White City rides tide of change
Family center rises as renewal project By PETER WONG WHITE CITY -- A larger Rogue Family Center for social services is on the rise, and a larger county library branch is on the drawing board for what will become the center of Jackson County's largest unincorporated community. Together with a proposed training center for firefighters, they will be the most visible symbols of an urban renewal program that has invested $13 million in public works improvements in the past seven years -- and plans $7 million more in the next couple of years. The Rogue Family Center is scheduled for completion this summer, and the larger library branch -- now being designed -- will follow on a 40-acre site on Avenue C. "It's going to help a lot with the sense of community in White City," said Dan Beck, a resident for 12 years. White City developed from Camp White, the World War II Army training camp. The physical changes brought about by the urban renewal district, which county commissioners formed in 1991, caused intangible but equally important changes in how people viewed their community. "When some of these improvements happened, people started taking pride in their community," said Beck, who sits on the urban renewal advisory committee and the White City Area Planning Commission. "We saw things happen here through the White City Community Improvement Association and the urban renewal district. They caused people to turn around."
Bill Jones, principal of White City Elementary School for 21 years and a former member of the urban renewal advisory committee, said the first project in 1993 was the catalyst. "As they broke ground to pave Division Road, it was the start of White City getting rid of a kind of cloud it carried around," said Jones, who became superintendent last year of the Eagle Point School District, which includes White City. "As the streets were paved and sidewalks put in, people began to take care of their yards. There was a pride shown that had not been there before. There is still work to do, but the people who lived there at the beginning and watched are supportive of urban renewal."Urban renewal bonds are repaid through tax-increment financing, which uses the taxes generated by increased property values to pay off what is borrowed through bonds for public improvements. Once all the bonds are repaid, the higher values are put on the countywide rolls."When we started this program, property values were going down, no doubt about it," said Cathy Conlow, executive director of the county urban renewal agency. Almost $7 million in such bonds has paid for streets, water and sewer lines, and other improvements for neighborhoods. More is planned. "On the residential side, it helps bring property up to urban standards," said Curt Burrill, chairman of the White City Planning Commission. "It creates more areas for affordable housing for the workers employed in the industrial plants here. Average prices of homes have doubled in the past decade -- from $40,000 to $80,000 or $90,000 -- but they remain below averages elsewhere in the Rogue Valley. Conlow said a joint venture has led to development of Clear Sky Estates, the first residential subdivision of its type in White City in 15 years. It was the result of work by the agency, Freel and Associates, and Malot Construction of Central Point. Burrill said pending applications for zone changes indicate that other residential and commercial developments are in the works. Jones said the improvements in housing have led to increased stability and a dramatic decrease in annual student turnover rates, which reached around 50 percent. "As people grew out of mobile home parks and moved into other housing, often they had to leave this community," he said. "But as they find more and more neighborhoods here desirable for families, they are staying -- and that is positive." Beck said White City continues to have problems with older housing, although Conlow said nearly $1 million has been spent in federal block grants for housing repairs for low- and moderate-income households. "You have to think about what would have happened if we had let it go," said Jackson County Commissioner Sue Kupillas, who worked with residents to form the White City Community Improvement Association in 1989. "The physical and social impacts of that neglect would have been negative -- and they would have affected everyone in this valley."About $6 million in urban renewal bonds has been spent on public works improvements that benefit new or refurbished industrial plants. Kupillas said the original urban renewal plan envisioned a limited use of bonds for such projects. "The change we made was that instead of just creating incentives for new businesses to come in, we would create them for existing industries to upgrade their plants if it would result in increasing the number of good jobs they already have there," she said. The bonds paid for improvements that retained two companies -- Balteau Standard (now GEC Alsthom), which makes transformers, and the 3M plant (now owned by Eastman Kodak), which makes X-ray film for medical imaging -- before they helped attract new manufacturers."This (urban renewal) is a tool for economic development," Burrill said. "I hope that the Rogue Valley can look at the jobs that will be created on a higher scale. It gives bigger companies a competitive opportunity to site plants here and create good-paying jobs for the community."Some other benefits of urban renewal have been less tangible but still evident. A relatively small amount in bonds went to develop Burns Park, named after longtime resident Judi Burns, on Division Road. A community effort for a proposed youth center there led to the establishment of a Boys and Girls Club. Beck, who just completed two years as board president of the Jackson County Boys and Girls Club, said the original intent was to develop activities for teenagers. "But it turns out that if you do not catch them when they are younger, it's difficult to bring them into activities as teenagers," he said. Beck said White City still lacks sufficient activities for teenagers outside school. According to the 1990 Census, 35.3 percent of the estimated 6,000 people in White City were under age 20 -- the county average was 27.7 percent -- yet the community had only the former YMCA swimming pool for recreation outside its schools. Voters within the district agreed in 1995 to tax themselves to continue community policing through the sheriff's department. The vote was 2 to 1 in favor. "That is unheard of," Beck said. "The public perception is probably way behind the facts, which are that White City has moved toward the point of being a progressive community. People are looking out for their neighbors and against crime." Beck said much has been done by people like himself, who got involved in the past five to 10 years. "We had a lot of good people in White City who did not have an outlet for their voices until we started having these opportunities for community involvement," he said. Beck and his wife have three foster children in addition to their four children. "We are getting limited in the time we can do things in the community," he said. "So we need other people to step in and take their turns." |
