Norfolk: Southern-Fried Urban Renewal
Norfolk Virginia is the more typical “southern” Age of UR city. Smaller cities have “smaller” corporate elites, but they are pragmatic—to the point of having slightly progressive tendencies. Important to us is how civil rights/desegregation affected the primacy of economic development in Norfolk’s policy agenda. This is very typical of the South, differentiating it from western cities.
Local politics and public housing
In 1930 Norfolk’s metro exceeded 262,000, with the city home to nearly 130,000 (62nd nationally). With an established naval base, Norfolk’s economy was military and its best period of pre-1940 growth was during World War I. By 1920 the city was split fairly evenly between black and white, but very segregated. Booker T. Washington’s black capitalist approach fostered black-owned small business and leadership (Lewis, 1991). Two annexations recaptured periphery expansion. The Norfolk city council/city manager was controlled by the state–Byrd machine’s local czar, the Clerk of Courts. The city’s business community did not include “large corporation elites” and was composed of local and regional businesses and professionals.
The 1934 Housing Act inspired local business Progressives to advocate for slum removal and public housing. The city manager formed a committee “to make a study of the slum districts of Norfolk with the hope of obtaining federal funds to eliminate them.”11 A 1937 workshop followed from the committee’s report—which inspired the state to approve enabling legislation permitting localities to establish a local housing authority and participate in the federal program (1938). After a 1940 workshop held by the League of Virginia Municipalities, the Norfolk city council approved the Norfolk Housing Authority (NHA) in July 1940. The behind the scenes story was that public housing was driven by businessmen social reformers (like Palmer in Atlanta) who maneuvered the city council to create its “Committee on Slums” to deal with perceived crime. City leaders never embraced public housing per se. Reformers lobbied for three years before capitalizing on Richmond-generated momentum to establish the housing authority.
War years
With the war, a defense housing brouhaha commenced. Norfolk’s civilian population doubled to 259,000 by 1940, rising to 323,000 by 1942 and 365,000 in 1944.12 Add 128,000 military and this population explosion was a tsunami, impacting severely the lifestyle (and mores) of its residents. Soldiers and sailors going to war inflated prices, fostered prostitution and gambling, trailer parks and incredibly cramped housing. The place was a “delight”; media and military pressures “stole” the housing authority, putting it to work building military-related “projects”. The war made the Navy Department and naval base leadership the most important administrative force in the area—the shore patrol, for example, was the only effective control on sailors.
Aside from public safety and morals, the most crushing problem was housing this mass of people. Remembering the crippling recession that followed World War, I the city council wanted nothing to do with building housing that would become vacant and have to be destroyed at war’s end, crushing tax revenues in the process. The result was a five-year battle between the local political leadership and the Navy Department over housing construction. Congress and the President got involved. The Navy Department in desperation sent our old friend, Robert Moses, down to do a study (1942) and a congressional subcommittee held hearings (1943) to add its two cents. The solution required the Navy to build huge amounts of on-base housing: 10,000 units by the federal Public Housing Department and a further 11,000 units privately built; the housing authority built fewer than 800 units. When the population onslaught became overwhelming in 1944, the city manager left town. The worthless reaction of the machine—its unwillingness to confront war-related problems—generated shame and demands for reform from Norfolk’s business community.
By war’s end that business community coalesced behind the “People’s Ticket”. In June 1946 they swept into office, carrying all but African-American precincts controlled by the machine (Abbott, 1981, pp. 127–8). Included in the People’s Ticket were the housing reformers who led the public housing/housing authority movement. Their first initiative removed machine influence by professionalizing the city’s bureaucracy. Creating a personnel department, a planning department and various other departments, and conducting a national search for a new professional city manager resulted in a policy system change. Included in these reforms was creation of the Norfolk Port Authority, meant to be their EDO.13 Taking advantage of Virginia’s 1949 Housing Act, Norfolk expanded the NHA’s scope, renaming it the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA). Immediately, the NHA submitted an application for 3428 units of federal public housing that required a 190-acre slum clearance. The NRHA believes their application was the first funded from the 1949 Housing Act.
UR meets school desegregation
And that was that! Following motivations my research has not uncovered, the People’s Ticket struck a deal (1950) with the Byrd machine for machine support of CBD redevelopment. In subsequent elections, a “Harmony Ticket” controlled city council and city politics. The professional city manager resigned in 1952 and Mayor Fred Duckworth ran the city government. Over the next 15 years, the city pursued a vigorous urban renewal program, using federal funds.
In the back of [Duckworth’s] mind was a vision of metropolitan Norfolk as a major financial center able to compete equally with other South Atlantic cities … the development strategy [included] new housing, new business investment, a new airport, a four-year college, new highways, new tunnels—All promised to supplant sour wartime memories with the shining steel and solid concrete of new Norfolk. (Abbott, 1981, p. 129)
School desegregation intruded. Initially, Norfolk followed Byrd machine dictates— bitterly contesting court orders and closing down the school system for part of a year (1959). The city council participated actively in the anti-desegregation resistance. CBS’s Edward R. Murrow dramatically reported Norfolk’s intransigence, and the Progressive business community came back to life. Taking an ad in the main newspaper, “one hundred leading business and professional men” opposed the city’s position and urged compromise to keep the schools open—and desegregated. The schools opened a week later—desegregated. In local historiography the “Committee of 100” is given major credit for resolving the school crisis and pointing Norfolk back towards its primary goal of economic development. The Committee of 100 took over the NRHA, returning it to CBD-focused urban renewal. Enjoying some success electorally in 1959, however, the Byrd machine renegotiated a 1961 equivalent of the Harmony Ticket and maintained its control over the council (Abbott, 1981, pp. 130–31). Again, the core of the deal was Norfolk urban redevelopment.
Before school desegregation hit the agenda, two renewal projects removed (1) a bi-racial working-class neighborhood of 600 families, installing highway access to the CBD; and (2) the wartime sailors’ downtown red-light district. Following school desegregation, subsequent urban renewal initiatives cleared areas for privately financed banking and high-rise office buildings and company headquarters, as well as new municipal buildings, a library and some public housing. Also constructed were luxury apartments and medical buildings associated with a hospital expansion, and a downtown shopping center. During these years “the urban renewal program enjoyed almost complete support as a symbol of a city on the make”. Worth noting is that the same individuals who had pushed for the 1940 housing authority remained in charge of the NRHA in the 1960s. Also noteworthy is that Mayor Duckworth, a unanimous city council and regional newspapers stood behind the program.
In the early sixties, the NRHA launched an “image” program, urging outsiders to create a “vision in Virginia”. The image initiative counteracted negative school desegregation publicity, but also demonstrated to the world that Norfolk had made it. In the later sixties, the NRHA again built middle-class housing downtown, demolishing an African-American neighborhood, to support downtown retail (Abbott, 1981, p. 129).
Oklahoma City
We introduced chamber CEO Stanley Draper back in Chapter 13. He’s back. Chapter 13 described an Oklahoma City policy system almost totally controlled by a triumvirate: city manager, corporate and media CEO and Draper. In 1948 Oklahoma City’s downtown retail businesses garnered a whopping 75 percent of the metro area retail sales; by 1965 this was down to 11 percent, and 77 downtown businesses closed their doors. True to form, however, Draper had his eye on this eastern UR thing, earmarking it as a possible source of funds for an increasingly deteriorating and declining downtown. School desegregation (the 1954 Brown decision) did not go smoothly in Oklahoma City. But businessmen urged racial moderation so as not to threaten economic and population growth. The disruption temporarily sidelined Draper’s ED program. Early in 1957 Draper sent a delegation to Pittsburgh to study the Golden Triangle project. The delegation apparently liked what they saw, and Draper spent two years securing state passage of UR-enabling legislation (1959).
His first steps (1961) included forming an urban renewal agency and stocking it with proceeds from a $39 million bond issue. Like many western cities in the postwar period, however, the triumvirate’s power over policy was challenged. In 1962 citizens—mostly middle class, professionals and businesspeople—formed the Association for Responsible Government (ARG), recruiting 5000 members. The ARG was concerned with government inefficiency, corruption and independence from the cabal. In 1963 the reformers took over the city council—just in time to deal with Draper’s UR initiative. The city council appointed several non-cabal board members to the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA), sparking a brouhaha between council, Draper and cabal.
For several years the ARG-dominated council sometimes worked with Draper’s cabal, sometimes not, on issues such as school desegregation, reapportionment that favored suburbs, and even directly challenging Draper’s government facility-based economic development program (opposing the FAA facility). Regarding UR, however, the ARG mostly let Draper have his way with OCURA. The Oklahoma City UR plan, drafted by Pei & Associates in 1964, encompassed a huge area. Oklahoma City UR subsequently demolished (without federal funds) nearly the entirety of the downtown and East Side. The chamber in 1966 installed its general council as OCURA’s executive director.
In 1967 the newspaper owner and cabal member E.K. Gaylord, having had enough of LBJ’s Great Society “creeping socialism”, attacked key ARG leaders, alleging their involvement in UR-related city contracts. Whatever its merits, the ensuing scuffle fragmented the ARG, reducing its political influence. While of no consequence to the UR program, UR proved to be a useful pretext for reasserting the cabal’s control over Oklahoma City politics. Returned to power, Oklahoma City’s UR cranked into high gear. To provide working capital Draper’s chamber formed a subsidiary, the Urban Action Foundation (UAF), to not only extend funds and credit to OCURA but also to serve as the chamber’s monitor of program implementation.
Draper’s initial UR project application (1963) proposed extension of the University of Oklahoma’s Medical Center into predominantly black, East Side neighborhoods. Submitted during the last days of the Kennedy administration, the proposal was finally approved by HUD in December 1967. Oklahoma City’s first UR project began in 1968 and involved 30 new or renovated downtown buildings.
urban renewal completely leveled the core of the city to replace the old buildings with modern structures … OCURA funded buildings, streets, parks, heating systems and an underground walkway. By 1980, the Authority had spent some $500 million ($300 million downtown) … and construction of 786 housing units. (Bernard, 1983, p. 230)
Oklahoma City UR persisted through most of the 1970s, picking up steam with a new ally—Patience Latting, the city’s first woman mayor. Independent of Draper and the cabal, Latting pursued on her own initiative, an intense ED strategy:
Through the Latting Years [1973-83] … one word captured … Oklahoma City politics and life. Growth, unchallenged and unquestioned has summarized the desires of most citizens of central Oklahoma. An inscription at the base of a downtown memorial … best expresses the city’s mood: “Passerby—Look about you and ask this question: Where else within a single life span has man built so mightily.” (Bernard, 1983, p. 231)
Ron W. Coan 