Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

In the chronology

1. Late 1800s Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s.
2. 1963 David Caldwell's family bought a home on Rogers Road David Caldwell, later a RENA leader, said his family moved from Merritt Mill Road to Rogers Road when Black families got the chance to buy homes there. He recalled a farming neighborhood of about thirteen houses, with dirt roads and cornfields. People: David Caldwell Jr.
3. Early 1970s Robert Campbell moves to Rogers Road as the county landfill is built beside it Campbell, who grew up in the Northside community of Chapel Hill, moved to Rogers Road in the early 1970s, as the Orange County landfill was going in next to the neighborhood. He later became president of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.
4. November 30, 1972 Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood RENA's chronology records that Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee, Mayor Robert Wells Jr. and county commission chairman H.D. Bennett signed the full landfill agreement. Residents remember Lee promising that their road would be paved and that the filled site would become a recreation center for them. People: Howard N. Lee
5. 2007 Residents founded the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association About 85 households founded RENA as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, putting a long-running informal community alliance on a formal footing. RENA went on to organize the Coalition to End Environmental Racism and to run the neighborhood's community center.
6. 2008 David Caldwell retires as a sheriff's lieutenant to organize in Rogers Road full time Caldwell joined the sheriff's department in 1985 after returning to the area and retired as a lieutenant in 2008 to work full time on community and social justice work. He became project director and community organizer for the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association.
7. March 16, 2009 Chapel Hill council received the Rogers Road Small Area Plan Task Force's final report Council members Mark Kleinschmidt and Bill Strom presented the report, and the council voted 9 to 0 to send it to advisory boards, Carrboro, Orange County, OWASA and the city schools, with a joint public hearing planned for October 2009. Rev. Robert Campbell of RENA thanked the council for giving the community a voice. People: Robert Campbell, Mark Kleinschmidt
8. June 12–August 31, 2009 UNC's library exhibited Rogers Road family histories drawn from Emily Eidenier Pearce's book The exhibit We're All Family Here: Preserving Community Heritage in the Rogers Road Neighborhood of Chapel Hill introduced families who had shaped the area from the 1700s on. It was inspired by Pearce's 2009 history Rogers Road, which RENA presents as part of its History Project.
9. Summer 2010 RENA opened its first community center on Edgar Road Three years after incorporating as a nonprofit, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association opened a small community center on Edgar Road so the neighborhood had a place of its own to gather and run programs.
10. February 21, 2012 Commissioners set the landfill's closing date and created the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force On the night the Orange County commissioners voted to close the landfill on June 30, 2013, they also authorized an eight-member task force, with two members each from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, the county and RENA, to recommend how to deliver sewer service and a community center and how to guard against displacement. An interim report was due that August and a final report to the Assembly of Governments on December 6, 2012. People: Penny Rich
11. 2013–2014 Neighbors form the Rogers Road Community Unity Board The Community Unity Board brought together leaders from every sub-neighborhood of Rogers-Eubanks, among them Historic Rogers Road, Billabong, TallyHo, Meadow Run, Phoenix Place and Sandberg, for continuing talks about the area's future. RENA and the Jackson Center reconvened it in 2015 for the planning work the three governments had asked for. People: Robert Campbell
12. June 20, 2013 EPA accepted RENA's civil rights complaint over water and sewer service for investigation The EPA Office of Civil Rights took up the question whether the Orange County Planning and Inspections Department had intentionally discriminated on the basis of race by denying water and sewer service to the African American residents of Rogers Road. RENA had filed the complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, which referred it to several federal agencies, and it was joined to an earlier complaint against OWASA accepted on November 23, 2009.
13. 2014 RENA and the Jackson Center produced the Historic and Vibrant Rogers Road report The Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and the Marian Cheek Jackson Center put together survey analysis and community feedback on the neighborhood's future. Two years later the same partners ran the planning process behind Mapping our Community's Future.
14. December 2014 The county-funded Rogers Road Community Center opened at 101 Edgar Street Orange County commissioners awarded a $522,488 contract to Riggs-Harrod Builders of Durham on April 1, 2014 after a first round of bids came in at two to three times the authorized budget and the building was redesigned. The larger center, with a community room, kitchen, computer lab and outdoor courts, opened that December a short walk from RENA's 2010 building.
15. May 2016 RENA and the Jackson Center published the Rogers Road community plan commissioned by the three governments In July 2015 Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro asked the Marian Cheek Jackson Center and RENA to run a community-first planning process as sewer design advanced. The resulting report, built from nine Unity Board sessions and two rounds of interviews, set four priorities for the neighborhood and became the reference document for the later zoning districts and Greene Tract resolutions. People: Robert Campbell, David Caldwell Jr.
16. June 20, 2017 Ground was broken on the sewer extension to the historic Rogers Road area Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, OWASA and RENA held a groundbreaking at the RENA Community Center on Edgar Street after the sanitary sewer design was finished and a contractor hired. Construction was to begin in July 2017 and run 10 to 12 months. People: Robert Campbell
17. May 1, 2021 Pop-up vaccine clinic held at the Rogers Road Community Center The Orange County Health Department held a pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Rogers Road Community Center for Hispanic and Asian American residents, many of whom do not speak English, after local volunteers asked for one and printed flyers in several languages.

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