The funding -- part of the city's Hayti Promise Fayetteville Street Corridor Project -- is the first money earmarked from $10 million in ARPA funds that was approved for that project back in May. City leaders say it's part of a larger plan to inject new economic vitality and address long-term underinvestment in what was historically Durham's black cultural center.
"The investment tonight, I think, is hopeful for a throwback, paying homage to what was to the best of what was," said Anita Scott Neville, director of Hayti Reborn.
Scott Neville's ties to Durham's historic black business backbone run deep -- her father was among the business owners in the historic Hayti district.
"It was a safe space, it was a community in the truest sense of the word," she recalled.
The Durham native calls herself a "servant leader", and is striving to promote growth and investment in the Hayti District that doesn't displace and erase the neighborhood's culture, legacy and residents.
"What my hope is, is that along with the money and the tangible investment comes an intangible that our neighborhood is sorely in need of, and that is trust," said Scott Neville.
It's a vision shared by Marc Lee, a historian at Hayti Heritage Center who was born just down Fayetteville Street at the old Lincoln Hospital.
"We're seeing more and more people that are definitely looking at this community and seeing it as a place of hope. And they're even going back and remembering the history of Hayti," Lee said.
That hope is now being supported financially at the city level.
"This area has been neglected for a very long time. No more. Not under my watch," Mayor Leo Williams said before Tuesday's council meeting.
Community members say they're hopeful in the plan, while Williams is vowing that this funding is just the start -- and that the city wants to preserve, not replace.
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"When you beautify it, the people there take pride in it, the people coming through take pride in it. So what we want to do is revitalize this community from within, and that's why this investment is so important," he said.