Don Gately ‘retires’ to become a full-time builder of homes — and dreams — in Grier Heights

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GRIER HEIGHTS – Don Gately thought he was retired when he left Bank of America in 2001.

He thought he was retired when he left Lat Purser & Associates commercial real estate firm in 2007.

But today, at the ripe old retirement age of 65, Gately is working harder than ever, as executive director of the nonprofit Crossroads Corp. for Affordable Housing and Community Development, on building new homes to revitalize Grier Heights, a historically black, middle-class neighborhood in decline.

Founded in 2008 by the church Gately attends, Myers Park Presbyterian, Crossroads works solely in Grier Heights, between Randolph and Monroe roads about three miles from uptown.

Among several other programs, Crossroads – along with nonprofit partner Center for Community Self-Help of Durham and for-profit builder JCB Urban of Charlotte – has bought 36 lots in Grier Heights to establish the new Elizabeth Heights subdivision.

We caught up with Gately on the site of one of the first eight homes to be built in Elizabeth Heights.

How did Crossroads get started? Crossroads was formed by Myers Park Presbyterian in July 2008. We were one of the results of a big capital campaign by the church that garnered $30 million, most of which went to a major expansion of the church campus. But we used part of the money to partner with this community to help the residents realize their dreams of a revitalized Grier Heights.

Why Grier Heights? Why not Cherry? Or any of Charlotte’s other historically black neighborhoods? So many other neighborhoods had already been successful in revitalizing. In this neighborhood, several efforts, with public and with private funds, have been started but without a lot of impact. We want to make a long-term commitment to the neighborhood to stabilize it systematically over the long haul.

Just last week there was a fatal shooting in Grier Heights. Crime and violence are two of the challenges in working with a neighborhood like this. The police, in the 4½ years we have been working here, say they have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of service calls here. Unfortunately, this year we’ve had three fatalities. But crime in general is down.

Has the housing downturn slowed progress on Elizabeth Heights? We started acquiring land in 2009. It’s taken since then to put together grants and financing. Once we got that in place, we broke ground. These are spec houses, and we were penalized, for lack of a better word, by the housing market. But I think this is unique to any other housing development in Charlotte. $170,000 is the cost to build these homes, including the land, and we’ll be selling them for $115,000-$125,000, thanks to the HUD grant. We get operating support from a number of foundations and other sources of funding, including ongoing support from the church. The commitment to date from the church is $1.8 million, and could grow. The church also supports a lot of other efforts to revitalize Grier Heights, including helping to build Habitat for Humanity homes.

How is Crossroads different from Habitat? This is significantly different from Habitat, which we of course support and respect. These homes are at a slightly higher price point. We target buyers to families with incomes that are 80 percent or less of the Charlotte area median household income level, which is about $50,000 for a family, slightly higher than the typical Habitat buyer.

How does the Crossroads/Self-Help/JCB Urban partnership work? We’re the developer, Self-Help is the builder and Jim Burbank at JCB Urban is the general contractor. Bu the bottom line is that Crossroads and Self-Help are partners in this and Jim is our contractor. But he’s also a partner, and given us endless hours of advice on architecture and building.

When do these first houses go on sale? We take it live in the next several weeks, and hope to have homes completed by the end of February or mid-March, and then we’ll take it from there on the next phase of homes. Helen Adams Realty is listing them, with Realtor Curt Seifart, who also goes to Myers Park Presbyterian, as our agent. He’s been really, really enthusiastic. Our hope is for it to be a mixed-income development. We’re starting out with this first phase of affordable homes, hoping that it jump-starts a larger revitalization effort that would bring commercial builders in. We’re still a little bit at the mercy of the housing market. But the location couldn’t be better, near uptown, and it’s a beautiful neighborhood right in the middle of some upper-income neighborhoods like Eastover, where I live.

There’s always a danger with re-gentrification that you’ll push out the current residents. We’re making sure our homes are done with justice. We’re hoping that people who now rent in Grier Heights will buy these houses, to keep the population stable. We don’t want to push people out. In fact, we want to try to bring back people who moved out because of the housing stock decline and the crime.

What have gotten out of this personally?

If you’re passionate enough about something, you get help from a lot of people and you do the best you can.