By Kylie Marsh
Kylie.marsh@triangletribune.com
DURHAM – Bragtown residents want community amenities but not at the expense of their legacy.
The Durham Planning Department hosted a listening session Sept. 29 to identify community needs in Bragtown, one of Durham’s historic Black communities, and Oxford-Hamlin, an unincorporated part of Durham County.
City planner Lisa Miller opened by saying the listening session will help shape the Small Area Plan, or SAP, which is a set of recommendations to local government for future development of an area. Similar SAPs are taking shape in West End/Lyon Park, Lakewood and Walltown. The heavily-attended event was held at Braggtown Baptist Church.
“One of the things that we’ve heard loud and clear is that residents are really interested in influencing investment in their community,” Miller said. Residents have already raised concerns about sewer and water infrastructure, traffic and pedestrian safety, while pushing for a recreation center.
At the meeting, residents asked about new developments that have already been approved, future developments’ impact on affordability, and the possibility of losing property through eminent domain.
“One of the things we can look at as part of this plan is recommendations to help maintain affordability,” Miller answered. “This plan is not trying to accelerate change. We are trying to talk with you about how to manage change as it occurs.”
Miller also clarified that plans for development already moving forward will not be impacted by the SAP. “If there is a proposed development in the pipeline right now, or somebody has submitted a request, this plan does not stop that,” she said.
Constance Wright, 73, has lived in Bragtown since 1987. She’s skeptical that the SAP will lead to the community’s needs being met. For her, residents have been speaking to city government since at least 2014.
“Just asking for the amenities that we need, not that we want,” Wright told The Tribune. For example, Red Maple Park, although improved, is “so secluded that a lot of parents don’t really want their kids to go there,” she said. The city has taken away safe places for kids to go.
“They have taken away all of the activities for the kids,” she said. “They used to have parks and playgrounds down there, and you see teenagers walking because they don’t have anything to do.”
Wright said she and her neighbors don’t believe they’re valued by the city government. “The main thing you’ll hear is, ‘they don’t care,’” she said. “You can talk until you’re blue in the face, ask for what you want, but they don’t care.”
The small group of predominately white residents from the Oxford-Hamlin community is “fairly new” as one community member described.
Brittany Cheatham, 36, is a lifelong Bragtown resident. She loves the history and legacy of the community, but thinks redevelopment and gentrification go hand in hand. She fears development means the community and its history will be discarded.
“I just hope that [the SAP] translates into real action that benefits the material conditions and the everyday lives of the people who built and continue to build this community,” she told The Tribune.
Part of the night’s conversation also involved bringing investment to Oxford Commons, a shopping center in the area. Cheatham wonders if the new stores will be accessible and affordable to current residents of Oxford Manor Apartments, a public housing complex a few streets over.
“Typically when you see commercial development…the residential communities around are affected, even if that is not the story,” she said. “There’s this really horrible juxtaposition of ‘this is a great place to live and work, and come here and move here’; all of the things that you love about this city are worsening the displacement and lives of the people who are being displaced and harmed by policy violence.”
