As they showed a photographer around on a bright spring afternoon, Elaine Curry and Dawn Paige looked up the ladder to the roof of 109 W. Parrish St., the building they bought in 2013 and sold this year for nearly 2 million dollars more. The building had proved to be just the kind of smart, profitable investment that they had in mind when they bought it.
But the building itself also held a deep allure, they said, a legacy that they had hoped to preserve and pass on. They bought 109 from Durham stalwarts Irwin Holmes, the first black graduate of N.C. State, and Meredythe Holmes, who has had a long career helping Durham students finish high school and get jobs. Curry and Paige were the second generation of black owners. They hoped to sell to a third.
Durham’s recent renewal has not spread proportionally to black- and minority-owned businesses. Only 3.5% of businesses downtown are black-owned, according to Downtown Durham Inc. One of the keys to restoring diversity in business ownership, many black business owners say, is improving diversity in property ownership.
If the landlord had a vested interest in diversity, advocates argue, then balance might be restored.
Sometimes in business, even on the cold bottom-line of what the market may bear, things require this broader view. So Curry and Paige looked again at the ladder to the roof, took off their shoes, and began to climb.
The roof of 109 is a nice perch from which to see Durham, both as it is and as it was. To the southwest, there’s the art deco Kress building, which was the site of sit-ins in the ’60s, sat nearly empty in Durham’s bad years, and is now full of high-end condos. Towering above 109 next door is One City Center, the sparkling new home to co-working space WeWork – and to even more condos.
And you can see the block itself, a small and irregular rectangle formed by Magnum Street, Parrish, Corcoran, and Main. More than 100 years ago, this block was key real estate in Black Wall Street (BWS), a thriving district of some 200 black-owned businesses nearly unrivaled in the rest of the country.
Then came setbacks and downturns, as urban renewal programs, gentrification and the building of the freeway helped boost the city as a whole, but had an inverse effect on black neighborhoods and businesses.
The paucity of real estate feeds the disparities in businesses, advocates say.
“If you’ve got an owner who has a mindset and a commitment and an initiative around an inclusive approach, that’s going to be built into the contractual document, it’s going to be part of the deal,” Gloria Shealey, president, and CEO of the construction management company The Daniele Company, told us in March, then
“Then it’s going to be up to the owner to make sure it’s not just words on paper.”
It is a blueprint Curry and Paige wanted to follow.
“I had the idea that it would be nice, being that it was on Black Wall Street, and we had bought it from another African American couple,” Curry said, “if we could sort of keep it going, at least with that building.”
“We wanted to try to preserve some sort of presence downtown,” Paige added.
But the passing of legacy was somewhat by chance and was not entirely smooth.
After extensive renovations in 2014, they began to lease the space, bringing in Empower Dance Studio on the Parrish Street side, and Luna Rotisserie & Empanadas and Morningstar Law Group on Main Street. In the summer of 2018, they decided to sell, reaching out to their networks to identify potential buyers. But, they did not find the interest they were looking for and listed the property through a broker, which sparked interest but did not immediately bring offers from black owners.
Then Nish Evans came along.
While the building was on the market, Nicole Oxendine, the owner and director of Empower Dance Studio and Paige and Curry’s first tenant, ran into Evans at a Black Wall Street Homecoming event and told her the building was for sale. She introduced Evans to Curry and Paige.
Evans is the owner and founder of the development firm Lennox + Grae, which she named after her two sons, Ellery Lennox and Zoelen Grae. Evans said that Paige and Curry were intentional about wanting to pass on the legacy of the building, but the closing process took nearly four months, and it was not always clear that things would work out.
“We had other offers to purchase the building before we received Nish’s offer, and during the time period when we were waiting to close,” Curry said. “Several extensions of the initial close date were required,” she said, and other “contract offers might have potentially, (and maybe even likely) closed sooner.”
But, she said, “Once we began this process in earnest, both parties were committed to doing everything possible to make it happen.”
It was always going to be about business, said Paige and Curry, who worked together in investment for 10 years before starting their real estate business, Empress Development. The decision to sell 109 was “first a financial decision,” Curry said, and the price was “dictated solely by the market factors and our desired return.”
Because they prioritized finding a black buyer, however, they were able to do it all.
“We did what we wanted to do,” Curry said. “In the end, we did not have to choose between keeping the building black-owned and accepting the highest offer, and we consider this the best outcome.”
Nicole Thompson, DDI president and CEO, said it is difficult to know the numbers of minority-owned buildings because there are very few specific means in place to track them and because federal data is published only every few years. But the deal for 109 serves as a good model moving forward, she said.
“We had a very passionate buyer of the property in Nish Evans, but I also know we had very patient sellers,” Thompson said. “It is great when we can align with property owners like Elaine and Dawn, who said [that] if they could continue the trend of it being in African American hands, then they would.”
“I think a lot of credit is given to them for being intentional.”
The transaction benefited all sides, as it does in the best of business deals. Curry and Paige purchased the building from the Holmes’ for a “sweet deal” of $605,000 and sold the 9,256-square-foot building for $2.45 million.
Evans said the building was a great first retail investment for her company and that she hoped to follow in the footsteps of Curry, Paige and the Black Wall Street pioneers.
“They were known to ‘ask for a fair shot and [an] open playing field in which to prove their abilities to build a strong business and legacy,” Nish said of BWS.
“I wish to mirror this same approach. Equitable spaces are vital to our communities, in addition to black-owned real estate. They both are physical manifestations that people of color ‘belong’ and have been key players to the vibrant attraction of Durham.”
Oxendine, who launched her business in June 2015, said she appreciates that approach.
“It was exciting to be like, OK, this is my new landlord,” she said, “and I’m excited to give my money to her.”
From the beginning, she said, Curry and Paige were supportive of her and expressed their desire to house a black business. It’s been nice to feel the same support from Evans, she said.
“It wasn’t just an exchange, like, ‘Here’s a check and go about your way,’ but they were really invested in seeing what I was doing,” Oxendine said.
“As a new business owner, that meant so much to me – and I think to the girls, primarily African American girls, to see two black women who own this building – that’s huge.”
–By Hannah McClellan
