Once facing demolition, former west Charlotte grocery store to be brought back to life
When Henry Ellis stepped inside the old Jim Patterson’s Grocery building on Booker Avenue in west Charlotte, he was reminded of his upbringing in the Jim Crow South.
Growing up in a close-knit neighborhood in rural Virginia, Ellis and his family frequented a similar grocery store during a time when it was dangerous for Black people to shop outside their community. So when he heard that a local preservation group was trying to find a new owner for the Washington Heights store, he decided to stop by.
Six months later, Ellis, 73, and his son, Dr. Todd Ellis, 50, purchased the building, and plan to bring back its legacy of Black entrepreneurship and community.
The Ellis Legacy Group, their company, acquired the property in December for $143,000 from the nonprofit Preserve Mecklenburg. As part of an agreement signed with the transaction, the firm will not tear down any portion of the building, and Preserve Mecklenburg will approve any material changes to the exterior.
This spring, the store was up for sale and at risk of being demolished. With it, another piece of Charlotte’s Black history would have been gone. Now, Henry and Todd Ellis want to restore it and create a gathering place in the Washington Heights neighborhood.
“This was a safe haven, this was a place we could go to get what we needed to survive,” Todd Ellis said of the building. “Let’s revitalize this, renovate it — make it serve a purpose like it did in the past.”
A ‘historic artifact’
Jim Patterson opened his grocery store in the 1920s, during a time in the city’s history when segregation limited Black residents to running just a few types of businesses, such as barber shops, legal practices and grocery stores.
The property changed hands several times over the next few decades, until the mid-1990s. By the time lifelong Washington Heights resident Dawn Neal started shopping there, it was known as the “Little Booker” store.
Neal, now 58, used to stop at the store in the mornings before work and pick up items such as cigarettes, bread and eggs for her mother. Hyder Massey owned the store at the time, she said, and he was dependable and connected to the neighborhood.
“If someone had to come and they needed something, if they didn’t have the money, he didn’t turn them away,” she said.
At one time, there were more than 40 Black-owned grocery stores in Charlotte, local historian Dan Morrill said. Now, the Washington Heights store is one of the few surviving buildings of its kind in the city.
Morrill became aware of the property before he retired as consulting director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, and had approached the previous owner several times about designating the building as a historic landmark. But the owner was apprehensive about going through a months-long process that requires city approval, said Morrill, who is now an administrative consultant for Preserve Mecklenburg.
But when Morrill saw a for-sale sign in front of the building this spring, he worked with Preserve Mecklenburg, which he co-founded in 2019, to make an offer. The nonprofit purchased it for $110,000 in July before selling it to Ellis Legacy Group, and has the right of first refusal if it is sold in the future.
“Almost every Realtor would say: ‘Tear it down,’ ” Morrill wrote in a report about the building. “The Patterson Grocery Store is not a refined piece of architecture. But it is a significant historic artifact.”
Bringing back something lost
Every Sunday in Virginia, Henry Ellis would visit his grandparents, and if he arrived first, he could sit on his grandmother’s lap to hear her stories. His grandparents, Tom Robinson and Easter Cousin Robinson, told him about living through the Great Depression and racial segregation.
Although he didn’t understand it at the time, they were planting seeds in his mind, Ellis recalls. The Patterson grocery store project grew out of those lessons, he said, and he hopes to educate younger generations about Black history.
“It stayed with me, the good and the bad,” said Ellis, a retired production engineer who first moved to the Charlotte area in the 1960s. “I think we can take the story and connect one era up to another.”
The Ellises plan to work with Preserve Mecklenburg in January to figure out the design and costs for revamping the building. The sale also included Patterson’s former home, and Henry Ellis said he hopes to incorporate it into the project.
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The pair is looking to convert the grocery store building to a commercial use, such as a coffee shop or a small grocery store. But they said it will be based on what the community needs, and they plan to reach out to residents for their input.
Neal said she would like to see a coffee shop or a store that sells basic products open on the site.
“It would be a very special moment to see history come back, especially in today’s time, to be able to gain something that was lost,” Neal said.
As gentrification has destroyed history in Charlotte’s Black neighborhoods, Todd Ellis said more physical structures like the grocery store need to be preserved.
“Gentrification is going to happen, and we get it,” he said. “But give us the opportunity to be a part of it. Don’t come in and wipe us out.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Once facing demolition, former west Charlotte grocery store to be brought back to life."
