City to help turn decrepit Durham home into boutique hotel. What it looks like today.

An old Durham home abandoned for more than two decades will be renovated into a boutique hotel thanks to a city grant.

The Durham City Council voted unanimously Monday night to contribute $500,000 to the $2.1 million project.

“We’re excited about it. We really are,” Queen Marable Bass-Scarborough said in an interview after the vote.

She owns the Scarborough House, at 1406 Fayetteville St., on the southern end of the historic Hayti community.

It’s a powerfully built home, white columns still standing guard around the front porch, though the interior and exterior show signs of fire damage. Bass-Scarborough said it’s sat vacant since 2002.

“My late husband Skeepie Scarborough always wanted the house to be restored,” she said.

Skeepie Scarborough was the grandson of the home’s namesake, John C. Scarborough, who was described in The Durham Sun in 1956 as the “dean of Negro business.”

In 1906, John Scarborough became the first Black funeral director and embalmer licensed in North Carolina.

Scarborough & Hargett Celebration of Life Center remains open today, in the hands of the family’s fourth generation, Skeepie and Queen’s daughter Tonya Bass.

Construction could begin next year

Bass-Scarborough has teamed up with Greene Solutions to renovate the home. It’s their first time working together.

Marcus Greene said they hope to begin construction in the first quarter of 2024.

Their business plan details the vision for a 15,000-square-foot hotel:

• Eight guest rooms

• 10 bathrooms

• Commercial kitchen

• Formal dining area with seating for 25

• A 5,000-square-foot event space

They hope to reinvigorate the neighborhood and get nearby N.C. Central University involved in supplying hospitality workers to learn the trade.

Bass-Scarborough typed a one-page presentation to prepare for Monday night’s council meeting. She wrote about how the hotel would support retailers in the Fayetteville Street corridor, highlight the culture of Black Wall Street and become a new chapter in Hayti’s history.

“We shall put forth diligent efforts to make the Scarborough House project become a reality and an added attraction that we shall all be proud of existing in the Hayti community,” she tacked on in her own handwriting.

But the item was last on the agenda and it was nearing 11:30 p.m. when the City Council took up the matter. Queen-Scarborough sat in the audience with family as the council got a quick presentation and voted quickly in favor of the grant.

“Go Fayetteville Street,” Mayor Elaine O’Neal said, clapping her hands.

Growing business outside downtown

City Manager Wanda Page said she is developing a $10 million plan for revitalizing the Fayetteville Street corridor. She said it’s been on the radar for years.

“We’re including and highlighting $10 million to help rediscover, enhance and create — with the community — a sense of place for this valued and historic area of our city,” Page said when presenting her proposed budget last month.

“This funding will support a variety of efforts, including residential and commercial real estate programs, small business support, along with street, sidewalk and landscape improvements,” she said.

The $500,000 for the Scarborough House was given under the Neighborhood Revitalization Grant Incentive Program, which the city established in 2014.

It supports projects that stimulate business and create jobs in areas outside downtown, according to the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Among its previous grants:

• Self-Help Credit Union renovated five buildings around Angier Avenue and Driver Street that now house nonprofits and businesses. $700,000, 7% of the total cost.

• A blighted building on Driver Street was renovated and now contains apartments and shops, including the Black-owned independent bookstore Rofhiwa Book Cafe. $170,000, 32% of the total cost.

• A Fayetteville Street building was torn down for a Checkers franchise. $140,000, 10% of the total cost.

Bass-Scarborough and Greene received letters of support from the director of the Hayti Heritage Center, the chair of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, their lenders M&F Bank, former Mayor Steve Schewel and former state Sen. Howard Lee.

“The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People is a strong supporter of work that needs to be done to restore the Fayetteville Street corridor, an area that was decimated by Durham’s ‘Urban Renewal’ project, and has never recovered following years of neglect and broken promises,” chair Walter A. Jackson wrote.

“We support both publicly funded and private initiatives designed to rebuild the area in a way that exceeds its former glory.”