Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ As a teenager in the mid 60’s, I heard the death rattle of my hometown Germantown aka G-town, a real historic neighborhood in Philadelphia. Germantown in the 50’s to early 60’s was a mixed white and black neighborhood made up of educated middle and upper income working people. It was an outstanding place to grow up at least until the early 60’s when two “turning points” in Germantown occurred. The first was planting high-rise public housing developments in Germantown bringing large pockets of poverty, gangs, drugs, and crime to the neighborhood from the North Philly. Also at work were greedy real estate brokers who practiced “blockbusting” an approach to acquiring real estates cheap by spreading rumors that “ghetto” folks from the North Philly were moving next store. Block by block these realtors destroyed the more affluent sections of Germantown. Both of these events stampeded people out of a stable-educated racially mixed neighborhood. Overnight Germantown became the poster child for “urban flight”. The public schools in G-town went downhill and dangerous. When the schools go bad, the neighborhood follows. People pack up and leave just like they’re doing now in the Bury.
The Queen Lane High-Rise Housing Development built in the 50’s and “imploded” by the Philadelphia Housing Authority:
Germantown was a place where the Continental Congress once hid out from the advancing Redcoats. George Washington didn’t sleep there–he lived there for a time. Germantown would blind Salisbury with its history and its actual historic buildings. But when the city’s urban planning experimented by dropping high-rise public housing that turned into dangerous tenements and scam relators tried their hand at “blockbusting” to buy up homes cheap–rocketed G-town overnight into “tenderloin” status. G-town never recovered. It went crime-ridden and died as a livable community.
My hood’s major shopping area on Chelten and Germantown Avenues, once crowded with shoppers and energized with department stores like Penny’s, Sears (Hey, I once met Vincent Price there showing the “Vincent Price art collection” at Sears), Rowell’s, F.W. Woolworth’s, and dozens of once successful merchants were gone. Out of there! Those once thriving businesses were boarded up and padlocked, victims of dedicated shoplifters and vandalism. For sale signs dominated the windows yet to be broken by G-town’s roving rock throwers.
The neighborhood packed up and left. Within a few years the retailers suffered from incredible pilferage and were forced to close down. The people who supported those stores moved on to safer places. The business district in G-town closed down at night fall because people feared to come out of their houses. Break-in artists, car thieves, burglars, junkies, vandals, and gangs were everywhere. Murders and “beats” happened too frequently.
G-Town:
Germantown achieved tenderloin status, becoming an incubator for violent crime with gangs like Dogtown, Haines Street, Sommerville, Sleepy Hollow, and C & M. Old heads used “smack” (heroin), Meth became a growing industry, and coke sales sprouted in the 60’s. Prostitution hung out in East G-town and on sidestreets. Crime was everywhere. G-town turned completely dangerous at nightfall. Before long G-town was an extraordinary tangle of mean streets and a breeding ground for world-class boxers like Meldrick Taylor and Bernard Hopkins (B-Hop). Poverty shapes a different kind of character–a survivor character. In so many ways, Salisbury engenders memories of Germantown a few years before it abruptly morphed into a pure unalloyed “badass”.
By the late sixties G-town would mostly be unrecognizable to its middle and upper-class expatriates gone to higher ground in safer parts of the city and the burbs. When I returned after a 3 plus years stint as supervisor in open-pit copper mine in New Mexico, I reacted like I had a major traumatic brain injury. “What is this place? Did I take a wrong exit?” My hometown was a grim shell of itself. G-town was remodeled by urban flight and decay. My neighborhood packed up and left. 
The middle and upper income folks “booked for the burbs” and safety. Small pockets of gentrification and urban homesteading failed to take root. Germantown simply became too dangerous. Construction materials and pipes disappeared. Trucks were vandalized not only for construction materials, but for truck parts. Half-renovated houses had their doors kicked in or stolen. Activists for the elderly and the poor, in defense of “affordable” housing, were said to practice strategic arson. Gentrifiers were robbed and mugged. A spot for renters and squatters, G-town was mostly badlands by the mid 70’s.
Some early signs for Germantown’s drift toward the bottom came when it’s once prosperous shopping district began to be swamped with vacancies and projects never seeming to get past sawhorses in the graffitied windows: “KOOL EARL HITS N’ QUITS.” Empty boarded up stores dominated this ghostscape overnight. Thoughts of gentrification became a decreasing dot in the rearview window as primal survival made more sense. G-town’s 14th Police District station house became a blur of activity at night. Purse snatchers were getting mugged by other purse snatchers. People triple locked their doors at night. Windows sprouted bars. This once prosperous Philly neighborhood did a presto-chango. The empty spaces of the shopping areas were plugged in by small Asian convenience stores and greasy chicken joints with plexiglass shielded counters. The convenience store owners gutted it out during the day and fled at night to safer environs elsewhere in the city or in New Jersey. Olde English 800 and King Cobra bottles in brown paper bags sat empty on street corners. Panhandlers swarmed passersbys like in the grimmer reaches of Calcutta.
Whenever I hear Bruce Springsteen’s song “My Hometown” I get flashbacks of G-town.
Today, many parts of Salisbury are in decay. East Innes, a block from Main doesn’t look so cozy. Vacancies abound. Projects are stalled on Main. Most days, our downtown shopping area looks ghostly with an infrequent pedestrian save for lunchtime. Occasionally a car passes. Where did everyone go? A few people trickle out of the Sidewalk Deli or hurriedly slug down their chili dogs and dawgs at Haps. Any shopping action seems to be in the Tinseltown, Wal-Mart, and Wallace Commons areas where the big box stores do okay.
Somehow our downtown doesn’t begin to match its overly radiant and confabulated description in the Salisbury, NC entry in Wikipedia. Downtown seems to have lost its spark save for the alternative reality created by its small but vocal fringe.
Drive around Salisbury–the REAL Salisbury. Those destitute areas many avoid out of a self-protective sense. Our “awful corners” forgotten about and avoided and denied by polite society. Do it. It’s an adventure. And that adventure can import itself to any other area of the city in a stolen vehicle within minutes.
What are the key indicators of urban flight and decline in Salisbury?
Many homes on the market. Many middle and upper income folks are gradually selling their homes and move elsewhere. In a number of real estate data bases well over a thousand houses are up for sale. Vacancies and for sale signs are crowding the landscape. Over in the historic area people are less likely to put out their signs and instead advertise only at real estate agencies. The glut of homes for sale is a large indicator of urban flight.
The problem of safety. The perception grows that many Salisbury neighborhoods are dangerous. Violent crime and property crime is prevalent. Salisbury stands toward the top of the heap on the per capita violent FBI crime databases for North Carolina. The crime pages of the Salisbury Post are jamming. Night is not a good time to be out and about in many areas. Break-ins happen over in the upscale historic district. More and more folks are acquiring guns for home protection. We read of car jacks, stick-ups, street muggings, bank hold-ups, murders, car break-ins, rapes, and oh-my-god, a freaking train robbery.
Middle and upper classes shrinking and poverty at 25%. According to statistics Salisbury’s middle and upper classes are shrinking while poverty is growing. At the last census Salisbury’s poverty has grown to 25%. This shrinkage and growth is due to the search for better job prospects, safer environments, and the poor performance and safety concerns of our city public schools.
Our population grows older. Census stats show an increase of seniors in our population and a decrease among the young. Our Medicare and Medicaid numbers are up.
Youth flight. Young educated people are moving away for jobs or to fulfill their desire for a better lifestyle, safety, and a more stimulating environment.
Average income is dropping. When folks move out of the area they take their higher incomes with them. The poor grow in number. A truly bad sign for Salisbury’s future.
Unpaid mortgages and taxes. Many residents are not keeping up with their mortgages and taxes. Foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies are steady and only slowed because lending institutions became overwhelmed with foreclosed properties they can’t unload. Property tax delinquencies are another indicator of economic decline. More people are renting single family homes or are involved in rent to own schemes. Increasing property code violations. All indicators of a downward slide. In some forcibly annexed neighborhoods, according to the GIS, up to 75% of the inhabitants are behind on their city taxes.
Major city buildings going unoccupied or falling into long standing disrepair. Some major buildings on Main Street stand vacant or are stalled projects in need of renovation or repair. The decaying Empire Hotel remains in its pristine flophouse form. A rotting bat sanctuary, the Empire Hotel has gone unsold for years.
Economic segregation. Economic segregation exists where decaying and poverty ridden neighborhoods sit only a street or two away from affluent neighborhoods.
Major land areas go undeveloped. Major land areas stagnate, growing weeds or becoming public dumping grounds.
Badlands/no fly zones. Areas of decay, boarded up gothic castles, and abandoned and burned out buildings. For Sale and No Trespassing signs dot neighborhoods. Many of our hoods could recreate classic backdrops of the video game: Grand Theft Auto. Poverty areas exist where people fear to tread, even during the day light hours. Virtual wastelands where violent crime and hit n’ run petty crime abound. Heroin, meth, and crack houses
The Fibrant Debacle and its impact on city services. Fiber optic gamble accounts for millions in debt and 7.6 million so far being siphoned from the our city’s water and sewer funds. No money has been paid back on these loans nor does the fiber optic debacle show any signs of breaking even. Cutbacks in city programs are evident and a large number of city employees were let go, including police and firemen. Not good.
Declining schools. Students graduate who can’t read and write or who need remedial help when they get to community colleges. Poor performance on the NC “Ready Report. SAT scores dropping in the high schools. Reported gangs, behavioral problems, and bullying add to parental perception of a dangerous educational environment and spark urban flight by concerned parents.
Large chain stores and chain restaurants seldom venturing into Salisbury. This lack of important chain store and chain restaurant growth may reflect our lowered median income, our growing taxes and fees, our byzantine city regulations, and anti-business attitude hereabouts.
Areas of the city can be revived if solutions are worked. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden were rebuilt. Solutions exist — many never considered yet. Salisbury is at a very precarious tipping point. Is it may have already passed the tipping point. People are leaving. You never want to hide what’s going on. That is a killer.
Germantown, Philadelphia in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germantown,_Philadelphia
Salisbury’s Undeniable Statistics:
http://rowanfreepress.com/salisbury-nc-statistics/