Brenda Bradshaw thought she’d die before anything would ever be done about Fayette Place.
The vacant, city-owned lot on Merrick St. brushing up against the Durham Freeway in the heart of her native Hayti has been an eyesore for thirty years, she said.
For all that time, it’s been a sad reminder of what was built and demolished there twice in history — single-family homes and businesses during “urban renewal” of the 1950s and then, the Fayetteville Street public housing complex — and the years since of unfulfilled proposals for its 20 acres.
“We are finally going to get our neighborhood back,” said Bradshaw, 79. “It’s sad that they too so long to do something.”
On Nov. 3, the Durham City Council unanimously supported the Durham Housing Authority’s and Development Ventures, Inc.’s plan to fund the first phase of redevelopment for Fayette Place with a $44 million tax-exempt bond.
Plans for the former Fayette Place
The new housing development is slated to bring 252 affordable garden-style rental units for families earning 30% to 80% of the area median income — though its exact affordability hasn’t yet been defined by city officials.
The project will be named The Villages of Hayti and . The city previously awarded the development contracts to the real estate firms Harmony Housing Affordable Development, Gilbane Development Company and F7 International Development.
"Durham Community Partners has made community engagement a cornerstone of The Villages at Hayti project. Efforts have included a series of public meetings and breakout sessions focused on resident experience, homeownership, community programming, preserving history, and economic participation," reads a description on Gilbane Development Company's website.
It’s slated to include nine buildings of three and four stories, with 81 one-bedroom, 113 two-bedroom and 58 three-bedroom units, according to the proposed plans.
On Monday evening, the Durham City Council will move forward with securing additional funding for the project, in this case a loan agreement to provide more than $17 million for the development’s first phase.
City officials previously said in a City Council meeting that the total cost of the full development will be up to $90 million.
“It makes you think, maybe, life is worth living,” said Bradsher. “Finally, it’s finally going to happen.”
Since it was reconstructed as a public housing complex in 1967, it was sold to developers, then bought back by the Durham Housing Authority and remained bare since it was demolished around 16 years ago.
Representation of ‘promises not kept’
Henry McKoy, director emeritus of the neighborhood organization Hayti Reborn and former director of the North Carolina Central University School of Business, said Fayette Place is about righting a historic wrong.
McKoy said that by some estimates, around 4,000 homes and 500 businesses were lost during the period of urban renewal, when white government officials demolished parts of Hayti to build NC-14.
“The Hayti community still resonates from a pain of what was lost,” said McKoy. “Fayette Place in particular, because it is such a large swath of land. It also was a representation of promises not kept.”
There was formerly a promise that houses torn down would be rebuilt, and the city replaced it with a public housing complex instead, he said.
“There was a lot of things that that would not have even been part of this project if the community had not raised their voices and had not engaged,” McKoy said.
Like McKoy, Hayti leader and community advocate Anita Scott Neville of Hayti Reborn said this is good news in the short term, but she remains cautious of the city's promises.
One issue that Neville and McKoy point out is that residents won't be able to own property in the Villages of Hayti. The city's contract with the out-of-town developers includes a 99-year lease.
"Fayette Place is the last official parcel of land historically known as Hayti," said Neville. "The vanguard about preservation is to make sure that while there is development, there is also preservation, and that there is legacy building, and that for those who currently live and do business on these sites, that the redevelopment is not pushing them out."
Construction of the first phase is expected to be completed in 2027.
