Change is no good if it's not for the better. Some change ain't no good at all. This is where we orchestrated in this community.
This was known as Brooklyn. This is where black folk lived. This is where the churches were. This is where our businesses were. The neighborhood of Brooklyn, for them it was ideal.
Because everybody looked after everybody's children. Didn't nobody have nothing, but it was close. You could sleep on the front porch, you could walk, get up and go anywhere you want to go at any time of night. Didn't have no problems. Charlotte's Brooklyn neighborhood existed for about the first two-thirds of the 20th century.
It's the area that today is the Government Center, Marshall Park, NASCAR Hall of Fame, all of all of that in the center city. Most of the second ward neighborhood, as segregation hardened, became the most important African-American neighborhood. Brooklyn was the center of civic life.
It was where the Black Main Street was, roughly where today's Martin Luther King Boulevard was. It was a beloved neighborhood. We played hopscotch in the street and played ball in the street, kickball and softball. All that was played right over there. And when I close my eyes, I can see all of that.
We had dry cleaners. We had grocery stores. We had meat markets. We had shoeshine stands, barbie shops.
Brooklyn is a wonderful place to live. We used to make pallets on the front porch and never forget. You had poor people, you had middle-class people, and maybe even a little more affluent people. Ingested streets, inadequate parking, retail vacancies.
There's only one answer. And as a master plan of development, it's do or die for downtown Charlotte right now. During a period of time there was this urban renewal. That came through and I often heard it growing up as a child as being referred to as black removal because that's what I witnessed that black folk were actually displaced from the Brooklyn community which was Uptown Charlotte and moved to the west side. When they could say they was gonna tear down Brooklyn and they start putting up posters letting you know and the next thing you know The idea was if you wipe out blighted neighborhoods, you'll have the perfect city.
And unfortunately, they defined blighted neighborhoods as neighborhoods where there were a lot of absentee landlords, a lot of rundown housing, which often was African-American neighborhoods because of redlining and other things that kept African-Americans from... easily buying homes. The property was significant.
People felt that Brooklyn was a shantytown. It had all shotgun houses. It was blighted. But there was a part of Brooklyn that certainly had low-income housing or houses that wasn't very affordable. But guess what?
It also had houses that had multi-bedrooms, broad-iron fences, really two-story homes that were owned by African Americans. So there was a variety of price point housing in Brooklyn. Okay.
I feel like a stranger in my hometown. There's so much change. Because I can't even find my way now when I come down here. Let's see.
On this side of the street, the Savoy would have been right by... Right in there, the Savoy Theater. I don't see anything here that remotely helps me to remember where anything is.
None of this is. If that were Second Street, we would have made a left there and about right in there, the Savoy Theater. And where all those gray buildings are would have been buildings, apartments.
And on down there would have been black businesses, cafes, tailor shops. Hairdresser. In the last few years, which will come to fruition as we move forward, is this Brooklyn Village project, which is intended to give honor to that history and to create something that won't look anything like the old Brooklyn, but will have some of the vibrance of having stores, homes, offices, all in the same place. Dennis Lucario, Sr.
Assistant to the County Manager will be giving you an update on the Center City redevelopment projects, includes Brooklyn Village. So going into the components of the master redevelopment agreement including 106,800 square feet of retail, 532,000 square feet of office, 395 housing units minimum, 30% of the below market units will be dedicated to 60% AMI or less. You know where there's still some emotion around the history of Brooklyn. I respect it and I think it's foolish to try and, like I said, to try and do anything that like attempts to fix that. Is that specifically for the formal residents of Brooklyn?
It's not. We're going to rebuild Brooklyn. We can only replace those facilities, but the spirit is what I'm pushing for.
That as we build, that we build on the spirit of Brooklyn, what it was. Brooklyn, the Blue Heaven, First Ward, Billerville, Greenville, all these places it's long forgotten about. Change is on the way.