Augusta revitalization project interests musician

The house on Pine Street is a mess -- a hole in the porch ceiling, siding boards exposed by peeling paint, vines overtaking one side, broken glass and plywood-covered windows.

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Rainier Ehrhardt/Staff

Jazz trombonist and composer Wycliffe Gordon has spent the past decade in New York but plans to come home to Augusta. He is in talks with the city's Housing and Community Development Department about purchasing a century-old Pine Street house.

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Rainier Ehrhardt/Staff

The Heritage Pine development includes plans for more than 40 newly built and restored homes, along with about a dozen duplexes, on Pine, Florence and 11th streets and Laney-Walker Boulevard.

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Corey Perrine/File

Two new two-story houses on Pine Street are on the market. Chosen partly for its proximity to the black community's old business district, Pine Street is considered the first stage of the city's Laney-Walker and Bethlehem Neighborhood Action Plan.

It's not the kind of place one would expect a local music celebrity to move into for a six-figure purchase price.

But that's what might be about to happen, and in many ways this house could prove just as pivotal in kicking off a projected $99.3 million revitalization of the Laney-Walker and Bethlehem neighborhoods as the pristine model home and two newly built houses for sale farther up the block.

Nationally renowned jazz trombonist and composer Wycliffe Gordon confirmed he is in talks with the city's Housing and Community Development Department about rehabbing a 109-year-old bungalow, one of a select handful on Pine Street that haven't been razed.

Gordon, who grew up in Waynesboro, Ga., graduated from Butler High School. He went on to back trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, front globe-trotting ensembles of his own and record 16 solo albums and about 70 others as a co-leader or sideman.

Like James Brown and Terri Gibbs, Gordon is coming home to Augusta. He spent the past decade in New York City teaching music at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. No deals have been signed with the city yet, but he has met with architects and designers and said he fully intends to move his base of operations from a Harlem, N.Y., brownstone apartment to the Pine Street house, which would be his primary residence, complete with a practice studio.

"It's in terrible shape," Gordon said. "But I went in that house. They have 12-foot ceilings. They have pocket doors.

"It's going to be a restoration. They can make it what I want it to be."

Keen to the value of a celebrity endorsement, Housing and Community Development Director Chester Wheeler has dropped Gordon's name at least twice in public appearances plugging the neighborhood revitalization plan -- first at the model home ribbon cutting in April, then at an Urban Redevelopment Agency meeting in June. On the latter occasion, it was said that a house had been pre-sold to Gordon.

Gordon said he knew his involvement would be used as a marketing point, and he doesn't mind. He just doesn't want people knowing his address.

Pine Street, chosen for its proximity to the black community's old central business district and its proliferation of acquirable properties, is envisioned as the genesis for the city's ambitious Laney-Walker and Bethlehem Neighborhood Action Plan, which is to receive $37.5 million over the next 50 years through a $1-a-night hotel fee. In a vote tying it to funding of the downtown trade, exhibit and event center, the Augusta Commission finally approved bonding last year to raise the inner-city money faster, starting with an $8 million taxable revenue bond sold in June.

Wheeler and Laney-Walker/Bethlehem consultant Jesse Wiles, the president of Asset Property Disposition Inc., have said the overall investment in the neighborhoods, including private money and other funding sources, could reach nearly $100 million.

The plan is for revitalization to move outward from Pine Street. But first, a development named Heritage Pine has to take off. Conceptual renderings presented in meetings show about two dozen new homes, 20 restored homes and a dozen duplexes on Pine, Florence and 11th streets and Laney-Walker Boulevard.

The two two-story houses already built are on the market for $138,000 and $143,500, prices that have raised eyebrows considering the state of the neighborhood, the recession and the poor state of the housing market. The city is offering incentives such as down payment and payment assistance and education on obtaining credit.

No purchase contracts have been signed, Assistant Director of Housing Hawthorne Welcher Jr. said, but there's been a lot of interest in Heritage Pine. Gordon's involvement should open some eyes, he said.

"It just shows you the caliber of personnel that we're dealing with," Welcher said. "It says a lot for our project, for our product, and for the belief in this department to get it done."

Gordon said he was brought into the mix by First Bank Mortgage Vice President and Loan Officer Tim Key, a fellow trombonist. He said he couldn't say how much he might buy the rehabbed house for because the extent of remodeling and redesign hasn't been sorted out yet, but he's hoping it will be between $150,000 and $300,000.

The 43-year-old musician acknowledged that he could buy a house in the suburbs for that amount, but he's not interested in that. He's lived in west Augusta before, and though he liked the area, he didn't like the way people kept to themselves. He said he wants to be in a place like the neighborhood in Waynesboro where he lived as a child, where neighbors interact and socialize.

"I don't want to live in a place where I feel isolated," he said. "Right now, I want to live around people."

As for crime and safety concerns, he doesn't buy it. New York's Harlem once had a bad reputation, but in the 1990s it saw a major revival through gentrification. At some point, Gordon said, he hopes he can persuade his girlfriend, singer Niki Harris, and her daughter to move in, too.

"If what happened in Harlem can happen here, that's a great thing," Gordon said.

Gordon said he'll keep the apartment in Harlem, much as he's kept rental units in the Laney-Walker neighborhood over the years as quiet places to stay while he was in town.

His full-time return to Augusta is part of a return to his roots. He wants to spend more time with family, and he wants to start a professional big band. He's also mulling another major investment in his hometown, doing something -- he's not sure what, yet -- in conjunction with the Augusta Symphony and the Miller Theater restoration to put the Garden City on the jazz map.

Worldwide touring will be more logistically difficult, he said, being based in Augusta instead of New York -- but so be it.

"I'd just have to start saying no to stuff," Gordon said. "It's that simple."