Pubdate: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) Copyright: 2001 Richmond Newspapers Inc. Contact: P.O. Box 85333, Richmond, VA 23293 Fax: (804) 775-8072 Feedback: http://www.gatewayva.com/feedback/totheeditor.shtml Website: http://www.timesdispatch.com/ Author: Mark Holmberg, Times-Dispatch Columnist TWO RICHMOND ADDRESSES, BUT THEY'RE LIGHT-YEARS APART Here's a tale of two places. The first is a former bank downtown, its post WWII modernistic architecture stylishly anchoring the southeast corner of Grace and Fourth streets. The second is a 50-year-old dump of a house squatting on the northeast corner of Garland Avenue and West Crawford Street in a mean section of North Side. The first, a nightclub called Cafine's, has helped revitalize East Grace Street downtown, rescuing it from the drunks, holdup men and car-window smashers who previously drifted through the nightscape there. The second, 3101 Garland Ave., has been a cancer in that North Side neighborhood for the better part of a decade, anchoring the firearm-enforced drug trade on the corner. Cafine's, a gay-owned club, has played host to a diverse, largely upscale clientele, including students, swing dancers, homosexuals, straights, city dwellers and suburbanites. Off-duty police officers hired by management provided a secure environment, although parents of young patrons complained to law enforcement that the designer drug Ecstasy was being used openly there. 3101 Garland Ave. housed more than a few felons over the years, and neighbors complained bitterly of drug dealing, drug use, gunfire and loitering there. Visiting police officers found illegally possessed guns there on several occasions. Cafine's is clean and nicely decorated, occupying prime real estate in the convention center expansion plan. 3101 Garland, an illegal rooming house, is filled with building code violations. Guess which one was the target of a five-month undercover operation? On Feb. 9, agents with the state Alcohol Beverage Control Board and the Virginia State Police swooped down on Cafine's. Nine people were charged with distributing small amounts of Ecstasy and cocaine. Some of the accused are gay, which has the homosexual community believing it has been targeted. Meanwhile, it was business as usual on Garland Avenue. Five days after the Cafine's bust, three young men with criminal records who frequented 3101 Garland - one of them out on a paltry $3,000 bond for breaking a police officer's jaw - allegedly chased another man into the house. One sprayed the inside of the house with an assault rifle, according to police. Another fired a handgun. Little Kayla "Bird" Brown, just 23 months old, took a bullet in her little head as she slept on a couch that Valentine's Day night. Within hours, building inspectors condemned 3101 Garland as an illegal rooming house with numerous code violations. Cafine's is still open, but Richmond prosecutors are seeking to close it down as a public nuisance. Where was the hardball enforcement at 3101? Why hadn't it been condemned as a safety hazard or public nuisance before Valentine's Day? Why did a little girl have to die before even the most basic building and housing codes could be enforced in a house long known as a menace? And why is it that in every drug-and violence-plagued neighborhood in Richmond, there are cancers like 3101 Garland that the city can't seem to shut down? A building official told me he wasn't aware of the code violations at 3101 until Kayla died. A police official said that address had been identified as an illegal rooming house prior to the shooting but was on a long list to be shut down. Roughly two months ago the city launched the Community Assisted Public Safety project, which brings building officials, police, ABC agents, social services, the city attorney and others together to shut down places like 3101 Garland. Perhaps it should be called the Kayla Project, to remind us all that a little girl with Tweety Bird eyes died because she happened to live in the wrong place. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth