Old North Durham Park City Documents and More

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• 2003-2013 Durham Parks and Recreation Master Plan: As stated in the DPR Master Plan, based on national “Level of Service” standards, Durham lacks nearly forty soccer fields given its population. The report states, “It is in those areas where the City’s targets are lower than the national recommendations that citizens have most strongly noted a lack of facilities (e.g. soccer/football fields)” (p83).  Further, “Several parks have plans in place for playing field upgrades and rehabilitation: Campus Hills, Valley Springs, and Old North Durham” (p32).

• January 11, 2005:  Email by DPR employee Beth Timson to staff expressing concern about CPSC’s explicit undermining of DPR’s full-size soccer field plans for OND Park, reaffirming the importance of a public park for all, and reiterating the city’s desperate need for more athletic fields. Email by Vicky Patton, then-CPSC Director and founding and current CPSC board member urging the CPSC community to object to the full-size soccer field.

• September 6, 2005: City Council Meeting Minutes adopting Resolution #9281. This resolution reaffirms the city’s original plans to upgrade OND Park, including:  “The Athletic field in the park (330ft by 180 ft) will be renovated with grading, sod, and irrigation. The field will serve tournament level and adult soccer as well as junior-level games, several of which can be played simultaneously across the width of the field…With the current shortage of athletic fields in Durham, DPR staff feels that we cannot afford to reduce or lose one of the existing fields.”

• November 15, 2005 notes from the Old North Durham Neighborhood Association Board Meeting in which invited guest Vicky Patton, wife of developer Bob Chapman and then Director of Central Park School for Children, requests that “ONDNA support a motion to stop the current plans for the park and instead hire a planner to make it more broadly useful.”  Notes also state, “if anything is going to change, the neighborhood has to dig in hard to get this changed; it needs to be done with Central Park…” and continues that even though the city has put out bids for the improvement of the full-size soccer field, the city’s plans are not “actually final until money exchanges hands and construction equipment shows up.” After this meeting, ONDNA reverses its previous support for the improvement of the full-size athletic field, instead works against the city’s plans.

• Capital Improvement Plan Bond-Funded Project Listing

• General Services Department document indicating $222,879 had been appropriated for Old North Durham Park field renovations.

• Capital Improvement Plan Athletic Field Renovations Status Report

• November 7, 2005: City Council Meeting Minutes discussing $1 lease to TROSA of public parking lot at Old North Durham Park’s eastern entrance on Geer St.

• February 21, 2006: Memo from Darrell R. Crittendon, then Director of Parks and Recreation to Councilman Eugene Brown providing an update on the status of the city’s OND Park improvement. A full-size soccer field had been approved, with Capital Improvement Program funding already authorized,  and  Storm Water services had committed to help pay for a damaged storm water line under the field as part of the upgrade.

• June 11, 2007: Email from Real Estate Division Manager Sandra Harper noting that an extension beyond a 10-year lease is considered a sale

• November 2007: Proposed lease of OND Park to Central Park School for Children Foundation for $10/year for 10 years

• May 9, 2001 study conducted by UNC Public Health graduate students: “Old North Durham: An Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis Including Secondary Data Analysis and Qualitative Data Collection” illustrating the extent to which northern downtown Durham is segregated by race and class.  Their study found a stark lack of involvement by the area’s low-income residents in the Old North Durham Neighborhood Association:

“Like most areas primed for gentrification, the original lower income residents have the same concerns but are hesitant to join with the new neighbors, who, in the case of Old North Durham run the neighborhood association, for fear that they will end up advocating for their own displacement as improvements cause property values to rise. The neighborhood association has great difficulty involving lower income residents, due in part to their efforts to gentrify and thereby, without meaning to, displace the poor from their community…Many of the urban gentry that we interviewed specifically stated that they appreciated OND because of the diversity and did not want it to become gentrified. They seem unaware or at least in denial that they are doing exactly that. No, they are not living in a gated suburban community, instead they glory in the diversity of their urban environment, while effectively organizing themselves to eliminate the very variety they hail as the greatest characteristic of Old North Durham” (pg 37).

Past Kilombo Memos Regarding Old North Durham Park

• November 8, 2007: Memo from Concerned Citizens of Old North Durham to City Council contesting private leasing of OND Park to Central Park School for Children Foundation (with all referenced documents).
• November 8, 2007: (above memo without referenced documents).
• December 10, 2007:  Follow up Memo to City Council from Concerned Citizens of Durham
• October 21, 2010: Memo from El Kilombo to City Council, presented at Oct. 21 Work Session

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