Old East Durham has a long history as an industrial hub, but some property owners in the area want to further transform the district into a residential and commercial destination.
Currently, the district is sliced up by incongruent zoning types. A significant portion of the area is still zoned for industrial uses, even as the neighborhood has slowly reconstituted to include more houses and small businesses. A group of residential and commercial property owners want to turn two blocks around the Angier-Driver corridor into a “downtown” area complete with retail, makerspaces, restaurants, and a variety of housing options.
No specific plans have been filed, and any changes are likely still years away as the city makes improvements to the area’s sewer system, which is currently at capacity, putting additional growth there on hold. The proposal took an initial step on June 15 when the Durham City Council approved the necessary rezoning by a 5-2 vote.
In Durham’s earliest incarnation, the district played host to the Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company, whose headquarters at the end of Driver Street is now occupied by chemical distributor Brenntag. The neighborhood surrounding the mill rapidly expanded to include housing, banks, and churches like the former Angier Avenue Baptist Church that sprung up at that time.
Decades after the mills closed, the industrial zoning lent itself to automotive shops, scrapyards, and crematoriums. In the early 2000s, as Durham began its economic rebound and downtown became oversaturated, folks took chances on cheaper spaces on the periphery of Main Street. Black entrepreneurs in particular coalesced around the historic Old East Durham neighborhood as a spiritual successor to Durham’s Black Wall Street. But the current hodgepodge of zoning types limits development permitted in the area through an ordinance feature called nonconformity; any changes to properties that don’t conform to the current zoning rules—in this case, homes and businesses in the industrial zoning area—are prohibited.
The rezoning effort is led by Garland Ventures, a group of local developers with a history of rehabilitating former industrial sites in Durham.
John Warasila, one of the partners in Garland Ventures, said the owners of all the properties that will be rezoned opted to be included. Properties whose owners did not want to participate aren’t. About two dozen residential and commercial properties are included in the reenvisioned district. Garland Ventures owns six, with two more under Warasila’s name.
“We are not some big out-of-town developer who’s come in to try and rebuild an entire part of the city,” Warasila said at a previous City Council meeting. “We’re local people who are working from the ground up to revitalize neighborhoods that have seen no improvement for decades.”
Warasila moved to Durham in the ’90s and lives downtown. His firm, Alliance Architecture, is responsible for rehabilitating other former industrial centers like Golden Belt and American Tobacco Campus.
“When we looked at East Durham, we said, this is distinctly not downtown,” Warasila said. “It’s a very different scale of development: two- and three-story buildings where the commercial is on the ground floor and residential is a floor or two above that, but not five stories. The trade-off is that scale versus building big parking decks.”
The goal is to bring more foot traffic to the commercial corridor, providing a stronger customer base for the businesses in the area, Dan Jewell, who has been working as a developer in Durham for nearly 40 years and is also involved in the Garland rezoning, said at the meeting.
“In talking to those people, the tenants, our tenants and other folks in the neighborhood, it’s clear what is needed is a lot more local foot traffic than is in there today to support those businesses,” Jewell told the council. “We can’t do that with the current light industrial zoning.”
The city began exploring options for rezoning the district several years ago. Business owners like Joe Bushfan, who opened his restaurant-turned-commissary kitchen Joe’s Diner in 2010, told the INDY in 2017 that the city had long neglected the district. Durham made some investments in the neighborhood. In 2013, the city spent $4.8 million on improvements to the streets, sidewalks, and utilities in the corridor. Popular businesses like Proximity Brewing, Rofhiwa Book Café, Mike D’s BBQ, and Ideal’s sandwich shop filled the vacant millhouses and empty commercial spaces soon after.
The district has been moderately successful, building momentum in fits and starts. Rofhiwa, Proximity Brewing, and Mike D’s recently closed their storefronts for varying reasons, but Dame’s Chicken and Waffles relocated to the corridor late last year, and Ideal’s keeps a line around the block most days. The neighborhood also includes a couple of bars, a home goods store, a small grocery, and other retail options. It’s also poised for growth. Another project, Brickworks, will substantially increase the population of the area. Durham Technical Community College is building housing not far from the proposed Garland District, and the city is exploring options for a transit substation nearby in the Village shopping center.
Jewell and Warasila worked to restore the old Garland Woodcraft building, where Dame’s is now, after a major fire caused structural collapse years ago. The building is part of the East Durham Historic District the city created in 2004, and Jewell said it won’t be demolished as part of future plans for the area.
At the June 15 meeting, the City Council approved changing the Garland District properties’ zoning from “industrial light” to “commercial general” and “commercial infill.” The city planning department created the “commercial infill” zoning district in 2018 to accommodate and encourage smaller-scale development. The designation has been used sparingly—West Chapel Hill Street is the most prominent example—but the zoning does pave the way for future projects in areas like West Chapel Hill Street, and potentially the Angier-Driver corridor.
Councilmembers Shanetta Burris and Nate Baker voiced concerns about the proposed rezoning, citing environmental concerns and the lack of specific plans for the area.
Burris pressed the developers on their plans for some of the industrial sites that might have contaminants in the land, as well as any contingency plans for any accidents on the railroad tracks that might affect the new residents Garland District is expecting to host. Brenntag, a biotech company whose facility is across the railroad tracks on the other side of Peabody Street, is currently being sued for polluting a nearby creek.
Jewell said Garland Ventures would work with the Durham Fire Department to understand what contingency plans are already in place and take additional steps if needed.
Baker, along with Councilmember Chelsea Cook, who both voted against the rezoning, raised concerns about approving the zoning change without a specific plan for the area in hand.
Baker questioned whether waiting for the city to adopt new land use rules would give City Council, the planning department, and the neighborhood time to think about the area “more holistically” and possibly create a small area plan for the Garland District. Because the case is for rezoning without a specific development plan, Baker said the city is missing out on the opportunity to receive additional proffers from the applicants. The new zoning could allow future development by-right without the applicants having to come back to the City Council for further approval and precluding the city from negotiating proffers like affordable housing or donations to public schools based on the impact of the project.
“Could we work on commitments that involve community investment, public investments, and infrastructure so that both private investments and public investments are greater than the sum of their parts?” Baker said.
Jewell said that with the uncertainty around Durham’s future land use rules and the sewer capacity issues in East Durham, as well as the lengthy development process, the Garland team wants to get out in front of any potential plans for the district as soon as possible.
Still, the group is optimistic about the potential of the neighborhood. Two neighborhood residents spoke in favor of the rezoning at the City Council meeting, and Mayor Pro Tem Javiera Caballero said that the lack of opponents in City Hall suggested the Garland team had gotten buy-in from the neighborhood.
Warasila hopes that the mix of modest commercial spaces and residential units will offer folks affordable opportunities to live and work in the Garland District.
“That neighborhood, to me, strikes me as the neighborhood where people make stuff. … You know it’s made in Durham, that’s where they’re doing it, and those people should be able to live in the neighborhood,” Warasila told the INDY. “That’s going to require that the construction and everything else be not gigantic buildings that have a high price tag to them. They need to be moderately scaled and moderately priced; that’s the goal. I have no idea what it’s going to look like in the end, but I do know until we get the zoning changed, we kind of can’t do anything.”
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