Project puts Malone neighborhood in flux
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The Malone neighborhood of central Lincoln has a storied tradition and a lot of history. But in the next few years, the Antelope Valley Project will bring some drastic changes to the area. Some are excited about the possibilities, while others remain skeptical of promises.
BY KENDRA WALTKE | Lincoln Journal Star
The Malone neighborhood that greeted three women who had lived there long ago warmed their hearts.
“The neighborhood seems to be thriving,” said Helen Patrick Seward, 83, gesturing toward new houses near Trago Park at 20th and U streets.
“It’s gratifying to see.”
Over barbecue at Juneteenth, a festival that drew 3,000 people to the Malone neighborhood June 17, the ladies recalled a pre-World War II community that revolved around the Lincoln Urban League, later renamed the Clyde Malone Community Center.
They remembered old Malone, a network of extended families and deep friendships in a place populated with black families.
Some of those families spread out into other parts of Lincoln when segregation began to fade in the 1960s and ’70s.
Others were squeezed out when parts of Malone were bulldozed and depleted in the 1970s for the Northeast Radial, an arterial road project later defeated by voters.
These women were gone before all that, before slip-in apartments and rentals sprung up in the vacant lots left by the Northeast Radial.
The Trago Park where they sat is surrounded by newer homes.
Oh, the women said, how things have changed.
Seward and her sister, Ruth Patrick Thomas, 86, talked with Jeanne Malone Freels, a daughter of Clyde Malone, the namesake of the center and the neighborhood.
The trio said they have a soft spot for the Malone Center and were delighted to see it busy again after it closed briefly in 2002.
They were pleased with Trago Park, an 8-acre greenspace named for longtime Malone leader Trago McWilliams, who Helen said was “someone I knew very well.”
But of course the sharply dressed ladies who left Malone so long ago knew nothing about the Antelope Valley Project.
The $240 million project will tackle some of the same goals as the Northeast Radial, and it too will bring changes to Malone.
Today’s Malone leaders look at Antelope Valley — a multifaceted behemoth of a plan that can leave even well-informed Lincolnites scratching their heads — and see different outcomes.
Some distrust the entities involved and see an affront to the neighborhood’s rich history. Others see opportunity to revive the neighborhood once again.
The big ditch is coming
Antelope Creek flows beneath central Lincoln, near the Malone Center, via an underground system that experts say can’t hold enough water if Lincoln suffers a 100-year flood, said Marc Wullschleger, director of Urban Development.
Creating a channel wide enough to carry the water will remove about 400 acres of central Lincoln — including the west end of Malone — from the designated flood plain. That will make economic development there more viable, he said.
The Antelope Valley Project will offer recreation area along the waterway, an East Downtown Park with fountains, amphitheater and plaza and expand Trago Park.
It will build major roads and bridges and open a wide seam in Lincoln’s core for development.
Malone will be in middle of it.
Excavation will start later this year for the channel of waterway from Vine to R streets, along Trago Park and past the Malone Center, Wullschleger said.
Later on, a major north-south arterial, tentatively called Antelope Valley Boulevard, will be built along 19th Street. Drive Vine Street, and a person can see a fence with reflective striping where the road will be.
Signs of change
Construction recently wrapped on Liberty Village, a block of new homes from Vine to U streets and 23rd and 24th streets.
The closely spaced 16 single-family homes and four townhomes make up the first housing development of Antelope Valley.
Fifteen of the 16 homes and one townhome have been sold, said Fernando Pages, developer and owner of Brighton Construction.
Covenants attached to the properties require owners to live in the homes themselves.
“The point was to do a great project that would remain a great project,” he said. “In perpetuity.”
Homes ranged from $116,000 to $134,000. They were spaced close together, in an urban row-house-like design, because one aim was to ensure affordability, Pages said.
“We have families there from Bangladesh to Argentina,” Pages said. “It’s the most international spot in Lincoln. It’s a great place to watch the World Cup.”
That bears out a trend in Malone. It’s still one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, and many residents are foreign-born.
Census figures from 2000 show the minority population at 43.5 percent, compared with 12.2 percent overall in Lincoln. The largest minority group in the area was Asian.
More housing similar to Liberty Village is planned along Antelope Valley, Wullschleger said.
“We would like to see those kind of housing concepts and more density,” he said. “The area next to the creek and roadway will be a desirable part.”
Elsewhere in Malone, “There isn’t much land available,” he said.
NeighborWorks is “on the lookout” to redevelop lots with dilapidated homes and rehabilitate problem properties in the area, said its director, Terry Uland.
“If we move forward with the (Antelope Valley) vision, there will be more choices in housing and a better mix of income there,” he said.
Differing opinions
The changes don’t sit well with all Malone neighbors.
Ed Patterson and Barb Morley own three houses in the way of the Antelope Valley Project and have major concerns.
“We don’t feel that what they have planned is bad,” Morley said. “We just feel that it could be much better for the money spent.”
They were given the option of demolishing or moving the homes. They likely will move all of them, Patterson said, and keep them in Malone. They found lots with help from NeighborWorks.
Tall trees and Trago Park border the houses now, but at least one will be moved to a smaller lot, one next to three-story apartment building.
That’s hard for Patterson to swallow.
“They want to tear down the good stuff to put up crap,” he said.
People who care about historic renovation want to keep a house in its original spot, he said.
“It’s not a moneymaker, it’s an avocation,” Patterson said.
The couple has been active in the Malone Neighborhood Association, one of two neighborhood associations that have staked out the same territory.
The newer Hawley Area Association claims mostly the residential part of Malone, which stretches from 22nd to 27th streets, O Street to just south of Y Street.
The associations split, in part, because of differing opinions on the city’s redevelopment efforts.
Hawley was more supportive of plans, while leaders of the Malone Neighborhood Association, among them Patterson and Morley, were skeptical.
Peggy Struwe, president of Hawley, said she sees signs of progress in the area already.
Vine Street was widened and has landscaped medians, wide sidewalks and retaining walls because of an effort later absorbed by the Antelope Valley Project.
“We’re very happy with the Vine widening,” she said. “It’s cut down on a lot of people cutting through the neighborhood,” she said.
The neighborhood has seen the city reinvest in North 27th Street, and now has a Walgreens, Alps grocery and People’s Health Center nearby, Struwe pointed out, plus ethnic cafes, groceries and bakeries.
Struwe and her husband bought an 1893 two-family home on North 25th Street and turned it into Hawley Bed and Breakfast. They welcomed their first guests in March.
The bed and breakfast is across the street from Christ Temple Mission Church, which will soon open its doors again after a $1.25 million renovation saved it from the wrecking ball.
“It’s kind of exciting,” she said.
Struwe said the Hawley group does speak out on some issues related to Antelope Valley, such as the density of homes in Liberty Village.
“We’re concerned about parking,” she said. Parking and vacancies in the rentals are the neighborhood’s main challenges.
She also is on a committee to study the redesign of Trago Park, part of the Antelope Valley Project.
“It will take awhile but there will be a lot of neat things going on here,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to walk down the street and sit by a water feature and get an ice cream cone? That could happen.”
Malone Center
The big ditch, as it’s jokingly called, will flow near Malone Center director T.J. McDowell Jr.’s office.
He said the Antelope Valley project wouldn’t necessarily affect the center. But he hopes it does.
The Malone Center will flank the waterway and redevelopment efforts could give the center a chance, and maybe some leverage, to improve its facilities.
McDowell said the center’s 1982 building has heating, cooling and structural issues and a design that is ill-suited for its current use.
“We want to be good neighbors so we want to spruce up our space, too,” McDowell said.
Trago Park will expand to the south as part of the project, and its renovation is set for 2008. Malone Center leaders hope the city will work with them to update the center as well, McDowell said.
“We think Antelope Valley will be good for this area,” he said. “And we at Malone would like to stay and be a part of that draw. It could help us serve more people.”
Those who remember
Joan McWilliams, Malone resident since 1948, says expanding Trago Park, building a new pool there and updating the Malone Center would give the neighborhood needed recreation.
“It’s not a black community center, it’s a cultural center for everybody,” she said.
She doesn’t care for the new closely spaced homes in Malone, but thinks the neighborhood is looking more attractive, she said.
McWilliams’ feelings about the 1970s Northeast Radial project are still sore. That project, she said, was a “sham.” The Malone community was misrepresented then, she said.
Her family cleared out of their house to make way for the Radial, and only a few year later, an apartment building was built on the vacant lot.
Ed Wimes grew up in Malone in the late 1940s to the middle 1960s.
He hoped the Antelope Valley Project will help produce “great partnerships” among the Malone Center, the university and city.
“We will have more people to work with, more youth. It’s a great great opportunity for us,” he said.
The neighborhood “has weathered many storms,” said Ada Robinson, a Malone Center volunteer.
She thinks the area is looking up.
“It gives your heart a good feeling to see the sold signs and know people want to be part of this neighborhood,” she said.
“It’s come full circle,” she said. “It was predominantly black and segregated and now it’s very intermingled and it’s beautiful.”
What’s ahead
“You’re going to see downtown moving east to 27th Street,” Pages said. And the property in Malone will become desirable, he said.
Pages is not afraid to say it.
He predicts the gentrification of Malone will happen, maybe 10 years in the future.
The scenic elements of Antelope Valley — the water features, East Downtown Park and eventually, the commercial development— and the proximity to the university, restaurants and entertainment will draw people to Malone.
And that development can be done in way that is compatible with Malone’s history, Pages said.
“The good thing about Antelope Valley is that it has enough focus that you will see real change in these neighborhoods,” he said. “It won’t be just some new paint here and a new fence there.”
Reach Kendra Waltke at 473-7303 or kwaltke@journalstar.com.
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Skyy--Marcella Whitebear wrote on August 25, 2007 6:16 pm:
Editor's response to Skyy wrote on August 25, 2007 6:32 pm:
Kellahnitta Bradley(Belcher) wrote on October 24, 2007 5:24 pm:
Peggy Struwe wrote on June 25, 2008 11:18 am: