By Thea Jarvis

Repercussions from the urban renewal project in Atlanta's Bedford-Pine community, begun almost 20 years ago, are still being felt by many of those who once formed the heart of the neighborhood.

While many former residents have moved out of the inner-city since the mid-sixties, countless others have been placed in public and subsidized housing in and around the Bedford-Pine area.

Much of the neighborhood they once knew has been ground down, smoothed over, or replaced by the unfamiliar. Vacant lots and public housing complexes back humbly in the glow of new tennis courts and chic condominiums. In-town is now the place to be for the upwardly mobile as well as the modestly placed.

Change has taken its toll, oftentimes on those least able to shoulder its considerable weight.

Evelyn Echols knows the Bedford-Pine area -- and most of its old residents -- like the back of her hand.

A lector and teacher of religious education at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in northwest Atlanta, Evelyn graduated from the parish school almost 35 years ago. She has seen much in the way of change since her girlhood days on Dallas Avenue.

In the 1960s, Evelyn and her husband, together with their son, were living on Linden Avenue when they learned of the urban renewal project in Bedford-Pine. As the project moved forward, they were placed in temporary housing down the street and remained there for two years.

From Linden, the relocated in the Angier Courts Apartments, a neat, brick, subsidized low-rise where they live today.

"We moved to Angier Avenue because it was close to my husband's job, close to Crawford Long Hospital," Evelyn recalled. Boulevard was a rougher neighborhood, she claimed, but on Angier, "I wasn't afraid to go to sleep at night."

Other Bedford-Pine residents chose Decatur, Techwood Homes or Wheat Street Gardens, she explained.

From the sidewalk on Angier Avenue, where the Atlanta skyline looms not far in the distance, Evelyn can watch in-town progress in the making.

"Diagonally across from me," she noted, "are the new public tennis courts." The courts are clean and inviting, but, claimed Evelyn, "the people are complaining because they thought it would be a shopping area."

She points to the left and indicates the sprawl of the Civic Center "right behind me." About three blocks away sits Renaissance Park, a confident gathering of earth-hued condominiums that seems somewhat disconnected from the simpler lifestyles of the Echols and their neighbors.

"Miss Mary" Marshall lives across the street from Evelyn in a sturdy little house she has occupied for several decades. She is ailing now, and elderly. Like many of her neighbors, Mary Marshall buys some of her food from the vegetable truck that passes down Angier Avenue once or twice a week, a welcome vestige of the past.

Miss Mary gives Evelyn an order for some collards and talks about the restaurant she once owned with her husband on Linden Avenue.

"Called 'Charles Place,'" she said in a tired voice. "The government got it -- it was torn down. The neighborhood got thin and they tore down everything."

Cassie Edwards lives next door to Mary Marshall. She has been on Angier Avenue "for 30 or 35 years," she estimated. When Bedford-Pine was making the gradual change from a white to a black community, hers was the third black family to locate on the block.

Cassie still takes an active interest in her community, although advancing age and a bad hip have put a damper on her mobility.

"She is on the board of the Butler Street YMCA," Evelyn said proudly of her friend, and on the board of the Bedford-Pine Development Corporation."

Both women agreed that one of the greatest needs in the Bedford-Pine area at present is an adequate shopping facility. Over the years, the residents' hopes of a centrally located, well-stocked and fairly priced market have been repeatedly dashed.

"There's new housing on Ralph McGill Boulevard and Parkway near Milton Bradley where the old Catholic Colored clinic used to be," Evelyn pointed out. "People expected this to be a shopping area but were disappointed."

The Echols have a car and Evelyn is able to shop at the Big Star supermarket on Ponce de Leon and Highland, often taking orders for her neighbors who can't get out on their own. But the store is a good distance from the Bedford-Pine community, and much of the neighborhood food shopping is carried on at a local grocery that enjoys the distinction of being one of Bedford-Pine's sole commercial survivors.

From the outside, King's Food Store doesn't remotely resemble a friendly "mom and pop" operation. Bedford-Pine residents who patronize the store, which shares its block on Boulevard with an all-too available liquor establishment, must pay higher prices on most items, according to Evelyn Echols.

For a dollar, the store will send off customers' light, gas or telephone bills -- a major convenience for those who cannot read or write -- and will even cash a check if the patron buys a certain percentage of the check's amount in the store.

At one time, Evelyn claimed, remembering the planners' promises, "shopping was a priority. But nothing materialized." Most longtime residents of Bedford-Pine have been awaiting a shopping center for over 14 years, since the urban renewal project began. A sense of empty promises and broken dreams still haunts much of Bedford-Pine, from the neat brick bungalows on Angier Avenue where Evelyn Echols and her friends live to the overgrown lots that stare blankly at the traffic passing in front of King's Food Store.

For many in Bedford-Pine, the matter of permanent housing remains a question mark. The uprooting of the past has clearly taken its toll. Although comprehensive redevelopment plans do not call for further changes on Angier Avenue, there is concern about the future.

Evelyn wonders if the Civic Center -- her disinterested backyard neighbor -- might eventually need more room for parking.

"We never know when they might have to tear down. Right now I really wouldn’t know where we could go," she said hopelessly. "They have taken over all the apartments -- they renovated them the way they wanted them. There are no more empty places."

The changes that have touched the lives of Bedford-Pine residents over the years -- those that today account for lingering feelings of fear, uncertainty and anger -- are still abroad on the streets of Bedford-Pine.

And while change does not always mean the worst, it does not necessarily mean the best, either. Happily, the Bedford-Pine Development Corporation, a non-profit community-based organization, recently reported that plans for a neighborhood shopping center should be finalized this summer. Construction could begin shortly thereafter.

There is also some indication that current developers, planners and city officials are attuned to past promises made to the people of Bedford-Pine.

Moreover, those who were once the invisible feathers on the phoenix that rose from the ashes of old Atlanta have now acquired some awareness that they, too, have a legitimate place in the plan of the city.

Only the future will ultimately determine whether the changes of the present can adequately redeem the changes of the past.