By Thea Jarvis

Riding down Bedford Place from North Avenue, the average Atlantan can get an up-front picture of downtown progress in the making.

The 24-story Georgia Power headquarters, the spanking new condominiums, even the now-familiar Civic Center with its spacious parking facilities have all risen from the ashes of what was once one of Atlanta's oldest in-town neighborhoods -- Bedford-Pine.

Georgia Baptist Hospital still endures, as do many of the residents who have lived in Bedford-Pine over the years. But the new neighbors that keep them company grow from the minds of past and present city planners, business interests and developers who have targeted the area for renewal since the mid-sixties.

Captured forever in the winds of change that have swept through Bedford-Pine are personal histories that reveal the sweep, the scope and sometimes the suffering involved in Atlanta's urban renewal.

Dewey Merritt is a neighborhood planner and community organizer for the Urban Training Organization, an interdenominational effort that facilitates urban ministry and encourages neighborhood strength through local cooperation and organization.

Most recently cited by the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta for "building bridges between the poor and middle class," Merritt worked alongside the Archdiocese of Atlanta this summer in the city-wide "Help the Children" project.

In his modest office at the Druid Hills Presbyterian Church on Ponce de Leon Avenue, he faces the world with quiet optimism and an open, friendly manner that immediately puts a visitor at ease.

Merritt was born in Buttermilk Bottom, now the Civic Center's parking lot, but spent 26 of his 45 years in the adjoining Bedford-Pine community of blue-collar blacks where crime and violence were present, "but no more so than in any other blue-collar neighborhood," in Merritt's view.

The City of Atlanta felt the area was in need of major tidying, however, and, in the mid-sixties, approached the Department of Housing and Urban Development with a plan for renewal. Federal funding was subsequently awarded for the Bedford-Pine urban renewal project.

Dewey Merritt remembered how it all began.

"The city set up an urban renewal program and went in and took houses," he recalled. "They put fear in people's hearts."

Blanket inspections of local homes were conducted and minor violations became fodder for the grist mill of city planners.

"The city went into run-down areas and sent people in to find every violation they could," Merritt contended. The result was a devaluation of property either owned or rented by Merritt's friends and neighbors.

"It made the property seem like it was nothing," he said with feeling.

Dewey Merritt's father owned two houses on Pine Street, in the heart of the area the city was eyeballing for progress and expansion. One served as the Merritts' home, the other was rented out.

The houses were solidly constructed, finely crafter, one with "sliding glass doors and stained glass windows," Merritt recalled with pride.

"We knew the houses were increasing in value -- that's the nature of real estate," he continued. "There was an awareness that as the city was progressing, so would the Bedford-Pine homes. My father said never to sell the house on Pine, being only two blocks from Peachtree."

His father had lived in Atlanta since the age of six and knew whereof he spoke. He had moved to Bedford-Pine because he felt blacks had a reasonable chance there at a time when being black and not formally educated meant little or no chance for upward mobility.

But Merritt's father made it through hard work and the shrewd perception of what real estate could mean at a time of increasing property values. The Merritts' rental house had been bought for $10,000. Two years before the city began its takeover of Bedford-Pine, the senior Merritt had $10,000 worth of repair work done on the house. When the city offered to buy the home, their up-front offer was $10,000 and he refused the bid. Because he continued to reject the city's offers, the money was paid into the courts. Merritt finally hired a lawyer, who helped him to reclaim the funds, inadequate though they seemed to be.

"(That house) was his gift to me for my future. They took it," Dewey Merritt observed. His tone expressed little bitterness, but implied a keen awareness of the way things were and the way they should have been.

"It was another example of the system taking advantage of people," he said. "From the developer's standpoint, it sounds legitimate: take this place of crime and deterioration and let us fix it up. But it's like coming to someone's house, vacuuming it and sweeping it out and then letting you sleep in one of the rooms. The city sold the land in blocks to private businessmen and made millions off the land."

Dewey Merritt, his parents and sister moved to a house on Parkway Drive once they knew the die was cast and the house they lived in would also be claimed for redevelopment. Many of their neighbors were not as fortunate. Forced into an uprooting they found difficult to understand, countless Bedford-Pine residents "were scattered all over" the metro area, Merritt said sadly.

"The urban renewal group provided funds to move people," he explained, "but the development was not accomplished in an organized fashion. We never got communication directly from the city the way they do now. There was indirect communication between the city and the neighborhood, but they said 'this is it' -- no choices were given. Most people weren't told their rights."

Times have indeed changed. If Bedford-Pine holds few traces of its venerable past, some former residents, at least, have learned from their experience.

Dewey Merritt now lives in Grant Park, where he bought his home for $5,000 in 1973. According to Merritt, current prices for Grant Park homes presently range from $30,000 to $100,000.

When the city considered tearing down Grant Park residences in the name of zoological expansion in the seventies, local homeowners fought back.

Old Grant Park homes were renovated. Efforts were made to recruit middle- and moderate-income families into the neighborhood. Houses abandoned in fear were newly occupied in hope.

And Dewey Merritt, onetime Bedford-Pine resident, helped to organize the neighborhood defense.

"My father had taught me about houses being valuable," he observed simply.