A $1.6 million grant will help Norfolk study the removal of an I-264 ramp that divided a community

When Interstate 264 was built in the 1960s, a highway access ramp helped cut a Norfolk neighborhood off from commercial downtown areas.

The decision isolated a public housing development from jobs and crucial social and economic connections, critics have said.

As Norfolk is now embarking on a major revitalization of the St. Paul’s section of the city — centered on Tidewater Gardens in particular — officials are wondering what they can do about the I-264 on-ramp at the center of the divide.

Is the ramp still needed? Can we move it? Can we perhaps eliminate it altogether?

Those possibilities and more will be studied with a $1.6 million grant the city recently received under a “reconnecting communities” federal grant.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, were on hand at a Norfolk church, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, to tout the new grant.

The second-floor classroom at St. Mary’s church school served as a good vantage point for the problem — with Norfolk’s bustling downtown visible through highway ramp structures. “We’ve got communities like this all over the commonwealth, all over the country,” Warner said.

The St. Paul’s neighborhood, he said, was “in many ways the epicenter” of people getting isolated by 1960s highway and redevelopment projects.

The goal of the new grant program, Warner said, is “trying to make sure those communities — that are oftentimes communities of color — that were divided by highways and other structures, that we would start to try to build that reconnection.”

Scott, for his part, told the crowd that the reconnect project — part of the Biden administration’s recent $1 trillion infrastructure bill — “was just a brilliant idea because it tries to reverse the damage done in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.”

Aside from the disconnection created by the I-264 project, he said, Interstate 664 also “went right through the Black community in Newport News,” while Interstate 95 went through Jackson Ward, a historic Black section of Richmond.

According to press reports, Richmond earlier this month received a $1.3 million federal grant — similar to Norfolk’s — to study how to fix the damage from the interstate.

“We want to see what we can do to reconnect those communities,” Scott said. “It’s one of those things in there (the infrastructure bill) along with public transit, railroad money, airports. But this is one little project that I think will make a lot of difference.”

While changing the I-264 on-ramps would be costly, Norfolk City Manager Chip Filer said the $1.6 million grant will be used to hire consultants to study the transportation issues surrounding the ramps.

The study will be focused on the Market Street ramp, Exit 9.

That on-ramp to westbound I-264 can’t simply be removed because “there are plenty of cars that use it” to get onto the interstate every day, Filer said following the St. Mary’s meeting.

“This is still a heavily used ramp onto 264 in the afternoon,” he said. “So the major question is, if we are committed to removing this ramp, we still have traffic, and we have to figure out the flow.”

There’s another I-264 on-ramp to the south of Market Street, Filer said, but it’s unclear whether that would be enough. “We have over 50,000 people working down here in a given day,” he said of the downtown area.

He said he’s not as worried about access to I-264 eastbound because there are other access points from Waterside Drive.

The new grant funding, Filer said, will “fully study the transportation system” in the area to figure out what traffic alterations can be made to give nearby residents access to Norfolk’s downtown while still ensuring efficient traffic flow in the area.

The grant follows a major federal investment into the St. Paul’s area four years ago under the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative.

In May 2019, President Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, announced that Newport News and Norfolk would each receive $30 million in federal money to revitalize distressed areas.

While Norfolk’s allocation is going to St. Paul’s, Newport News’ money is going to the area around Ridley Circle and Marshall Courts in the Southeast Community.

Father James Curran, the pastor at St. Mary’s, said at Monday’s meeting with Warner and Scott that when he first arrived at the church 11 years ago, he noticed a good golfer could practically drive a ball into a window at Nordstrom’s at the MacArthur Center.

But to get to the mall, he said, there was no easy way to get there from where he was.

“There was this image of this really high-end, exclusive department store ... and they did not want us to get there very easily,” Curran said.

But Tidewater Gardens, he said, has always been a strong community despite the disconnect.

Lots of low-income homes have been torn down near St. Mary’s, with much of the new development to be built in their stead, to be called the Kindred neighborhood.

“I hope that when all this is finished, we can maintain that sense of identity and that sense of community,” Curran said. “Because it was impressive, and it was beautiful.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com