And a trio of Jamaicans led by Grand Avenue copy shop owner Glen Diston has a contract to buy a vacant lot at Grand and Hibiscus. Diston, who previously ran a car-rental business in Kingston, Jamaica, won't disclose his idea, but the 36-year-old hints it would involve construction of offices and shops.
CGLDC is requesting five million dollars in public money to add a median, trees, and angle parking on Grand between Douglas and McDonald. Some think the beautification will be the silver bullet that will put Grand Avenue's cycle of poverty out of its misery. "When that happens, it's going to be, 'Katie, bar the door,'" says Parrish. "There's going to be tremendous economic development in that neighborhood."
Michelle Sas
Norman Moodie has expanded from low-rent apartments to low-cost cuisine
Related Content
More About
"That's the dumbest, stupidest, thing I've ever seen or heard of in my entire life, that median," declares Walter Green, looking out the doorway of his sparse office. "We've got so many other things the money could be spent on. Like a traffic light for the lady who was just trying to cross the street. Wouldn't that make more sense than planting trees?" he asks. "I don't think anybody would appreciate that."
But some would. Grady Dinkins, one of Green's elderly neighbors, is delighted at the prospect of street improvement. She thinks a leafy median on Grand Avenue is as good an idea now as it was back in the Seventies, when she first proposed it to then-City Commissioner Theodore Gibson, the first black elected to that office. "That was one of the things that Father Gibson and I went to a community meeting about," she says. "We wanted to see Grand Avenue with a median strip with all these beautiful trees. It never developed. The city never seems to have money to do these things. But this is the black Grove so I guess you have to expect this to happen."
Dinkins is among a group of residents who for most of the Nineties held up development of a vacant block at Grand and McDonald. The city commission finally rezoned the parcel last year to allow construction of a 170-room hotel. The owners (who include Carnesella) are negotiating with an Atlanta company to build a Marriott inn on the property.
"Everybody on South Beach and every white area of the city has seen their real estate do nothing but go up in value," Andy Parrish says. "And that's why [Grand Avenue] is going to change. It's as simple as that."
Brock concurs. "I mean face it. If they're going to put a hotel, a Marriott, on the corner there, in a virtually black neighborhood, don't that tell you something? Don't that tell you some development is coming?" he reasons. "You always want to buy where you see a chain going up. You see a McDonald's or a Burger King or a hotel chain in an area, you buy. Because they're coming. They'll be there in five years."
Brock predicts other big players will one day follow: casinos.
Thelma Gibson's enthusiasm about Goombay Plaza has tempered. "I have no idea where it's going at this point. We're sort of in limbo," she admits. "I'm always hopeful. I'm always believing that dreams come true because I've had a lot of them come true." Then she adds: "But now, as far as where that dream will take me, God knows at this point."
Givens says this about Goombay Plaza's future: "We're still doing something. It may not seem like it. But we're still struggling."
Back at Howard Johnson's putt-putt, planning proceeds apace. His next project: to replace the old cups at each hole of his golf course.
"If it were up to me, I would stop building at the black Grove's border," says one 85-year-old male resident, pointing in the direction of CocoWalk. "There are people who want to come in and push the black people out," he growls with an ominous sweep of a long bony forearm.
