The New Bern Housing Authority takes steps to update the Greater Five Points Transformation Plan.
The Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners approved an $899,873 contract with CVR Associates, Inc. to update the Greater Five Points Transformation Plan and provide application services for a Choice Neighborhoods implementation grant during the Aug. 19, 2024 meeting in New Bern, NC.
Ten years ago, the New Bern Housing Authority received a $400,000 Choice Neighborhoods planning grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“The grantees will use the funding to work with local stakeholders – public and/or assisted housing residents, community members, businesses, institutions and local government officials – to undertake a successful neighborhood transformation to create a “choice neighborhood.” The awardees will use the funding to create a comprehensive Transformation Plan, or road map, to transforming distressed public and/or assisted housing within a distressed community,” according to a HUD press release.
The Greater Five Points Transformation Plan was published on Feb. 22, 2016 and can be found here.
Melanie Campbell, CVR executive vice president, said a lot of the plan needs to be rewritten because it is ten years old. She said they need to hold multiple community meetings and redo the needs assessment. She expected the process to take about nine months.
“The hope is that once we redo all those things, they will be current when the HUD NOFO (Notice of Funding Opportunity) for the implementation grant comes out,” she said.
She said they need a developer with successful mixed-income experience to be the housing lead and a data driven people partner. She said the city tends to be the neighborhood partner.
“A large part of your scoring has to do with the investments that are committed,” she said.
Campbell said there are expectations that the city would contribute infrastructure money, like streets and water and sewer upgrades.
Commissioner James Copland asked about the possible risks as the political situation could be different in nine months.
Campbell said the Hope VI and Choice Neighborhood programs received bipartisan support in the past and she was hopeful but wasn’t absolutely confident because you never know.
Commissioner Dana Outlaw, also the former mayor, said, “the city’s in-kind portion, wasn’t it about 10% or 15%…at that time we were looking at $60 or $70 million.
Commissioner Sabrina Bengel, also a former alderman, said, “Correct, and we were going to use the water and sewer, that money that we got for the stormwater. We were using all of that and that was $35 million I think,”
Reginal “Reggie” Barner, the NBHA interim executive director, said the goal is to bring everybody back to the table.
He said they need a master plan so they can demolish and redevelop the Trent Court area because the State Historic Preservation Office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency won’t move forward.
Barner said they are going to create a master plan for the Choice Neighborhoods application and use it to submit to FEMA and SHPO.
“FEMA has provided us $8.9 million to do this master plan. This portion to pay CVR to help facilitate that kills two birds with one stone in the sense that we’re getting our CNI done along with our master plan. That’s one document and it’s been for the most part, paid for by the FEMA money,” he said.
He asked if they thought the aldermen and mayor would be willing to contribute the infrastructure for a mixed income, mixed use development and the redevelopment of riverfront property.
“You all got to help carry and lift that load for us to go to the community and say in order for us to get, as Sabrina said before, if we apply for $30 million in CNI money and we have $40 million coming in from FEMA, we got to be able to go to the community and say, are y’all willing to help us get this additional $30 million or 10%, 15% to go towards infrastructure? If they’re not willing to do that and quite frankly, if y’all’s pull is not strong enough to help facilitate that, then let me be the first to tell you, we’re throwing good money out of an open window in the wintertime with the heat on,” he said.
Outlaw said they needed a legitimate number of projects and asked Barner to go through the major ones that would be incorporated.
Barner said the plan has good bones and their focus is on the properties that were identified.
“To be very candid with you, ten years later, everything y’all identified ain’t been built, excuse my grammar,” he said.
“We didn’t have the Stanley White (Recreation) Center, which we didn’t even think about ten years ago,” Bengel said.
Outlaw said they are five years from Craven Terrace (multifamily housing) coming back and asked if that qualified.
“I don’t want to go spend $800 some thousand dollars and we don’t identify things, that by the time we might get the implementation, that are coming on the timeline but are not here right now. So are we going…,” he said.
“As part of what we’re going to do with the tour and as part of our discussions with you all and the alderman and community is talking about the elephant in the room because it is the elephant in the room, but I also know that elephant in the room, there are a lot of people that have opinions in this community on what it means,” Barner said.
Outlaw said, “There goes a two-year stall right there,” Outlaw said.
Barner said, “If that is going to stall this process, part of the assessment that we’re going to be doing is we can’t lose the funding opportunity to save what we don’t know or are we going to get pushback and fights from the community on Craven Terrace.”
“Do we want to incorporate it and use it? But at the same time, how far are we going to go before we start losing ground fighting that fight with people that may not let go of that because if you think we have a fight with tearing down Trent Court, a Craven Terrace teardown…it was a horrible redevelopment. That is my professional opinion. So, as part of the review process, we’re going to have to flush that out,” he said.
Outlaw said, “I would prefer the direction of this board to have you negotiate for us to become the managing partner of the project until we get it back.”
Barner said, “I’ve submitted to Foster (Hughes, the city manager) and the mayor (Jeffrey Odham) to have an hour discussion with Aldermen by themselves, with city leadership, Melanie will do a lunch and learn with you all…and I’m bringing in community folk to have a separate one, some initial community folk that were a part of it before…those are going to be our kickoffs and then we’re doing tours.”
The board approved the professional services agreement with CVR Associates.
Commissioners Jennell Reddick, Denise Powell, Dana Outlaw, Sabrina Bengel, Chairman Ronald Scott and Resident Commissioner Sulin Blackmon met at the Housing Authority’s office and Commissioner James Copeland was at a different location.
An email from the city clerk to Alderman Rick Prill, Alderman Hazel Royal and Alderman Barbara Best said, “The Housing Authority has procured CVR Associates to assist with updating the previous CNI Transformation plan and developing a Master Plan for redevelopment of the Trent Court site.
Their goal is to complete the plan within the next 9 months. They also have a goal to submit a CNI Implementation application in 2025. On September 9/11/24 from 9:30-11 a.m. a meeting will be held at Development Services to discuss this process. The mayor and various staff will attend. Please let me know if you are interested in joining as well. To avoid a quorum of Governing Board members, attendance will be limited to the first 2 of you to respond.”
A notice for a Stakeholder meeting on Sept. 10 was posted on the NBHA’s Facebook page the evening of Sept. 9 and posted on their website on Sept. 10.
NewBernNow.com asked Reginal Barner who attended the meeting, but we did not receive a response by press time.
The public notice for the NBHA Board of Commissioners Zoom regular meeting notice for Aug. 19 said the meeting was “In-Person & via Facebook Live, Zoom, and recording available within 72 hrs.”
The link to the Zoom conference meeting did not work and the meeting was not livestreamed to Facebook.
By Wendy Card, editor. Send an email with questions or comments.