Fund from 1864 to 1967, launched an anti-poverty organization called the Foundation for Community Development.

"The purpose of this organization was to provide support in selected communities for community organizations around important issues," Garrett explained. "The Foundation spearheaded development of United Durham, Inc."

According to Garrett, the idea for a for profit company to serve low wealth communities developed from conversatons 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 quality food at reasonable 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."

The market opened at 602 N. Mangum Street in what is now called North Central Durham in June 1971, and operated until March 1975. The modular home plant started in 1969 and closed in 1973, according to M.L. Harris, a long time UDI/CDC board member and the factory's first manager. Several factors contributed to the market's short life, not the least of which was one of the sharpest increases in food price in two decades, as reported by the US Department of Agriculture. According to USDA analysts, US food prices jumped six percent in 1973, just two years after the grocery store opened.

With the supermarket and the modudlar home factory, this community development organization pioneered in economic ventures in the local low wealth, principally African American, neighborhoods that later proved to be viable. For example, since the UDI market closed, two other national grocery chains have operated stores in the southeast Durham area, including the new Food Lion, centerpiece of another UDI/CDC-inspired strategy to revitalize another Durham neighborhood. At that time--the 1970s--modular homes were cutting edge building technology, according to Harris, who served 19 years on the UDI/CDC board of directors. "A customer could order his home and it would be, for the most part, ready to set up on the property when it came out of the factory." More than 30 years later, the concept remains viable.

According to a recent article in Realty Times magazine, " . . .Modular homes are gaining in popularity while offering several advantages over traditional site-built homes. For those short on time and money, a modular home may be just the answer."

Pace-setting though they were, these ventures--the grocery story and the modular home factory--failed.

Undaunted, Garrett, Ed Stewart and others of the United Durham, Inc. team regrouped and reorganized the for profit company in 1974 into a non-profit community development corporation--UDI/CDC.

Garrett explained the change: "Several of our funding sources wanted to continue to make money available for what we were doing in Durham," Garrett said, "but they were concerned about the debt that the for profit company had incurred. So after a lot of consultation and planning, we decided to become a non-profit community development organization."

The leaders of this new organization--UDI/CDC--had to jump-start it with new projects that remained true to the original vision. "The board had bought 26 acres out here with the idea of building a modular home plant on 13 acres and using the other 13 acres for new houses to be built in the plant," explained Stewart. "With that idea gone, we had to figure out what we could do with this property, and Nathan's staff came up with the idea to develop an industrial part. Our targets would be companies that wanted to be near Research Triangle Park."

At that time--more than 30 years ago--"out here" was a heavily rural section of Durham County, slated to become prime development area as the Research Triangle Park attracted unprecedented growth to this region in North Carolina. Additionally, the federal government, still operating under the Great Society philosophy, was poised to invest large sums of money into projects with the potential to make a difference in communities.

"When I look back," Stewart continued, "I realize that much of the success of UDI/CDC is based upon being in the right place at the right time."

During the CDC's early years, working with the federal Economic Development Administration, Stewart and UDI/CDC, won a $1.2 million matching grant to put water and sewer into the 26 acress that would become one of Durham's first industrial parks. Before the money could be delivered, the administration in Washington changed from Democratic to Republican, and, according to Stewart, the feds held up the money for eight months.

"I was in Washington once a month for eight consecutive months talking with anyone who would listen explaining why they should release that money so we could develop this industrial park," Stewart said. "Finally, just a few months before the end of the fiscal year, they gave us the money."

The rest, as they say, is history. The UDI/CDC industrial park is now a 91-acre complex where 500 people work daily. As significant as this impact is, it's just one of a rippling effects that UDI/CDC has had in the Durham community for almost 40 years.

"Bringing water and sewer to this area made residential development along Cornwallis Road feasible and potentially profitable," said Stewart. "So our impact has been far greater than just what's happening in the industrial park."

The impact of UDI/CDC ripples across the lives of Durham's people, according to Frances Kithcart, another long time board member, who said: "There are former poor people in this community whose lives have been changed in immeasurable ways by this organization."

Can this impact continue?

Stewart Fulbright, former board member who was also the first dean of the NCCU School of Business and is a member of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, summed up the organization's future this way: "The UDI/CDC leadership must never forget that through out its history, it has recognized that poor people have a lot to contribute to a more complete understanding of a community's economic needs. Their input helps others develop more viable ideas of what is really needed to fuel economic development in Durham."

As UDI/CDC continues its countdown to a half century of service, it confronts at least three large challenges, some of them old, and at least one new one. "This organization has always understood and focused on the needs of the community," explained Michael Palmer, an UDI/CDC board member who is also director of the Office of Community Affairs for Duke University. "Helping these neighborhoods to grow and develop is complex work and now we must stay focused on our mission, but also change with the times so that we address real and urgent needs."

Stewart discusses the second challenge. "We must reach out and build more effective partnerships," he said, "particularly with local governments, such as the city of Durham. I believe there are a number of projects we can work on together."

Addressing real needs and building viable partnerships constitute continuing challenges for this organization that works daily where others fear to tread. Succession, on the other hand, offers a new challenge. For more than 30 years, it was simply understood that R. Edward Stewart and UDI/CDC were inseparable.

"Now, some of our funding sources have strongly suggested that we need a concrete leadership succession plan so that the organization's work is no unduly disrupted by a change in leadership," Stewart explained. "We are working on that plan now. It's part of our future."

In Part 3, let's meet R. Edward Stewart