The Brownsville Fallout
By Sean Boone
Published Feb. 11, 2010
A Community Must Wait Longer For Saving Grace
It’s a Wednesday afternoon in late January; Rev. LuTimothy May sits at his desk inside a small corner office on West Blount Street. He scours over numerous notes, letters and legal paperwork associated with a project he worked so hard to erect-within a broken neighborhood to which he has devoted his life.
The minister of the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church is at a loss of words, knowing he must soon inform an entire community that his vision for Brownsville’s revitalization would not be a likely reality.
He collects his thoughts, glares at a framed article about one of his father’s projects that reads They said it couldn’t be done,’ and continues his sentence.
“I have to go to so many individuals…so many phone calls…so many individuals were riding on this project,” he quietly remarks.
Many who believed in it thought the project could be place to help curb crime by keeping youth off the streets. A project that would allow folks to walk to evening events and social gatherings. A project that could make a difference in a neighborhood that in recent years has had so little to believe in.
For the better part of four years, May and his 600-member church have looked to convert the abandoned Brownsville Middle School on West Avery St. into a vibrant community center for the neighborhood; a place that offered such things as an after school activity and tutoring center, a computer lab and a nursery for small children.
In December, May and his attorney John Monroe came to an agreement with the Escambia County School District to purchase the building for $1 million. The church had 30 days to close on the property before the deal fell through.
The church needed just 27 to fold.
After lengthy discussions with the Friendship church board of trustees as well as his legal advisors, May decided to pull the plug, citing the lack of funding available to fully renovate the 55-year-old building, bring it up to building code standards and develop it into what it was promised to be. The church was also concerned about the building plumbing system, which leaked last year and cost the district more than $10,000 in water usage charges for the month of November-a problem that the district has not confirmed to have completely fixed.
“We know at the 12th hour it was late,” he says. “People were frustrated, but we are most appreciative of the hard work they put into this. There were investigations taking place to evaluate the property and estimated costs that it would take to bring this building back to code.
“We were kind of under the impression that there would be minor renovations to get this campus in order,” he adds.
The estimates for bringing the school up to code and making repairs-which include an entire wing destroyed by fire-were in the ballpark of $500,000. May says the church so far has financially invested $30,000 into the project-$10,000 for a down payment to the school district for a contract and $20,000 for survey work on the building.
“It’s not a small rollercoaster…it’s a very large rollercoaster,” he adds. “Fortunately the community came out in such a way and aided in such a way to make a community effort to revitalize Brownsville. But it was a great task from day one.”
A PROUD COMMUNITY
Marilynn Franklin recalls her childhood in West Pensacola as carefree. Riding her bike up and down the quiet streets, playing ball at the local church fields and mingling with neighbors and family on her porch.
“It was 1971 when we moved to Brownsville,” she recalls. “I was four-years-old. It was a place that, in my eyes, was vibrant.”
Today the single mother of three lives down the street from her old house-where her mother still lives-but paints a different picture of the street she once knew.
“I could ride my bike when I was 11,” says Franklin. “Now my daughter is 11 and I don’t let her go to the mailbox, pretty much.”
But even with drug deals and prostitutes looming outside her front door, she still considers the neighborhood her home and does not want to leave.
“There are a lot of hardworking families here,” she says. “Drug dealers used to knock on my door looking for my neighbors and I didn’t want to leave to go anywhere. Not everyone here is like that. I have some great neighbors, too.
“I really don’t have a desire to move away,” she adds. “It’s tough to go when you know people in the neighborhood.”
Businesses that have made their home off West Cervantes are often considered trademarks of the area.
Pfeiffer Drugs has made Brownsville its home for more than 50 years.
“Ken Pfeiffer started this store in 1953,” says current owner Sally Fairman. “It’s always been family-owned locally. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
Fairman says she’s seen the crime in the area come in waves and believes a project like Friendship’s could have helped the bleeding of the neighborhood economy.
“It absolutely would be a great step,” she says. “Anytime you get rid of a vacant building it is good for the local economy.”
For Franklin, the project is a symbol of hope. One that she says will one day be a reality.
“Now that there is a vision in place, it gives hope to a community,” she says as she holds back tears. “As a single parent it gives options…and to give your child options in the midst of a place with no options or no hope is reassuring.”
FINANCIAL HALT
When the Brownsville project reached the public eye early last year, community leaders and elected officials were quick to embrace the idea.
The problem according to May, was getting them to believe enough in it to support it financially.
“One of our greatest hurdles was getting people to believe, and I still think that’s the problem today,” he says. “In our hearts it was something that needed to be addressed, so we never gave up. Really, it was initially a few people who said they wanted to do something in Brownsville.”
The school building was appraised by the district at roughly $2 million, but was reduced to $1.02 million in December as a final offer. The church turned down the offer before reaching an agreement at a special meeting for $1 million.
According to Superintendent Malcolm Thomas, many things would have had to fall in place for the deal to work out for Friendship.
“I could not just give them the building. We did, in fact, give them the benefit of the doubt,” he says. “May and I talked several times about if they could get it, what the contracting and other expenses would be.”
Thomas says creating such things as a daycare center at the building would require certain codes unaccounted for that would add many extra expenses. He says discounted the building initially because of the location and the vision of the group to help the area, but says he has reached the bottom-line on price.
“One thing positive from all the publicity is that people know my bottom-line on the property,” says Thomas.
May admits he went into the whole process with no background on contracts and real estate deals and has relied on a lot of pro-bono work, including real estate advice from the school district.
“We didn’t have any expertise, but we knew we had to do something over time,” he adds. “We got to a place where other people began to believe in it.”
After the Dec. 15 school board meeting, which saw more than 200 supporters of the project show up to speak in favor of it and a front page article on the matter the following day in the daily paper, May says many people came forward to give him advice-eventually putting him in contact with Monroe.
“Without John Monroe, we were up the creek without a paddle,” he says. “He understood that this might be something that is not feasible. I mean, it would be great if (the district) could make a price that is feasible for us because we’d hate to have five years go by without something in place (to help).”
Unfortunately for May, unless a contribution is made from the private sector, local government will not likely financially support his church.
Commissioner Marie Young, who presides over the district Brownsville is located, feels it’s a progressive thought for the community but one that should be kept between the church and the school district.
“(The Commission) certainly couldn’t get involved with them,” she says. “We did help with (zoning) of the piece of property when they brought it to our attention, but as far as us stepping in as county government, that was something for them to decide, not me. LuTimothy had a great project, but we as District 3 have great things going through the CRA.
“We’ve done many, many projects in that area and we’re going to have to continue to do the clean-ups and putting in sidewalks,” she adds.
CLEANING UP THE STREETS
The problems in Brownsville have not risen to their stature over night-nor has the police presence. For years the neighborhood has been known as one of the roughest parts of town due to the persistent drug activity, prostitution rings and gang activity present on its streets.
According to Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan, the problem is much like “a revolving door” where criminals continue to come back to the area after they are incarcerated.
“We can’t do a sweep in Brownsville to hope to catch them all,” he says. “The situation I believe is better because the focus is much better than the previous four years. We’re not only pursuing prostitutes and johns, but also drug dealers.”
Morgan says that despite a cut in Community Redevelopment Agency funds that funded off-duty officers to patrol the area, his department still puts the majority of its focus on the neighborhood.
“We spend most of our active law enforcement time in that district,” he says. “We break down the districts for the highest crime levels and dist. 3 is the highest in Escambia County.”
Morgan says he is disappointed that Friendship was not able to acquire the building to create a community center; a place he says could have been a partner in preventing street crime.
“Anytime we have a community project, just on a whole…it’s the essence of taking communities back,” he says. “When the community bonds together and says we’re taking our community back,’ those are the things you see communities revitalize. What you have here is when a group of citizens, which in this is a church, we’re going to take back Brownsville and make it a joint use facility, an island or haven in this community…which hopefully will stop the crime sprawl.”
GOING FORWARD
May says he has not completely given up hope that there could be a center built in the same capacity that was originally envisioned.
He says he is not opposed to looking for another building in Brownsville to create the center, just as long as it fits in the geographic area that will make a difference.
“We’re not necessarily pulling out in essence of pulling out of the community,” he says. “We just were at our capacity limit.”
Thomas says he has had several groups recently come forward with interest in the Brownsville Middle property, but will not reveal the names.
“Buyers have asked to not be named,” he says. “I do not want to ruin my sale. We would have done the same with LuTimothy’s group. We actually had a couple people approach us in the six months dealing with Friendship, but we did not talk to them.
“We’re going to be very careful with what we put in there,” he adds. “I’d rather tear the building down then put something in there that does not fit well (next to Oakcrest Elementary). We’d really like to find projects that are good for the community.”
The superintendent also said the down payment the church put on the building deal will not be returned, as much of it was used on legal fees.
“It’s a $10,000 non-refundable sum that covers the survey costs,” he says. “This project drug on for several months. The last I checked, we had spent between $6,500-$7,500 in legal fees and the prepared title.”
May says he is disappointed the district decided to keep the money since his church has spent so much time working with the district and taking its advice, but he says it’s hard for him to view the project in terms of financial figures.
Looking down at his desk, he spots a funeral program for Victor Steen-the Brownsville teenager who was hit and killed by a Pensacola Police cruiser last year-and pauses.
“When you have to sit down and have to figure out how to put a 17-year-old in the ground…and sit down with his mother, it’s hard. You see that this is happening all the time because we have a lack of resources….lack of programs….there is only so much of this stuff you can take.”