Business View Magazine - September 2016 71
converted into loft-style apartment complexes, bars,
entertainment venues, art studios, and co-working
spaces.
“So now, there’s a thriving population of residents in
the downtown area,” says Reginald J. Johnson, Dur-
ham’s Director of Community Development. But while
newcomers are beginning to fill the market-rate units
downtown, Johnson’s office is more focused on the
ring of neighborhoods surrounding the downtown core,
directing its services especially to low and moderate
income citizens who need financing and other housing
services in order to fully claim their part of the city’s
redevelopment agenda. “Our mayor didn’t want just a
successful downtown,” Johnson says, “but also want-
ed to have some of that spillover occur in a positive
way to the neighborhoods adjacent to and surrounding
the downtown area.”
One such community redevelopment initiative under
the aegis of the Department of Community Develop-
ment is the Southside Revitalization Project. “This is
a project that includes the building of mixed-income
apartments, as well as single family homes in a neigh-
borhood that had suffered from disinvestment with
dilapidated and boarded-up houses, vacant lots, and
