A Wealth of Opportunity But For Whom?

Over seven decades, Norfolk leveraged federal tax breaks to remake itself. Now the Virginia city is using them to demolish its historically Black neighborhoods

- By Caleb Melby

The contours of inequality in Norfolk, Va., a city of 240,000-plus people at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, are clearly visible from atop the 26-story Dominion Tower. The tallest building in townhouses its economic development office, a choice spot for officials to show off their city and to encourage visitors to envision its future.

Look west, and you see a 300-room Hilton, a hockey arena, corporate offices for PNC Financial and payment processor ADP, restaurants and bars, a light rail station, and a 1 million-square-foot mall. To the east is St. Paul’s, a 200-acre area that’s home to three public housing developments dating from the 1950s. The pitch-roofed, two-story, cinder-block houses are arrayed in neat rows, like barracks. The two sides of the city are divided by a highway offramp that shoots suburban shoppers right into the parking garage of the MacArthur Center shopping mall and a six-lane boulevard that keeps St. Paul’s residents, mostly Black and mostly poor, a world apart from the downtown.

Jared Chalk, the director of economic development, admits the detrimental effects. “We’re working with the landlord to open up the mall a bit,” he says, surveying the view on a dreary February morning. Chalk and other city officials say they’ve tried to correct for decades of inequity with jobs and education programs. Critics, seeing a dearth of local businesses and jobs, plus streets that frequently flood, say they haven’t tried hard enough.