Business View Magazine | February 2018

72 73 and for profit and nonprofit developers who build affordable housing. Last year, Business ViewMag- azine spoke with Department Director, Reginald Johnson,who told us about some of the City’s cur- rent and ongoing affordable housing and home re- tention projects.We checked in on Johnson, recently, to find out more about several of those initiatives, namely: three components of Durham’s Southside Revitalization Strategy: The Lofts at Southside,The Bungalows, the Whitted School; and Downtown Durham’s Jackson Street Project. The Southside Revitalization Project area consists of approximately 125 acres located on the southern edge of downtown Durham and just north of North Carolina Central University.After years of economic disinvestment, this area was found to contain the highest concentration of vacant properties in the city and one of the lowest rates of homeownership. When the City of Durham decided to undertake this most ambitious neighborhood revitalization project, it chose McCormack Baron Salazar, Inc. a real estate development firm, to lead the effort. “McCormack Baron Salazar has been in existence since the early ‘70s,” says Company President,Vince Bennett.“We’re a national developer and we focus on mixed-income communities.We generally do large-scale, neighborhood community transfor- mative efforts, partnering with cities and housing authorities to help with their comprehensive com- munity redevelopment plans. From late fall of 2009 to the summer of 2010,we worked with the city on a community-based revitalization planning process. The goal was to use mixed-income rental to jump start the revitalization of this long-declining area, as The Lofts at Southside Durham, NC The Southside effort was first and foremost a neighborhood revitalization strategy with the objective of creating a community that would attract private investment and market-rate interest over the long term. Mixed-Income HOPE VI/CNI mixed- nance District-Wide Plan DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA