Raleigh’s best days ahead — and in Southeast?
I know Southeast Raleigh just well enough to know that I don’t know very much about it at all. So take what follows with a grain of salt. Every time I do go there, I’m struck by what seems to be its huge potential for economic development of the modern, best kind. I’m also struck by how vast is the divide between West/Southwest Raleigh and Southeast Raleigh — politically, culturally, and in every other -ly way you could think of. Not to mention the divide between both and North Raleigh. More below (though I must warn you, it’s a lot more).
***
This comes up for me right now in the context of the City Council elections and ongoing Council politics — and divisions. I’ve had several long conversations of late with people involved in the elections and conversant with the divisions; and suffice it say it’s a minefield, a subject I’ll come back to. But what I’m talking about now is potential. Over the two-year life of whatever Council is elected October 9, Raleigh’s going to rewrite its entire comprehensive plan. We’re going to decide — maybe — what to do about the creaky CAC structure — the 18 Citizen Advisory Councils. We will, if we seize the chance offered by the STAC, figure out where to start on a modern mass-transit system, and what it might look like in 30, 40, 50 years when the population of Raleigh could be 1 million people. A million people are not going to fit on the Beltline, I don’t care how many lanes you add to it.
***
When I look around Raleigh I see a lot of places where transit and mixed-use developments and la-dee-dah can be “infilled” into or grafted onto the sprawl. At great expense, however, and over many years time. But there’s one part of town, and it’s inside the Beltline even, where there’s vacant land and wide avenues and yes, some sketchy or downright bad neighborhoods and drugs; but there’s nothing wrong with most of the housing stock that a good contractor couldn’t fix, and there are some seriously beautiful neighborhoods dotted around where, if you blinked, you’d think Gen. Eisenhower was in the White House again. Yes, I mean Southeast Raleigh. And the people who live there? They’re good, bad and everything in between — about the same as everywhere else except, as I was reminded yesterday by someone whose opinion I value highly, they have far fewer resources than the rest of Raleigh. Resources meaning money. Meaning access to people with money. Meaning educational standing that is the gateway to money. It’s a big “except.”
***
And here’s another difference that was pointed out to me. People in Southeast see the path to success in life as leading out of Southeast. They do not look around and see investment potential; and again, one reason they don’t is, they have very few resources to invest. Actually, that’s not so much of a difference, because while there is some stirring around of new money in Southeast, it’s not like big resources are pouring in from the outside either. But even that stirring is sparking talk of “gentrification” and population displacement among resident folks who might have it in their minds to leave someday, but for now can’t afford it. And besides which, if there is money to be made in Southeast, why shouldn’t they be the ones to make it?
***
So now, picture the Southeast Raleigh of 50 years from now. Picture a light-rail line, or a streetcar line, or — well, how about one of those buses that runs on rails or streets? Use your imagination. Picture whatever it is going out New Bern Avenue, and all those empty or lightly used lots on either side of New Bern are graceful apartment buildings and condominiums, with first-floor stores, or else vest-pocket parks. And the same on Poole Road. And Capitol Boulevard. And by the way, those roads aren’t so shabby-looking any more. The city’s fixed ‘em up — put in medians, sidewalks and landscapes so you can walk safely and in style. Your streetcars may have to steer around the Raleigh Country Club — did you know there’s a beautiful golf course right in the middle of Southeast Raleigh? — but otherwise there’s no end of boulevards in Southeast that could have their own transit and be “mixed-use” and — very important — be right downtown. The State Capitol? Five minutes away. Ten tops.
***
But let me stop right there, because this is not how it should happen. What Southeast Raleigh should look like is not for me to say. What should happen is that the people who live in Southeast should get their own picture of its future in their minds as part of that comp-plan process I mentioned before. It should be a picture developed with the help of the rest of the city — and shared by the rest of the city — but it’s their community first and foremost. And hopefully, when they picture it 50 years hence, it’ll still be their community, if not literally then in the sense that they — and their children — were the owners of what it became.
***
Back to the politics. I may be missing something — I’m sure I am — but Southeast Raleigh isn’t well-organized politically. That’s partly because it’s isolated racially (it’s historically African-American, where the other four-fifths of Raleigh isn’t), and partly because people don’t see their future success there. So they don’t invest the one resource they do have an equal amount of — time — in political organizing. Or community organizing. Or call it what you will, but politics is classically “who gets what when” and as my friend said, not very many people in Southeast are seeing their “what” in the neighborhoods they live in.
***
The first challenge, then, is door-to-door grassroots organizing, which is theoretically what the CACs are supposed to be about, or could be about, but my observation is they never have been. That’s a subject for another day (or, if you insist, here’s something I wrote awhile back). The City Council is so split over what the CACs should or shouldn’t do that they’re scheduled to meet in public with a facilitator on October 16. That’ll be a meeting run, in other words, not by the mayor, but by a mediator paid to find out, in the immortal words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all get along?”
***
Whether it’s via the CACs or some other route, grass-roots organizing ain’t easy anywhere, let alone Southeast. But what if it were undertaken there in the context of a larger citywide planning effort to identify future transit corridors and economic development zones where the dense, mixed-use, high-end and affordable housing that Raleigh needs — must have, in fact, to keep growing — should go? In the context of the comp-plan process, I mean.
***
And what if the City Council announced a major economic development initiative, to be carried out over 10 years, or 20, or pick a period, and pick a number, but I’m liking $100 million — no, that’s too little; remember when our city leaders went on the Chamber of Commerce trip to Jacksonville, Fla. and the Republican mayor there had a $1.5 billion economic development plan going? That was a few years ago, so make it $2 billion.
(See, when you’re a progressive, money isn’t a problem 
… a little levity if you’ve read this far.)
I don’t mean just scatter $2 billion across the landscape, and to get political buy-in for something like that, it’s gotta be shared around the city. But given the disproportional needs of Southeast Raleigh, and the disproportionately large potential for growth there, a very big chunk of the money could be put in prospect for that community.
***
What do I mean by put in prospect? I almost said promised. Let’s not quibble. I believe an awful lot of good community organizing will occur in Southeast if people hear that the city’s willing to invest $500 million (!) over time in their streets, their sidewalks, their homes, their future homes, and their future prospects if, that is, they organize themselves to use it, starting in small amounts and movin’ on up from there. The community organizing leads to community development and resource development and reinvestment. And meanwhile, how do you stop outsiders from noticing this juicy morsel of under-valued neighborhoods where Raleigh’s about to prime the pump for growth? How do you stop gentrification? I don’t think you can, exactly — or if you can, I don’t the answer — but you can control it, I think, with micro-enterprise lending, inclusionary zoning, sweat-equity requirements and the like. None of this is original with me, I should say, and a lot of it I’m “borrowing” from my wife, whose organizing work in community development has taken her to some neighborhoods in Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington DC and elsewhere that make Southeast Raleigh look like what it is, which is pretty healthy by low-income neighborhood standards. Pam — and others like her — go into these neighborhoods with micro-grants from foundations and the prospect of bigger ones down the line if the first ones are well-used. Guess what? These neighborhoods have leaders within, and potential leaders. Given some resources, they step forward. They build skills. Their neighborhoods start to gain. That’s what I imagine for Raleigh.
***
If I’m hearing right, it’s also what Councilor James West and the other political leaders in Southeast Raleigh imagine. But it’s not happening, and I think the reason is — and I’m going to end on this point — Southeast’s on-again, off-again alliance with the West/Southwest Raleigh neighborhoods around NCSU and in the now-booming downtown is, to put it nicely, off-again. Perhaps it goes without saying, but these are also the two progressive, Democratic areas of Raleigh. North Raleigh? Lotta Republicans. Conservatives. Harder to convince of the need for economic development “investments” of any kind, unless it’s another lane on I-40. (Another reason it isn’t happening, of course, is that the focus of city investment in Mayor Meeker’s time has been downtown, and there’s been plenty of pushback on that from the Republicans already. Meanwhile, neither Southeast nor Southwest has been getting much — e.g., the Hillsborough Street redevelopment plan, worked up by the community in 1999 and still iffy.) The prevailing majority on Council now is an alliance of three Democrats, including West, and two Republicans. The odd members out — except on the development in the downtown core — are Meeker himself and the two West Raleigh Democrats, Thomas Crowder and Russ Stephenson. Without a progressive alliance, what I’ve described is pie-in-the-sky. Maybe it is anyway. But if it is, then what will Southeast Raleigh be in 50 years?
September 24th, 2007 06:10
Yes. What say you, SE Raleigh and West/SW Raleigh leaders?