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Old East Durham has a long history as an industrial hub, but some property owners in the area want to further transform the district into a residential and commercial destination.
Currently, the district is sliced up by incongruent zoning types. A significant portion of the area is still zoned for industrial uses, even as the neighborhood has slowly reconstituted to include more houses and small businesses. A group of residential and commercial property owners want to turn two blocks around the Angier-Driver corridor into a “downtown” area complete with retail, makerspaces, restaurants, and a variety of housing options.
No specific plans have been filed, and any changes are likely still years away as the city makes improvements to the area’s sewer system, which is currently at capacity, putting additional growth there on hold. The proposal took an initial step on June 15 when the Durham City Council approved the necessary rezoning by a 5-2 vote.
In Durham’s earliest incarnation, the district played host to the Durham Cotton Manufacturing Company, whose headquarters at the end of Driver Street is now occupied by chemical distributor Brenntag. The neighborhood surrounding the mill rapidly expanded to include housing, banks, and churches like the former Angier Avenue Baptist Church that sprung up at that time.
Decades after the mills closed, the industrial zoning lent itself to automotive shops, scrapyards, and crematoriums. In the early 2000s, as Durham began its economic rebound and downtown became oversaturated, folks took chances on cheaper spaces on the periphery of Main Street. Black entrepreneurs in particular coalesced around the historic Old East Durham neighborhood as a spiritual successor to Durham’s Black Wall Street. But the current hodgepodge of zoning types limits development permitted in the area through an ordinance feature called nonconformity; any changes to properties that don’t conform to the current zoning rules—in this case, homes and businesses in the industrial zoning area—are prohibited.
The rezoning effort is led by Garland Ventures, a group of local developers with a history of rehabilitating former industrial sites in Durham.
John Warasila, one of the partners in Garland Ventures, said the owners of all the properties that will be rezoned opted to be included. Properties whose owners did not want to participate aren’t. About two dozen residential and commercial properties are included in the reenvisioned district. Garland Ventures owns six, with two more under Warasila’s name.
“We are not some big out-of-town developer who’s come in to try and rebuild an entire part of the city,” Warasila said at a previous City Council meeting. “We’re local people who are working from the ground up to revitalize neighborhoods that have seen no…
