For more than a decade, a piece of northwest Roanoke history has become a sorry sight in one local neighborhood.
What once was an after school haven for neighborhood kids – is now a blighted piece of property. But a local non profit is working with neighbors to restore it to its former glory.
From her front porch Patricia Reynolds watches over her neighborhood.
“You could sit here and see drug deals going on all the time,” she said.
Reynolds once headed up a crime prevention group in the neighborhood. She always knows what’s going on and said she’s received a lot of help from city liaisons in helping her meet the needs of the community.
She’s just down the street from the home on the hill – a big, blue, blighted reminder of what once was.
“It’s just a sore sight,” said Reynolds.
This old home was built in 1820, passed onto another family in the 1920s and gifted to the city of Roanoke in the 1950s.
For years it offered after school programs for kids and a meeting space for the community. But budget short falls let this place fall short of its intended purpose – and the city closed it in 2007. Reynolds says it became a center for unwanted activity.
“What do I see? I see what could have been,” she said.
Isabel Thornton is working to change that.
She heads up Restoration Housing – a non profit that aims to reduce blight and vacancy and offer below market rent.
The group made a deal with the city to take it the building and land around it off their hands for $1 but they have plans to pour about $800,000 more into restoring it.
“When all the pieces came together it just made sense,” said Thornton.
The home is in major disrepair and a fire created a gaping hole in the roof.
For the next year, Restoration Housing will take out loans to keep it from getting worse. But they hope that with work, during their year of due diligence, they’ll get this home on the state’s historic register, which could provide tax credits they can use to restore it. Thornton said those credits could account for a third of their construction costs.
Eventually they’d like to establish a new after school space for kids, potentially involving the Boys and Girls club.
“It’s lasted this long and how great it would be to serve our contemporary needs and serve this neighborhood,” Thornton said.
“It’s a plus for us to have more people on the positive side, not on the negative side,” said Reynolds.
Thornton said are now fundraising to generate more money for extra architectural costs.
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Published August 27, 2017 on WDBJ7 by Leanna Scachetti.
