Housing plan is part of Lamberts Point revival

NORFOLK

Thomas Harris has lived in Lamberts Point for 31 years, long enough to remember when a trucking company operated from 26th Street behind his house and when a mason there turned one building into a junkyard.

Crime and drugs were a problem, with vagrants hanging out on the block, Harris said.

"You name it, it was there," he said.

But in the past few years, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority started buying land in the stretch of 26th Street closest to Hampton Boulevard, and eventually came to own the whole block.

Now, the housing agency proposes using the 1.2-acre site to bring owner-occupied residences back to the southern edge of Lamberts Point.

The housing agency has planned 14 townhouses - and eventually three single-family homes - for 26th Street.

"Way back when, this was actually residential," said Michael Clark, the housing agency's director of neighborhood development. "We're kind of coming back here. Which made it work with the neighborhood very well."

Harris voted in favor of the project at a recent civic league meeting. He said it's another in a long line of revitalization projects that have sparked new life into the older community.

"I'm glad to see the new development," Harris said. "It's going to make the neighborhood a lot better."

A few blocks down Bowdens Ferry Road, he pointed out, the city is building a community center. Farther down 25th and 26th streets, away from Hampton Boulevard, new houses sit near older bungalows.

The housing agency chose townhouses to transition from the commercial and industrial businesses to Harris' quiet street of single-family homes. The market for townhouses, which proved a success in the redevelopment agency's project on Church Street, also remains strong, Clark said.

"People have seen Church Street and say 'Hey, that's cool,' " he said. "It's an alternative that seems to work. It's decent housing at a good price."

The townhomes, which will each be between 1,300 and 1,700 square feet, will be priced from about $160,000 to more than $200,000. Each two- and three-bedroom unit will have a garage and other amenities, Clark said. When those are complete, the housing agency hopes to build three single-family homes near Bowdens Ferry Road.

The townhouses will face a metal scrap recycling business that operates on 25th Street. Part of the work will include "softening" the neighborhood by widening 26th Street, planting trees along both sides and building a sound wall between the development and the grassy lot that will act as a buffer to Hampton Boulevard, Clark said.

Another proposed townhome project, headed up by Old Dominion University's Community Development Corp., would bring 50 units of housing to 43rd Street, on the neighborhood's northernmost edge.

Clark said the two projects could act as bookends for the growing neighborhood.

"If you look at Lamberts Point, we haven't done a whole lot of new construction there in awhile," Clark said. "This actually presented us a good opportunity. You don't get a whole block that often."

Meghan Hoyer, (757) 446-2293, meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com