‘A place of wholeness’: West Sugar Creek Community’s Plan to Unify

by Mae Israel

Nearly a year after gathering in a library conference room to tackle the challenge of developing an innovative project for the changing Sugar Creek/Interstate 85 area in North Charlotte, a group of residents and community leaders have drafted a proposal centered on the notion of shared community. With the support of urbanCORE at UNC Charlotte, residents and community leaders in the West Sugar Creek corridor plan to establish  a front porch-type space where residents can come together.

The ideas of what the Sugar Creek study team hopes to build move beyond a traditional government-operated recreation or resource center. Instead, the group hopes to generate community and financial support to create a program that will comprehensively touch the lives of the area’s mix of residents: predominantly Black, longtime homeowners; newcomers who are primarily Hispanic and Latino; and the housing insecure who are finding their way in temporary stays at motels along I-85.

As the area grapples with a muddled identity and the tensions of demographic and economic shifts, the study team determined that the best path to help stabilize the area’s largest neighborhood, Hidden Valley, and its surrounding apartments, is to create a place where people separated by language barriers and historical familiarity with the area can build a different dynamic that allows the area to thrive.

“If we can come up with a place that gives critical care for people’s culture and well-being,” started Eboné Lockett, a member of the study team and the CEO of the nonprofit Harvesting Humanity, “it is possible that it can provide belonging and caring among people with different experiences and cultures.”

Team member Marjorie Parker, a 50-year-resident of Hidden Valley and the president of its neighborhood association, is hopeful the area can regain some of its prestige while writing a new community story. “We have a wonderful concept and an outline of what it is to become,” she said. “I am really excited about this. It would be a place of wholeness.”

The proposal hopes to establish the following:

• Create a Wellness Anchor, a place that provides social connections through both community-directed events, activities and services offered in partnership with established education, health, mental wellness, workforce, and skills development programs.
• Establish the anchor in an area that would primarily serve residents of the area bounded by Sugar Creek Road, I-85 and North Tryon Street/U.S. 29.
• Seek partnership with an existing facility. This could be a local church or the city-owned recreation center.
• Select a location accessible to most residents, with a focus on micro-mobility options such as vans and ride-sharing services that connect residents to bus and rail transportation.

The concept of a Wellness Anchor grew from the work of the Sugar Creek/I-85 Community Innovation Incubator, an effort led by UNC Charlotte to facilitate community engagement and empowerment by helping residents and community leaders figure out how to build coalitions to find solutions for problems in their communities. It is a process in which residents and university experts collaborate as equal partners and focus on co-creating action plans.

The Sugar Creek incubator, led by the University’s Urban Research and Community Engagement office (urbanCORE), is part of a yearslong initiative to help struggling neighborhoods in Charlotte’s six designated Corridors of Opportunity, where the city is investing in infrastructure and other services in areas that have previously been overlooked.

University planning is underway to launch the next incubator in the Albemarle Road/Central Avenue corridor in East Charlotte. Four years ago, UNC Charlotte faculty and staff worked with West Boulevard residents to develop a strategic plan for a community-owned co-operative market in a low-income, food desert that has been ignored by traditional grocers for decades. The Three Sisters Market, which will also serve as a community space, is expected to soon be under construction. Neighborhood leaders involved in the inaugural study took the lead in cultivating community support for the plan, ultimately winning $3.5 million from Mecklenburg County commissioners along with financial support from private investors.

Sugar Creek/I-85 incubator members hope for a similar outcome with their proposal as they are excited for it to come to life.. A neighborhood coalition, known as The Creek Cooperative, is currently being organized to figure out a location, programming and potential financing for a Wellness Anchor.

 “We are eager to see where this leads,” said team member Odell Witherspoon, 50-year Hidden Valley resident, president of the Hidden Valley Community Development Association and member of the Hidden Valley Optimist Club. “We have created a wheel. Now we need a navigation tool.”

A Neighborhood in Transition
The Hidden Valley neighborhood, a community with nearly 5,000 homes, was once a top contender for middle class families to purchase homes in Charlotte –first for white families, and then for Black families beginning in the 1970s after the dismantling of housing segregation laws triggered “white flight” to the suburbs.

As a young architect, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt and other Black professionals sought out the neighborhood. Over time, the drug epidemic of the late 1980s and 1990s brought gang activity to the area, creating instability and a negative reputation. One ofwhich many residents often say was overblown. Motels and hotels clustered around nearby I-85 and Sugar Creek Road started attracting crime and housing insecure families. And as Charlotte emerged as an immigrant gateway city, an increasing number of Hispanics, Latinos and other ethnic groups moved to the area’s affordable apartments and houses.

Elena Peguero, a native of the Dominican Republic who moved to the Hidden Valley area five years ago and who works as an outreach ambassador to the Hispanic/Latino community there, said she hopes a bridge can be built between the area’s various cultures.

“Everybody wants the same thing,” Peguero, also a study team member, said. “We want a safe neighborhood. We are human beings from different cultures, born in different places.”

Census data compiled by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute shows the Hispanic/Latino population in Hidden Valley jumped from 11.8% in 2000 to 33.2% in 2020. Similarly, other areas of the Sugar Creek/I-85 corridor experienced an increase from 11.2% to 24.2% Hispanic/Latino.

During the same time period, the Black population in Hidden Valley dropped from 60 to 51%, according to the data. Other areas of the Sugar Creek corridor declined to 57.8% from 59.8%.

Meanwhile, homeownership in Hidden Valley has been on the decline. The change has occured steadily since the  2008 Great Depression provided more opportunities for corporate landlords to buy houses in bulk. Single-family homeownership in Hidden Valley was 35.1% in 2022, compared to 55.9% countywide, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer.

Other changes are also underway. More apartments are being built. A developer is planning to renovate the former Asian Corner Mall at the intersection of Sugar Creek Road and North Tryon Street. City officials, as part of the Corridors of Opportunity initiative, last year purchased a motel in the high-crime area near I-85 and are considering affordable housing for the site. Other motels in the area have been purchased for redevelopment.

But the spirit of the neighborhood is  wobbly, residents say. They believe creating a sense of shared community will help reduce both uneasiness and separateness as people learn to live together across race, culture and other differences..

Creating a Place for Healing and Access to Services
There is not a strong parent-teacher association (PTA) at Hidden Valley Elementary School, where most students are Hispanic and Latino. Educational programs could help the students. Area residents need health care and workforce skills development. Language barriers often prevent people from getting – and seeking – services.

The proposed Wellness Anchor, as envisioned by the Sugar Creek incubator team, would be “a facility that will be a trusted gathering place that connects every member of the community to essential programs, services and spaces to advance health and enhance quality of life,” according to their report.

A key component will be finding ways to reduce language barriers.

“In our contemporary lives we are a lot more isolated than we used to be,” said Nadia Anderson, a UNC Charlotte associate professor of architecture and design who served as faculty facilitator with the incubator team. “The idea of a third place [Wellness Anchor] is someplace where it is possible to build relationships through activities or just hanging out.”

The incubator team members faced two key issues in developing the framework for their proposal: who should a Wellness Anchor serve and in what type of facility.

While the city defines Sugar Creek/I-85 as the area that stretches from North Tryon Street across I-85 to the Derita community, team members focused on locating an anchor primarily to serve residents of Hidden Valley and surrounding apartments to increase community impact. In order to move forward with programming as quickly as possible, they decided to partner with existing programs rather than initially seek funding for a separate facility.

But team member Greg Jackson, founder of  HEAL Charlotte, which provides temporary housing and other services to homeless families in a motel it is leasing off I-85, said he thinks the neighborhood should first seek financing from the city and private investors for a community-owned and operated facility.

“I do believe in what was created,” said Jackson, who lived in the Hidden Valley area for about six years. “Right now, we just have a framework that will help keep the community vibrant. We don’t have an establishment. We don’t own anything. We would be able to control some things instead of just controlling [the creation of]culture.”

Figuring Out an Innovative Solution
The process for finding a solution for an entire community didn’t come easy. 

Community leaders gathered last fall, each with their own perspectives on how to help the community. The first action: for representative community members to participate in sessions conducted by a professional facilitator. The hope? For participants to get to know and trust each other.

Over several months, the team took a tour of the neighborhood and participated in sessions to determine the neighborhood’s assets and treasures. Team members separated into subcommittees to study various issues in the community from education, health and mental wellness to workforce and skills development. They talked to at least a dozen civic leaders and visited several programs dealing with those issues.

UNC Charlotte faculty participants came from the sociology, social work, architecture and urban design, and geography and urban planning departments. Four student fellows gathered data for the team and conducted community surveys.

“I think what they accomplished is pretty amazing,” said Byron White, UNC Charlotte’s associate provost of Urban Research and Community Engagement (urbanCORE), who moved to Hidden Valley after arriving in Charlotte four years ago. “There wasn’t a collective identity for the group, either in terms of how they worked together or what they focused on.”

“The decision to pursue creating a Wellness Anchor,” he added, “would create a space where the shared commitment (to the neighborhood) can be expressed and understood. If there is a way to affirm people are seeking the same thing, you can have a stable, racially diverse community.”

White says what he’s experiencing are people who live in Hidden Valley and want to live there.

“The Wellness Anchor would create a space where that shared commitment can be expressed and understood,” he said.

 “It’s when [you] perceive someone as threatening that you have tensions. If there is a way to affirm people are [looking for]the same thing, you can have a stable, racially diverse community.”

On a recent van tour of the Sugar Creek area and her Hidden Valley neighborhood, Marjorie Parker eagerly offered commentary about the community where she has lived for more than 47 years.

First, the van rolled through a longtime problem area off Sugar Creek Road and Reagan Drive near Interstate 85, passing a group of people loitering alongside the street. “I just wish the county would do something with mental health and substance abuse services.” 

As the van rumbled along streets in Hidden Valley, which has more than 5,000 houses, Parker noted the manicured lawns and neat homes. She pointed out a house she imagined might one day be her dream home. She talked of efforts to convince the news media to accurately describe where crime happens in the Sugar Creek area instead of generally naming Hidden Valley when crimes often occur outside the neighborhood.

Across from her home she pointed to a house that has been abandoned for two decades. She grumbled about several cluttered front yards nearby. “We are fighting, trying to get code enforcement to clean this up.”

“We’re into rebranding and yes, we have a long way to go,” Parker told the others in the van, participants in the Sugar Creek/I-85 Community Innovation Incubator initiative. “I remember what this neighborhood used to be.”

Parker, a retired records manager for the Charlotte Area Transit System, has been working for years to help strengthen and beautify Hidden Valley, a neighborhood that has been shaped by transitions.

It was initially an all-white neighborhood and transformed into a predominantly Black neighborhood after most white families left when Black families started buying houses there. Over the past decade, an increasing number of Latino families began moving into the neighborhood.

She is hopeful, Parker said, that the incubator initiative will lead to a physical space that “everybody can take advantage of.”

Since her election as president of the neighborhood association in 2022, membership has increased significantly and partnerships with the city and other organizations have resulted in renovations to a neighborhood park and other improvements. The neighborhood association is working with area developers to offer comments on planned projects.

Parker, the mother of three children, believes in the future of Hidden Valley. So does Merritt McCully, who has lived there a little over four years.

“A good variety of ages live here,” said McCully, director of the Mayfield Memorial Community Development Corporation (CDC). “Everyone is outside a lot. I like the location. It is close to the light rail. It is an older neighborhood with brick houses and big trees. There are cultural food options. There is an entrepreneurial spirit in the neighborhood.”

As he was starting graduate school in 2019, McCully found an apartment in Hidden Valley because it was convenient to UNC Charlotte and the light rail. A student fellowship led him to a position with Mayfield Memorial CDC, and by the time he received his master’s degree in public administration in 2022, he was named director of the church-sponsored organization.

Last year, the organization opened an affordable housing complex called Sugaree Place on Sugar Creek Road, adjacent to the church. It also operates Hola Neighbor, a program that employs four neighborhood residents as ambassadors to help Hidden Valley residents find needed services such as health care, food and housing assistance.

As a member of the Sugar Creek/I-85 incubator, McCully said he is hopeful communication improves between homeowners and residents who live in apartments. Last year, McCully bought a house in Hidden Valley. He didn’t look anywhere else.

Elena Peguero dreams of buying one there too.

Peguero, born in the Dominican Republic, arrived in Charlotte five years ago from France to live with a sister who had an apartment in Hidden Valley. Her sister later moved out of the neighborhood; she and her two-children remained.

Peguero worked as a trucking dispatcher and in other jobs until she was hired as an ambassador for the Hola Neighbor program operated by the Mayfield Memorial CDC.

“I feel like I am the bridge between the different cultures,” she said. “I can get information from one side and send information to the other side. I can try to bring everybody together, like a family.”

She added,” Everybody wants the same thing. We want a safe neighborhood. We are human beings from different cultures, born in different places.”

Odell Witherspoon, a retired finance manager who has lived in Hidden Valley for 50 years, agrees that the language barrier and misunderstandings are challenging for the neighborhood.

He spends much of his time as a community volunteer. He serves as the chairman of the Hidden Valley Community Development Corporation and as community services chairperson of the Hidden Valley Optimist Club.

“I think the whole incubator concept is a significant plus for the neighborhood,” he said. “I am optimistic.”