Late Spartanburg native behind Northside effort
Andrew Doughman wrote this series of articles for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal as a 2012 National Health Journalism Fellow. Other stories in the series include:
Northside: Being transformed into a healthy and thriving community
Northside: Story of the mill village is a familiar one
Northside: Single mom looks for college and a good job
Northside: Neighborhood's future depends on healthy choices
Northside: City is following Atlanta redevelopment plan
Spartanburg County Council considers fee-in-lieu of tax requests
In the late 1990s, a team of investors rehabilitated a distressed public housing complex in Atlanta called East Lake Meadows. They built mixed-income housing, started a new charter school and enticed a YMCA, Publix Super Market and bank to open nearby.
At the time, Atlanta banker and Spartanburg native Hugh Chapman was directly involved in the project. Before he died in 2007, he took former Spartanburg mayor Bill Barnet and developer George Dean Johnson to see the new East Lake Village.
Calling it a life-changing experience, Barnet said what he saw “was just a terrific transformation, from hopelessness to huge hope.”
“Anyone who can go down there and see the pictures of the way it was and the way it is today would be advantaged and encouraged,” he said.
Since his first trip in 2002, numerous Spartanburg civic leaders have traveled to East Lake to see the project. Now they want to do it here.
As the city of Spartanburg and its partners begin a massive project to remake the city's Northside community, they intend to follow a development model that billionaire investor Warren Buffett and others have marketed across the country.
After the Atlanta success, Buffett, billionaire investor Julian Robertson and developer Tom Cousins pledged to finance Purpose Built Communities, a nonprofit that would help other communities replicate the East Lake model's focus on quality schools, mixed-income housing and wrap-around social services.
Purpose Built Communities is now offering Spartanburg free consulting services for the Northside redevelopment project.
East Lake Meadows was a blighted public housing complex rampant with crime and drugs. It was an environment more suited to sending youths to prison than to college.
“You drive through East Lake Meadows, you wouldn't believe this was in the United States,” Cousins said in a speech this past fall. “Had I been one of those kids, I am sure I would have been one of the crime statistics.”
Local ties
To help transform East Lake, Cousins enlisted his best friend, Chapman, who departed from the family's traditional role in Spartanburg's textile economy for a career in banking.
“He always had his ties to Spartanburg and always cared about his roots here,” said Barnet, who is chairman of the Northside Development Corp., the nonprofit chartered to redevelop Spartanburg's Northside. “He would've been the person who made us most aware of the stories and opportunities presented by the East Lake model.”
While Chapman quietly led the execution of the East Lake project, the idea was Cousins'.
During the past decade, numerous Spartanburg leaders in both city government and in philanthropic groups have traveled to East Lake, where they have seen how a blighted public housing complex became a healthy, mixed-income community. All have returned enthused and ready to try the model here.
When current Spartanburg Mayor Junie White asked Barnet to lead the Northside Development Corp., Barnet had already been to East Lake several times.
Barnet said the East Lake story is a tale of “monumental change” that begins in a run-down, hopeless environment and ends in a neighborhood with a mixed-income housing development, an award-winning charter school, YMCA and grocery store.
It's a story he'd like to be able to one day tell about Spartanburg.
This story was originally published at GoUpstate.com on January 28, 2013
Photo Credit: ANDREW DOUGHMAN