14 | THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2016
The Chronicle
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From the archives
Where the lacrosse house once stood Daniel Carp The Chronicle At first glance, it looks like any other construction site. Construction sign out front. Trucks rolling on and off the lot. Two stories of yellow-painted walls waiting for someone to finally call it home. But the lot at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., sitting directly across from Duke’s East Campus between Dacian Ave. and Urban Ave., is not your typical construction site. It is the first house to be built on the land since three Duke men’s lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping stripper Crystal Mangum there nearly nine years ago. Two houses down from the construction site, Durham resident Gwen Palmer opens her door on a rainy Monday afternoon. It takes her no time to make the connection herself after I inquire about the construction site. “Do you want to come talk about the Duke lacrosse house?” she calls up the stairs to her husband, Ed. Even as construction wears on and the house grows closer to completion each day, the lot continues to attract attention from passersby. Cars driving along Buchanan Blvd. tend to slow down ever so slightly around the 600 block to catch a passing glimpse, Ed Palmer said. Joggers circumnavigating Duke’s East Campus wall conveniently stop to take a rest. “Everybody’s interested in it. They always tell their friends,” said Ed Palmer, who has only lived in his house since 2008 but had family living there for decades prior. “They’re always pointing at the vacant lot, and you know what they’re talking about.” Before the infamous Duke lacrosse case, there was no reason for people to stop and stare at the modest white house that stood at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. It was just another rental property in Trinity Park home to Duke undergraduates, which was abundantly common nearly a decade ago. Noisy neighbors Taking advantage of their ability to live off campus during their final year at Duke, undergraduates often rent houses in the Trinity Park and Trinity Heights neighborhoods, which—along with Downtown Durham and Ninth Street— encircle East Campus. Designed to curb student behavior in these neighborhoods, a decades-old Durham zoning ordinance mandates that only three unrelated persons can inhabit a single-family home. Landlords renting to Duke students would often turn a blind eye when it came to this statute. “There were multiple landlords, two or three—always worked very carefully with the students to have only three names on the leases even though it was apparent if anyone ever drove by the house and you saw the cars parked that a whole lot more kids were living in those houses,” said John Burness, who served as senior vice president for public affairs and government relations until 2008 and is now a visiting professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Students and their Trinity Park neighbors were constantly at odds. Loud parties would rage on until as late as 4 a.m. Drunk students would urinate on people’s lawns and damage their properties. Phones in Duke’s administrative offices would ring
Chronicle File Photo The house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. where the lacrosse party took place was recently demolished.
off the hook with complaints. “Neighbors were just outraged with the University for not doing something to clamp down on the behavior of the students,” Burness said. “They came to us—and we spent a lot of time on this—literally it got to the point where they sent a letter home to the parents of anyone they could identify who was living in any of those houses at the beginning of the year letting them know that the students were expected to be decent neighbors.” In January 2004, city-mandated housing inspections took place in the neighborhoods of Trinity Park and Trinity Heights. Among the violations inspectors were looking for was the illegal conversion of single-family homes into multiple-family homes—occupancy greater than three. It was also around this time that residents of Trinity Park approached the University about potentially buying out rental properties with the hopes of moving students out of the area. “The neighbors came to us and said they were thinking of putting together a nonprofit and [asked] would it be possible to raise enough money to purchase from one landlord there between 12 and 14 of these properties,” Burness said. “They wanted to know if we could help them purchase these houses out from under [Guy Solie, who rented the properties] and deal with that. We thought about that, and it was really complicated for the University to do.” Solie, Trinity ‘67 and Graduate School ‘76, had built up a portfolio of desirable real estate near Duke’s East Campus for his company, Trinity Properties. The house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. was one such property. Despite the quickly growing tensions between the neighbors and University regarding student housing in residential neighborhoods, Burness said the lacrosse house at 610 N. Buchanan didn’t receive close to the majority of neighbors’ complaints. “No. Absolutely not,” Burness said when asked if he recalled the house being more of an issue than others in the neighborhood. “To me, it was just one of the other houses.” Joanna Darby, who has lived directly behind the property at 705 Watts Street since 1999, added that though she recalled more than
three students living in the house at 610 N. Buchanan, that house was nowhere near the neighborhood’s biggest concern. “There were occasional parties at that house,” she said. “Not a lot, but occasional.” With the neighbors clamoring for the University to step in and buy Solie’s properties in 2004, Burness threw his support behind the complicated move. Ultimately, Burness’ efforts were unsuccessful. “We were spending so much time and getting so much beef with the neighbors. The police were unhappy and the city was unhappy. My argument didn’t carry,” Burness said. “Perhaps, if we had been successful in purchasing it... when I originally recommended it, what later became the big issue never would have occurred.” By early 2006, pressure from Trinity Park residents had finally mounted on the University. It was time for Duke to make a move. On Jan. 18, 2006, Solie filed to create a new corporation called Soleil, LLC. A month later, between Feb. 22 and Feb. 27, Solie transferred 15 of his properties from Trinity Properties to Soleil, LLC. On Feb. 28, Durham Realty, a company owned by Duke University, bought all 15 properties— including the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd.—for a total of $3.7 million. Now their new landlord, Duke allowed students living in the houses at the time to remain there for the duration of their existing leases, even those that extended beyond the end of the academic year. Although Burness noted that the final price tag may have been inflated due to future potential earnings of the rental properties, the property acquisition was heralded by the Durham community as the right move for Duke. “Neighbors were ecstatic with us when it got out that we were doing this,” Burness said. “There were editorials in the local paper talking about how Duke was doing the right thing and what a good neighbor we were and blah blah blah. It was one of those things that was pretty universally seen as Duke acting responsibly.” Little did the University know that one of the houses it had purchased as part of a good public relations move was about to become the epicenter of a media firestorm.
The Duke lacrosse case Exactly two weeks after 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. was purchased by Duke, on March 13, 2006, members of the Duke men’s lacrosse team held a party at their house. It was at that party where Mangum—one of the two strippers the team had hired for the evening—accused senior David Evans and sophomores Colin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann of raping her. Ed and Gwen Palmer were not in Durham when the allegations finally surfaced later that month—their house was undergoing renovations at the time. But from a distance, it didn’t take long for them to realize that the 600 block of N. Buchanan Blvd. had become ground zero for what would become some of the darkest days in Duke’s history. “My brother called me and said, ‘You won’t believe this, but your house is on CNN right now.’ They were doing all their TV stuff down the block, showing the whole block,” Ed Palmer said. “I turned on the TV and whoever it was from Fox News was standing on the front porch.” Television crews would make frequent pilgrimage to the house, making it the backdrop for many of their reports during the ensuing weeks and months. Supporters tacked posters to the walls of the house while dissenters defaced it with angry messages and accusations. Protestors walked up and down the block banging pots and pans and shouting for change. The lacrosse case drew dividing lines across Duke’s campus, the city of Durham and the entire United States. Even before there was a trial, even before any arrests were made, most condemned the three players as guilty. Academics pitted themselves against athletes when a cohort of professors, later known as the Group of 88, published an advertisement in which they vilified the accused lacrosse players. The idea that three privileged, white athletes at an elite private institution had raped an African American woman sparked racial tensions in a city that juxtaposes the University community with the city’s large black population. The University was tied for fifth in the nation See LAX HOUSE on Page 18