Historic status becomes a battle for one Suffolk neighborhood

The Virginian-Pilot

SUFFOLK

THE APRIL 2005 meeting of the Hall Place Community Association started with typical concerns: trash cans left in the streets, a speeding school bus, an upcoming yard sale.

Then, suddenly, it took a turn.

Residents had learned that the association's leadership had nominated their century-old neighborhood for historic status. A chorus of complaints rose.

Tara Stainback, the vice president, brandished a copy of "Robert's Rules of Order," and Susan Blair, the president, cut off discussion, saying the issue wasn't on the agenda. The meeting disintegrated into shouting. Everyone left angry. At the next meeting, Stainback and Blair were ousted by a 29-3 vote that Stainback later described as a "coup d'etat."

Less determined people might have gone home, licked their wounds and chalked up the whole thing to neighborhood politics. Stainback and Blair started a rival group.

Historic status, they argued, would improve Hall Place by allowing homeowners to qualify for tax credits to reduce the cost of historically accurate renovations. It would not affect what residents could do to their homes. Opponents countered that the change might lead to a city historic zoning district, which would indeed affect what residents could do to their homes.

Reasonable people could probably find merit in both arguments, but what happened in Hall Place after that first spat more than two years ago is not about reason. It's about how a neighborhood disagreement can escalate into a fierce battle of wills until each side is consumed by one goal alone: defeating the other.

Laid out in 1908 with an unusual oval street pattern at its center, Hall Place was home to many of Suffolk's early industrialists who built architecturally distinctive homes: Colonial Revivals, Queen Annes, bungalows, American Four Squares and Craftsmans.

In 1913, an Italian immigrant named Amedeo Obici built the Planters Chocolate and Nut Company factory so close to Hall Place that for decades company executives walked to work. A minor league baseball team - the Suffolk Goobers - played in a wooden stadium a block from the neighborhood. During the season, players would often take room and board with Hall Place families.

Baker Parker - a leader of the effort to block Stainback and Blair's bid for historic status - has lived in Hall Place for all his 61 years. The retired social worker likes to regale listeners with the story of how Mr. Peanut, the cane-carrying icon of Planters, was born here. The teenage boy who drew the stick figure that company artists polished into Mr. Peanut lived a few doors from where Parker lives with his wife, Sandra. One summer, when Parker was a young boy, the Goobers' team trainer stayed in his parents' home.

Compared to the Parkers, Stainback, 31, a computer trainer for the Department of Corrections, is a newcomer to the neighborhood. She fell in love with its classic, but weathered, American architecture when she and her husband were looking for a home in 2002. One of the first things they did to their 1924 Craftsman was to rip off its siding to expose the home's original wood clapboards, which they've since repainted in period green and yellow.

Despite a shared love for the history of Hall Place, the Parkers and Stainback don't speak to each other. They don't trust each other. They can't stand each other.

As the first president of the new Hall Place Civic League, Stainback made it a priority to go to the Suffolk courthouse and pay $10 to legally register the new group's name with the city.

She also did something that same day which the Parkers would never forget or forgive. She registered the previously unregistered Hall Place Community Association - the group from which she'd just been ousted - in her name.

In addition, Stainback registered five more names: Hall Place Homeowners Association, Hall Place Neighborhood Association, Hall Place Neighborhood League, Hall Place Owner's Association and Hall Place Society. She listed herself as director of each and the duration of her ownership as "indefinitely."

The Parkers were outraged.

"They sat down and thought up other names with Hall Place in it because they thought we might go and change our name, and then we'd be embarrassed when we went down there and the name would be taken," Sandra Parker said.

Stainback said that the Parkers misinterpreted her motives and that she bought the names in anticipation of the group expanding. For example, she said, the Hall Place Society could one day become the neighborhood's garden club.

One battle led to the next, and in September 2005 the two neighborhood organizations found themselves facing off in court.

The Parkers had filed a lawsuit to get back a banner and two wooden signs, used to advertise monthly meetings, that Stainback and members of the new Hall Place Civic League had kept after leaving the group.

The loss of the signs deeply frustrated Baker Parker, who was forced to make new ones out of cardboard. The day a judge was to hear the case, Stainback's group brought the banner and signs to court and gave them to the Parkers. The case was dismissed.

But the name issue lingered, further damaging an already tattered relationship. A few months after the court case, Sandra Parker wrote a letter asking Stainback to give up her legal claim to the Hall Place Community Association name.

"This agreement will serve to begin healing a wound that this community should never have had to endure,... " Sandra Parker wrote. "There is NO WAY that the original HPCA membership will relinquish our name!"

Two weeks later, Stainback responded. The only way they'd get their name back, she wrote, was if they supported the historic designation for Hall Place.

The Parkers were enraged. To them, this sounded like blackmail.

The issue proved too hot for city officials, who throughout 2006 declined to take a side other than to say they wouldn't support a historic designation if the two groups couldn't get along.

Facing what looked like a dead end without city support, Stainback decided to do something radical. She'd move the historic designation forward - on her own.

During lunch breaks and at night after her two young children were in bed, she began putting together a state application to make Hall Place a historic neighborhood.

For four months, she cataloged about 200 Hall Place homes, taking pictures and writing detailed descriptions of each one's historic attributes, a task usually left to a paid consultant.

"I'd go, All right, that's got a hipped roof. It's got a full front porch. An American Four Square has a hipped roof and a full front porch, so it must be an American Four Square.' "

On June 11, she submitted the 51-page application to the Department of Historic Resources. The quality of the report impressed state officials.

Stainback had outmaneuvered her foes. In effect, she had placed the burden to stop the historic designation on those who opposed it. Federal law requires the state Department of Historic Resources to accept any "responsible" application.

The Parkers were shocked.

They were left with one option. The only way to stop a historic designation is to get more than half of the homeowners in a neighborhood to send notarized letters to the Department of Historic Resources.

There were 238 property owners in the proposed Hall Place historic area. The Parkers needed half of them plus one, or 120, to block Stainback's application.

At first, the obstacles seemed insurmountable. In a busy world, how many residents would sit down, write a letter, take it to a notary - where they would be charged $5 - and then mail it to a state agency?

History was not on their side. No neighborhood in Virginia had ever overturned an application for historical designation.

The Parkers developed their strategy. In late July, they launched their counterattack.

A crucial recruit was Sharon Harris, a spunky, spiky-haired neighbor who happened to be a notary. Hill offered her services for free, waiving the usual $5 fee.

"Do you know how much money I'm giving up?" she said one mid-August afternoon in the living room of her 1914 Queen Anne.

Perhaps more important, Harris was willing to make house calls. With the Parkers, she went door to door, proselytizing against the historical designation and notarizing form letters on front porches, in the street, wherever a homeowner might be moved to sign.

One night, she left her house so quickly after Baker Parker called to say her services were needed that she burned chicken and rolls. Another night, she woke up a grandmother in her night clothes to notarize a letter.

Harris noted, "You don't get a carry-along notary every day."

The second prong of the Parkers' attack required trips to Richmond to look over the Department of Historic Resources' Hall Place file, which they'd requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the file, they read every e-mail and letter Stainback had sent state officials, findings that stoked their anger and fueled their determination.

In one e-mail that still rankles them today, Stainback, while acknowledging backlash was certain, predicted few people would object to her application for historic designation.

"I know the road ahead will be a little bumpy, as there are going to be some voices of objection," she wrote on June 22, "but I truly believe that they do not even come close to making up a majority of the neighborhood.... I think in the end that no more than 10% will object to this, and after this has gone through people will see and finally understand how this has helped save and improve the neighborhood."

In another e-mail to state officials in early July, Stainback praised them for what she perceived as their help.

"Thank you to all of you for supporting this and not being afraid of the ugliness that one couple will attempt to rain down. Believe me when I say their bark is worse than their bite."

In a third, Stainback wrote:

"Several of us have a friendly wager (ice cream) on just how many objections properly composed and meeting the criteria will come in."

Ten percent! Bark worse than bite! An ice cream wager! The Parkers remembered every jab.

The anti-historic-designation effort was well under way in mid-August, but Harris, the notary, wouldn't reveal how many letters she'd processed.

"We're making progress. You can take that to the bank and deposit it. You never give your enemy your tactics, don't you know that?"

Harris did predict victory.

"I feel we will prevail. We're gonna have a hell of a party." She paused and added with a grin, "An ice cream social."

Meanwhile, state officials, who would serve as the final counters of notarized signatures, couldn't believe what they were witnessing.

"Just imagine if all the energy from both sides of this issue was spent more on productive things for their community," Marc Wagner, historic register manager for the Department of Historic Resources, e-mailed a colleague on July 24.

"The Parkers and the Stainbacks of the community, together, could really get the city's attention if they were reading from the same page - there's a lot of energy and love of neighborhood. District or no district, there's got to be a way to bring both of their visions closer together."

If there was a way, it was proving elusive.

In addition to the historic issue, each side was blaming the other for unwanted attention from local law enforcement over minor infractions.

Stainback questioned the source of a complaint that led to a zoning violation - later dismissed - that she received after starting a small house renovation project.

Harris, the notary, called it suspicious that police had shown up at her house one day to ask about expired tags on her son's car, which was parked in her driveway. Another time, she said, police questioned her after receiving a complaint that her car was parked too far from the curb in front of her house.

In mid-August, Stainback was questioning the legitimacy of the notary's work.

She suggested in an Aug. 16 e-mail to Wagner that it was a conflict of interest for a notary to process documents related to an issue in which he or she had a stake. She included a Web site link to the state Notary Handbook.

"This will only really apply if they reach their '51%,' she wrote in the e-mail. "I know I am probably being a pain about this, but I am trying to continue to play by the rules, but it is so hard when I am clearly dealing with people who have no respect for the law or truth. The best I can hope for is to catch them breaking the law."

By Aug. 21, two weeks shy of the deadline, 42 people had sent in letters of support for the pro-historic cause. The letters weren't required, but they gave Stainback hope. The state had received no letters from objectors.

But the Parkers, who were working at a frenzied pace to collect signatures, had yet to strike. Their strategy was to collect them all and give them to state officials in one big bundle.

On Aug. 29, they drove to Richmond and hand-delivered about 100 notarized objections to state officials, about 20 shy of what they needed.

Two days later, while swaying on her porch swing the day before Labor Day weekend, Stainback was feeling confident. By now she knew her opponents were motivated. Still, she predicted the Parkers wouldn't get the remaining notarized letters needed to stop the historic designation.

On Sept. 3, the eve of the state deadline for letters, the Parkers made a final trip to Richmond, where they delivered another batch of objection letters, pushing them over the 50 percent mark.

In five weeks of nonstop work, the Parkers and their allies had gathered 123 notarized letters objecting to the historic designation. They had prevailed.

Exhausted but high on their achievement, the couple drove to a Richmond park to catch their breath, celebrate and call supporters back in Suffolk.

"It's very peaceful here," Sandra Parker said by phone from Byrd Park, "and it's just nice to sit back and talk about this whole, this whole - might as well call it an adventure."

Stainback and Blair, who were on their way back to Suffolk from a weekend trip to Philadelphia, got the news in a voice mail from Mark Wagner, the state historic register manager. It was their turn to be shocked. They wanted to cry. After they stopped driving, Blair broke down as soon as she got out of Stainback's sight.

"This is probably the most passionate thing I've been involved in in my life, and I can't say why it's to the point of obsession," she said the next day. "It's hard to explain. It's just very emotional."

Stainback questioned the legitimacy of the objection letters.

"I just don't buy that this was a fair vote. I don't think they were honest with people. It's not really about the neighborhood at this point. They want to do this to get back at us. This is payback."

Two days later, Stainback went back to the courthouse and signed a form to give up her right to the Hall Place Community Association name.

"It is the olive branch, from our side, so they can never say we did not offer something," she explained in an e-mail.

The next day, the Parkers received a copy of the form in the mail in an envelope with no return address or note to explain it. Sandra Parker hurried to the courthouse to register Hall Place Community Association in her name.

"We're glad to see it returned, but we don't have a trust there, so we had to protect it ourselves."

Aaron Applegate, (757) 222-5555. aaron.applegate@pilotonline.com