Healthy Start director says there's interest in moving them

By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Leaders of a West Chapel Hill Street charter school have turned down a request that they meet with the City Council today to discuss the fate of two school-owned houses in an adjoining historic district.

Liz Morey, executive director of the Healthy Start Academy, wrote City Manager Tom Bonfield on Monday to say that "due to a conflict," she and other school leaders "must postpone participation until mid to late November."

The letter answered an invitation Bonfield relayed at the request of council members who worry that the school will soon demolish the bungalow-style houses at 804 and 806 Jackson St.

The homes are in Durham's Morehead Hill historic district, in an area that's also on the National Register of Historic Places.

Morey in an interview said recent publicity about the homes has generated three leads on people or groups who might be interested in moving them off the school's property.

It's possible Healthy Start leaders are hoping to present the council with a fait accompli, judging from Morey's answer to a question about when the house-moving leads might pay off.

School leaders "probably won't have an answer until probably the middle of November," Morey said Wednesday. "That's when we're hoping we'll get concrete answers from at least one of the groups."

City elected officials, Councilman Eugene Brown most vocally, have gotten involved at the request of Morehead Hill residents who say demolition of the two houses will harm their community.

The bungalows, vacant for some years now, lie south of the school on an entirely residential block that has no commercial structures or vacant lots.

Their removal would be "extremely detrimental not only to the block, but also the integrity and rejuvenation efforts of this neighborhood," Brown said earlier this month in a letter to Morey and Healthy Start principal Jim McCormick.

The school's plans for the site are unsettled. But though Healthy Start directors have made no formal decision on the point, Morey indicated that she hopes to eventually convert the lots into a playground for Healthy Start pupils.

A playground there would be "calmer and safer" for the students than the one the school's using now, she said.

The existing playground is fenced and landscaped, but faces Chapel Hill Street and the nearby Durham Freeway.

Regardless of how that decision comes out, school leaders aren't interested in renting the houses out, like former site owner Temple Baptist Church did. Nor are they willing to sell any of their property.

"Right now, our school is landlocked," Morey said, noting that Healthy Start is hemmed in by the freeway and a neighboring Catholic church. "We don't intend to give up any of the land we do own."

Brown, however, urged Morey and McCormick to sell the houses in place. He estimated, based on his own experience as a real estate agent, that they could generate $200,000 for the school.

He said he knows of "no school in North Carolina -- public, private or [charter] -- that would turn its back on" such a windfall.

The idea is one that Morey herself floated going on nine years ago when Healthy Start got the Durham Board of Adjustment's permission to convert the former Temple Baptist into a school.

According to a transcript of the Jan. 23, 2001, meeting, she told the board she hoped Healthy Start's presence in the neighborhood would boost property values "because eventually the two properties on Jackson Street I hope to sell and make money for the school."

But the permit the board approved didn't bind the school to that idea, or address the fate of the houses at all. It didn't cover the lots they occupy, mostly, city/county planners said, because it appeared in the short term they would remain single-family homes.

Morehead Hill and Preservation Durham leaders did signal worry in that hearing that there wasn't a commitment to saving the houses.

The school now can demolish them when it chooses, having waited out a one-year cooling-off period imposed last year by the city's Historic Preservation Commission.

The only cost it faces, aside from that of hiring a bulldozer, is potential ill will, which Brown warned is certain if it goes ahead.

"To destroy these two houses would be tantamount to building a wall and not a bridge between Healthy Start Academy and the Durham City Council, the Morehead Hill neighborhood and those many Bull City residents who desire to revitalize our inner-city neighborhoods."