ADRIENNE McGIBBON: George Riles has fond memories of his early childhood in Northeast Roanoke.

GEORGE RILES: The neighborhood would come together in the backyard barbecue, especially on fight night.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Northeast had a vibrant Black community, filled with churches and hundreds of businesses and homes.

But in 1955, city leaders began tearing it all down with the help of federal funding for urban renewal.

Over decades, what made up that part of town was wiped away.

GEORGE RILES: Being young, I didn't know what was taking place.

I just knew that people was moving.

I knew they was tearing down homes, and I knew they was building Lincoln Terrace projects to absorb these people that was moving out.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Riles was in third grade when he and his family were forced to move for the first time.

GEORGE RILES: Like I said, they took down churches, they took homes, and when they got to the grave site, they took the graves up.

Leaving My mother and them were very disturbed about it because her grave site of my grandfather was dug up, but she never did really find out where her father was buried at.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Nearly 1,000 bodies moved to make room for the new highway, and when the city was done in that part of town, they did the same thing in the places where many of those people had relocated.

GEORGE RILES: Then they came and took many homes up in Southwest and built the projects up there, too, to house people in.

MARY BISHOP: It was just mass heartbreak, and terrible for people's health.

I heard of so many old people who just died, died of heartbreak.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Journalist Mary Bishop covered the story for the Roanoke Times.

MARY BISHOP: They wanted to spruce up how downtown looked, the approach to downtown.

Many of the older white people told me they didn't want them to see Black children sitting on curbs.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Despite outcries from the Black community, city leaders destroyed 1,600 homes, 200 businesses, and 24 churches, all replaced by new roads, the Civic Center, and the post office.

Now, plans to develop the last remaining green space in Roanoke are reopening old wounds and coming right to George Riles's back door.

GREORGE RILES: Oh, Evans Spring.

Evans Spring is right behind me.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Evans Spring is 150 acres of undeveloped land in Northwest Roanoke.

In March, city council approved a plan for the area, surrounded by predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Chris Chittum is leading the project.

CHRIS CHITTUM: We are encouraging a mixed use development that would benefit both by bringing retail, restaurant, and those types of commercial uses, along with new housing.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: The city hopes the additional living space will help ease a housing crunch, but leaders are facing a backlash from a weary community.

BRENDA HALE: We stand in opposition of the master plan concerning Evans Springs.

CHRIS CHITTUM: We have documented in the plan how we have heard concerns.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Concerns about the development's environmental impact and about what will happen to the people living around Evans Spring.

CHRIS CHITTUM: We really abhor what happened during urban renewal, and this is not the same thing.

This is a development of privately held property adjacent to a neighborhood.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: The city says its plan reflects community concerns, preserving nearly half of the green space and adjusting traffic routes around existing neighborhoods.

But urban planning professor Theodore Lim, who researched the proposal and spoke with residents, says city leaders aren't hearing the outcry.

THEODORE LIM: There was a very deep emotional affective meaning that was attached to kind of the city coming in and developing a plan.

A highway access area, increased roads and traffic, and more intensive development that reminded people of urban renewal and kind of triggered that trauma that they had experienced.

They have to grapple with the trauma of that history and kind of make space for people to heal from that past.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: Cam Terry runs Lick Run Farm in Northwest Roanoke.

CAM TERRY: We do a lot under the banner of community building here.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: This three and a half acre urban farm is half mile downstream of Evans Spring.

Terry attended one of the city's community meetings.

CAM TERRY: It's literally the same people looking up and saying, "I remember when this happened 50 or 60 years ago, and we were forced to move.

Now they're just going to develop around us and not tell us we have to move but change again everything about the neighborhood that we moved to and have loved since we were forced to come here.

” ADRIENNE McGIBBON: At 82, George Riles has lived in his Northwest home for nearly half a century.

He acknowledges he may not be able to stop the change.

GEORGE RILES: I know one thing, I'm getting to be an older person, but ideas, you know, we got new ideas, young ideas, and so forth, but sometimes it's nice to hold onto the old sometimes.

ADRIENNE McGIBBON: For VPM News, I'm Adrienne McGibbon.