Following the successful adoption of Durham’s first Small Area Plan (SAP) for the Walltown neighborhood, the residents of Lakewood, Lyon Park, and the West End are preparing to develop plans of their own.
Small Area Plans are specific vision statements within the city’s comprehensive plan—which guides future development—tailored to individual neighborhoods. Durham city council passed an update to the comprehensive plan in 2023, but the broad scope of the plan didn’t address concerns of residents in some of Durham’s unique neighborhoods.
On Tuesday, nearly 70 residents gathered at the Community Family Life & Recreation Center at Lyon Park to discuss the future of the three adjoining neighborhoods. Durham city planning staff gave a brief presentation on the history of SAPs, and ground rules on what they can and can’t accomplish and what makes this planning process different from Walltown, before residents broke out into working groups to brainstorm ideas for the new plan.
At each table, markers and large sheets of paper were laid out for residents to record their ideas. Folks coalesced around many tried-and-true concerns: affordable housing, green space, traffic safety, and things to do for the youth. Discussions about density and adding new amenities to the area teetered between YIMBY and NIMBY as residents tried to balance growth, long-term affordability, and protecting the environment.
Aroham Dutt moved into the area five years ago after living in an apartment downtown. He says it’s important for his new neighborhood to “grow responsibly” and preserve its unique character. A way to accomplish that goal, he says, is by supporting the local entrepreneurs who live there.
“I want to see a focus on businesses that are run by people that live in the community.” Dutt says. “My neighbors run the businesses around me, and I love that, and I don’t want that to change.”
Dutt abashedly espoused a vote for more density as a way to introduce a higher variety of housing opportunities in the area. The Shoppes at Lakewood has an excess of oft-unused parking spaces where residents suggested building additional green space like the parklet next to El Futuro. Community members have already started to come up with creative uses for the lot; Scrap Exchange is partnering with Manifest Skate Shop to build a skate park on the site.
The comprehensive plan, and by extension, small area plans, are just visioning documents. They don’t include any mechanisms for enforcement.
“The small area plan is not the law; it is not legally binding,” said Sarah Long, community planner with the Planning Department, during Tuesday’s meeting.
That responsibility falls to the unified development ordinance (UDO), a set of rules and regulations that says what kinds of development can go where. The planning department is in the process of rewriting the UDO and a draft is available on the city website, though Miller said the city hasn’t completed its engagement process.
While SAPs lack authority, they still have merit. SAPs provide the city council with a community-informed guide for future planning and development decisions in the neighborhood, taking into account transportation and connectivity needs, environmental challenges and areas of opportunity for future projects on locally-owned public land.
The city began the process for its first small area plan in 2024, partnering with the Northgate Mall Neighborhood Council—a consortium of representatives from Walltown, Trinity Park, Northgate Park, Trinity Heights, Watts-Hillandale, Old West Durham and Duke Park—to develop a pilot.
On August 18, Walltown residents received highly-anticipated news when the city council voted unanimously to formally adopt the Walltown small area plan. But while Walltown residents are excited to have their neighborhood’s vision codified, there’s still work to be done for the plan to come to life. Development on the former Northgate Mall site has been gridlocked since 2018 when Northwood Ravin, a global real estate firm, purchased the property. The firm hasn’t been able to reach a consensus with neighbors on a vision for the project. Brandon Williams, a Walltown resident who helped lead the process on behalf of the Northgate Mall Neighborhood Council, is hopeful the new small area plan will help rekindle the conversation.
“The big win is getting our priorities around Northgate into official policy guidance,” Williams says. “The clear next step is trying to figure out a way to bring Northwood to the table. And obviously our concern is that the UDO process needs to ensure that they’ll have a reason to be at the table.”
One of the main differences between the development of Walltown’s SAP and the Lakewood-Lyon Park-West End area, Long said, is there are no known redevelopment plans for the “for-profit” side of the Shoppes at Lakewood that is owned by development firm Brody Co. Last year, Brody Co. explored a plan to redevelop parts of the shopping center which included retail store fronts, redesigning the parking lot, and adding self-storage units, a controversial proposal that the community strongly rejected during initial community meetings.
Major construction projects are at the heart of the small area plan discussion. The redevelopment of those sites has an outsized impact on the future of neighborhoods like the historic Hayti district, which is grappling with similar growth pressures as Walltown and Lakewood and will go through the small area plan process in the future. On August 4, representatives from Sterling Bay, the company that currently owns the Heritage Square property in Hayti, rescinded its request for a rezoning of the shopping center. Now it’s back to square one as the developers consider how to proceed, but the delay could be an opening for the Hayti residents to initiate their own plan, one that encompasses more than just the Heritage Square site.
“At the time we started Walltown, we thought, there’s some imminent zoning change and so we had to immediately pivot and deal with Northgate first, which honestly is what the neighborhood was interested in,” says Scott Whiteman, senior planning manager with the City of Durham. “But in retrospect, starting with the big picture and then moving to the key sites would have been more effective, and probably would have made other folks understand the purpose of the plan, how everything fit together better.”
Even though the city has only one SAP under its belt, the planning department has hours of engagement with residents from a number of neighborhoods who want to take their community’s land use destiny into their own hands. Through the process, the planning department has noticed overlap in their priorities, and found more ways to support residents in making their development dreams a reality.
“You’ll start seeing patterns of issues, particularly issues that fall within the city’s bucket of stuff that we can deal with and so we can start focusing on that,” Whiteman says. “And even in Walltown, some issues came up that weren’t really long range planning issues, but we can at least hook people up with the right person at the city who might be able to help, and it does build better two-way communication between the city and residents.”
Follow Reporter Justin Laidlaw on X or send an email to [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].