I’ve lived in Hidden Valley 45 years and watched its reputation get tarnished | Opinion

Editor’s note: As The Observer launches its mobile newsroom in the Hidden Valley neighborhood, we asked longtime resident Marjorie Parker to write about what it’s like to live in Hidden Valley and how media coverage of her neighborhood has impacted it.

Growing up, my parents would say “sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” After living in the Hidden Valley neighborhood in northeast Charlotte for 45 years, I’ve come to realize that media words can hurt a neighborhood. Perception can become another person’s reality for years.

The Hidden Valley neighborhood is one of single-family homes, and the area is surrounded by three major roads — Sugar Creek Road, Tom Hunter Road and North Tryon Street — about five miles from uptown. The neighborhood was built in 1957 by home builder George S. Goodyear, who was trying to meet the growing demand for homes at the time. To encourage buyers, the streets were given fairy-tale names such as Snow White Lane and Cinderella Road. There’s even a gingerbread style house near Cinderella Road and Yuma Street.

It was originally a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood. African Americans began moving to Hidden Valley in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. After white flight began, the neighborhood swimming pool was closed. Over time, the neighborhood grew to be 90% African Americans.

For years, we raised our children, worked and lived a middle-class life. I remember my husband and I were teased at our church on the south side of Charlotte about “moving on up” when we moved to Hidden Valley in the late 1970s.

The Hidden Valley Action and Awareness Group began as a biracial organization of 45 women who wanted to strengthen the relationships between Black and white neighbors through socials, community improvement projects, and a monthly neighborhood newsletter. I would like to think that this idea led to the Hidden Valley Community Association, started in 1980.

In the 1990s things began to change. Uptown revitalization relocated residents from two major housing projects, Earle Village and Piedmont Courts, as did other revitalization projects. About that same time, the entire country was dealing with gangs and a surge in crime. Some gangs and drug dealers moved into Hidden Valley, which caused the existing Kings gang to protect its turf. I was never personally attacked or afraid, but there was a lot of shooting.

The city was forced to take a closer look at the Hidden Valley Kings after a killing on North Tryon Street in which cars stopped and began firing at each other in the middle of the day. Crime not controlled will spread like wildfire.

As news about crime in and around Hidden Valley grew, our neighbors and friends fled and our property values plummeted.

Now, we are a neighborhood where crime is down, property values have increased, and there is interest in this neighborhood. I’d like to see more home ownership, more diversity, and fewer code enforcement violations in Hidden Valley.

We are not without the issues of a large city. We do want the city to work on issues on Sugar Creek and Tom Hunter roads where the light-rail station is.

It’s demoralizing when your neighborhood only gets negative press, often unwarranted, when the incidents that are happening are not even in your area but somehow get associated with your community. I see negative press comments such as “near Hidden Valley” used to sensationalize a story.

As president of the Hidden Valley Community Association, I’ve twice sent major news networks copies of plats identifying Hidden Valley streets and we have called on them as a community to remind them some of the things they are reporting did not happen in Hidden Valley.

It’s refreshing that The Charlotte Observer will create a mobile newsroom near our community and that an Observer reporter will come to neighborhood association meetings to capture positive stories, as well as other news. Responsible journalism is about reporting accurate stories, all stories, great ones and bad ones.

Over the years Hidden Valley has had more than its share of negative press. I’m glad to see The Observer placing itself in a position to also write the positive stories.

This story was originally published January 13, 2023 at 6:00 AM.