A new vision for public housing complex in Norfolk

NORFOLK

From the front door of the city's new Grandy Village Learning Center, visitors can see clear through a two-story wall of windows, beyond the outdoor gazebo and out onto the calm ripple of the Elizabeth River.

It's a view no one expects in the middle of a public housing complex. Grandy Village, built in the 1950s, is home to roughly 360 apartments and townhomes for low- to moderate-income residents.

It's also a view that a year ago couldn't be seen at all. Decades' worth of overgrown bushes, weeds and trees blocked the riverfront from the neighborhood, making access almost impossible.

Officials hope to make the neighborhood's revived waterfront the main focus of the new $4.6 million Learning Center, which will house pre-kindergarten and day care classes and host nature field trips from elementary schools across the city.

"We've reclaimed it," said Rusty Carlock, Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority's senior architect. "Because you shouldn't have to live in an expensive neighborhood to have this type of amenity for your children."

The housing authority built the Learning Center through low-income housing tax credits. It will share operational costs with Norfolk Public Schools and the STOP Organization, each of which will occupy a wing of the building.

On Wednesday, it will open to the public. Residents and community leaders can tour bright classrooms with nautical flags on the walls, an area designed for the city parks department to run a kayak launch and the pier that takes visitors out over the Elizabeth River.

"We like the concept that the young people get to see this side of the city and the river," said David Heim, the authority's capital funds director. "Part of the idea is to show it's not a place to be afraid to come."

Built to meet the highest environmental design standards, the Learning Center will use 35 percent less energy than normal buildings of its size. That means solar panels on the roof heat all the water, natural light streams into all six classrooms and oyster-shell paths wind through restored wetlands outside.

Using a grant from the state and the city, the authority removed overgrown bushes and trees and replaced them with native grasses and plants. An Osprey nest built nearby provides bird-watching opportunities.

All those aspects feed into the nature lessons students will learn in the classrooms and at the Elizabeth River Project's Learning Barge, which is docked outside until November. Thousands of students from across the region will visit Grandy Village this fall to step aboard the nonprofit's barge, where they'll learn about river ecology and about how to improve water quality.

"To see a thriving wetlands restoration site as they come in, it comple ments the lessons," said Marjorie Mayfield-Jackson, the executive director of the Elizabeth River Project. "It all just helps to create an especially powerful learning experience."

Teachers will be able to use the building as a learning tool, pointing out measures taken to reduce rainwater runoff and conserve energy, Mayfield-Jackson said.

"It's really first-rate," she said. "The days of public housing being as ugly as possible, they're really over. This is spectacular."

The Learning Center is part of an ongoing effort to renovate and redevelop Grandy Village into a mixed-income, mixed-use community. In 2000, the housing authority began renovations of existing two-story apartment units, and since then has built townhouses, installed central air in apartments, renovated the neighborhood's recreation center and built new roads.

The authority now is raising and grading a nearby field to prepare the land for future development.

"Yes, it's public housing, but we want people to be comfortable living here," Heim said.

"This basically is going to be our model and our standard."

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