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Community Mitigation and Enhancement: Crest Street, Durham, North Carolina |
What Happened
Planning for the East-West Expressway began in 1959 (see chronology below). The highway was intended to provide access to a corridor characterized by high employment density, including the Durham central business district, major nearby manufacturers, and the Duke University Medical complex. The route was to generally follow the Southern Railroad tracks through the city, where increasing congestion was hampering the city's growth.
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Several urban-renewal programs were undertaken during the 1960s in
conjunction with the East-West corridor. Many households and businesses
were relocated at a time when relocation benefits were limited, and many
relocated residents accused the city of mot keeping promises it had made.
A major African-American community, known as Hayti, was virtually dismantled
by a combination of urban renewal and the East-West Expressway, resulting
in long-term resentment and distrust of government agencies among African-American
residents of Durham. The Crest Street neighborhood was the next African-American community to face the prospect of relocation. Beginning in the 1960s, Crest Street residents became active in opposing efforts to complete the East-West Expressway, which was already being delayed because of funding problems. They clearly recognized that, if implemented as planned, the proposed highway would be a threat that their neighborhood would not survive. Opposition by the Crest Street neighborhood was noticed early because, throughout Durham, this large African-American neighborhood had achieved a significant degree of economic and political power over the years. Crest Street residents were able to effectively use their long-term connections and respect in the Durham area to develop political alliances with sympathetic activist groups such as ECOS (a Duke University group that was fighting the expressway for environmental reasons). An important milestone was reached in 1973, when ECOS achieved a court decision that required NCDOT and FHWA to prepare an EIS to comply with NEPA. During the preparation of the EIS in the mid-1970s, NCDOT, FHWA, and the city of Durham worked together to prepare a restructuring plan for Crest Street. This plan, which would have dispersed Crest Street residents throughout the city, was actively opposed by the Crest Street neighborhood. In 1977, the Crest Street neighborhood was declared eligible to receive legal aid from the North-Central Legal Assistance Program. The help pf legal-aid attorneys was crucial to Crest Street residents' ability to make themselves heard. |
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In 1978, the Crest Street Community Council, assisted by legal-aid attorneys, filed a Title VI administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) alleging racial discrimination in the planning of the East-West Expressway project. Today, most parties agree that this complaint and the resultant favorable ruling by the Office of Civil Rights of USDOT in 1980 were the critical elements in making FHWA, NCDOT, and the city enter into serious negotiations with the Crest Street neighborhood.
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A series of meetings was convened among all parties, including a representative from
FHWA's Headquarters Office, Washington, D.C. These meetings established the basic
structure for formulating the collaborative process that developed a comprehensive
mitigation and enhancement plan for the Crest Street neighborhood. Objectives
and structure were established, including a technical operating committee (the "Task
Force") composed of representatives from the Crest Street Community Council
and the principal public agencies and private organizations involved in the
project, including FHWA; and a Steering Committee composed of Task Force
members, top government officials, and private interest groups. Although the
process was interrupted for 11 months to resolve a zoning dispute in the Crest
Street neighborhood, the basic structure help up and resulted in completion of a
comprehensive mitigation and enhancement plan in 1982.
The completion of the East-West Expressway had become a volatile and racially charged political issue in the city of Durham. Several elections turned on the issue. In the end, however, the Durham City/County Planning Department began developing a mitigation and enhancement plan with NCDOT and FHWA. The most encouraging and inspiring part of the Crest Street Story is the evolution of the mitigation effort. The working environment changed in the space of less than 2 years from angry and adversarial to a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect rarely, if ever, found in negotiations among opposing parties on a highway or other type of project. |
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The community leaders
offered the church fellowship hall--the center of most community activity--as
a place to hold project related meetings. The neutral, convenient site, along with some refreshments provided by the hosts, created a friendly, relaxed setting for discussions and reasoned negotiations.
Credit is due to all who were involved in the collaborative process. Both
NCDOT and FHWA made sure that the right personnel were assigned to do the job
properly. The Crest Street neighborhood extended courtesies to the project task
force that led to a friendly
meeting environment in which real progress was
possible. The agencies' representatives were chosen to participate, it seemed,
on their ability to get along with people and to get things done. They
were also empowered to make decisions independently and in a timely manner.