Demolition of Norfolk housing complex approved

NORFOLK

The residents of the Moton Circle public housing complex can step outside their nearly 60-year-old apartments to see gleaming new houses and apartments of Broad Creek across the street.

Soon, officials say, residents will have their own new place to call home.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has given Norfolk permission to demolish Moton Circle, the first step in replacing the complex with an extension of Broad Creek's mix of apartments, senior housing and single-family homes.

"We're going to make that neighborhood a little better than it is now," housing authority board chairman Sheppard Miller III said. "Certainly, it'll be a better place to live. We're excited about it."

Developed by the city's housing authority over the past decade, Broad Creek replaced two public housing complexes with homes and apartments. Some are subsidized and others have been sold and rented at full market rate.

Moton Circle has 138 subsidized apartments on 11 acres tucked behind the new neighborhood, a few blocks off Princess Anne Road. Housing officials said because the complex was so small, it became more difficult to maintain and provide services to residents there. Crime had become a problem.

Now federal officials have agreed with Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority's determination that "the development is obsolete " and granted permission for the authority to spend roughly $1.4 million in capital funds to tear it down.

The next step will be for the authority to apply for federal money to build housing and infrastructure. The authority, which has lost out on two rounds of federal Hope VI grants for Moton Circle, plans to apply again or to seek out similar money for redevelopment, John Kownack, chief of housing reinvention, said.

HUD often gives funding priority to redevelop complexes that have already been demolished, he added.

"It's important to get this approval and get that rolling," Kownack said. "And it should put us in a good position to compete."

Tenants must be given 90 days' notice to move, but many have requested to be moved sooner, while schools are out for the summer, Kownack said. The majority of residents are eligible to return once construction is complete.

Kownack said the authority hoped to have all residents moved by the fall and demolition started by the end of the year. The site will be ready for redevelopment by June 2011, he said.

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