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“I can’t sit at the table because I am not a good ol’ boy”: Virginia Beach architect marches for equality

By ALISSA SKELTON
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT |
FEB 24, 2017 AT 5:00 PM

VIRGINIA BEACH
Wendell Green will march 3 miles for African Americans who aspire to join his profession.

He will march for the young architects and designers he mentors, who want to live in Hampton Roads, make a living and raise families.

The 70-year-old African-American architect will march in solidarity with others who hope for a better future – one with equal opportunities for minorities and better opportunities than those he had.

“The biggest problem I have is people say minorities are always complaining,” said Green, a Virginia Beach resident who owns a firm in Chesapeake. “Well, guess what? It is not that people want to complain. They just want to feed their children, just like you do.”

Green plans to join a coalition of religious leaders from the region on Saturday as they walk up Atlantic Avenue, the main thoroughfare on the resort strip. The event will begin at Rudee Loop and end at 40th Street near The Cavalier Hotel.

For Green, whose career has spanned 46 years, the march is personal because he says he has experienced his own set of frustrations trying to win work for the city.

In 2010, Green said the city asked him to apply for a contract to provide ongoing architecture and engineering services.

After spending nearly $2,000 putting together a proposal, he said he was not selected. Three firms that qualified as finalists were well-respected larger companies that had previously done work for the city or school division.

Green, who has five employees, said he didn’t know at the time that the city was looking at larger firms.

“I wouldn’t have wasted their time if I had known,” he said.

Had he won, he would have contracted with the same engineers as the bigger firms to complete the work. He also has the same license as the architects at major firms. But small firms often don’t carry high enough insurance.

“They don’t give someone like me a chance,” he said.

The following year, the city asked Green to renovate a 700-square-foot Municipal Center office and conference room for civil engineers and public utilities’ staff. The project was under $4,500, so the city didn’t have to put it out for bid.

He did the work but said he couldn’t help feeling like it was a consolation prize.

“As an architect, I know I am getting the scraps, and I am glad to get them,” Green said. “I can’t sit at the table because I am not a good ol’ boy.”

People are marching to highlight the need for equal business opportunities for minorities, women and small businesses that are not politically connected, said Gary McCollum, a minister who is organizing the Faith, Freedom and Justice March.

“If we don’t level the playing field, generations from now, this place isn’t going to be pretty because the minority communities won’t be able to generate proportional incomes,” said McCollum, an associate minister at First Baptist in Norfolk and a former executive at Cox Communications. He ran as a Democrat for Virginia’s 7th Senate district in 2015.

After opposing the idea for months , Mayor Will Sessoms said Tuesday he is committed to evaluating whether the city contracts with enough businesses owned by minorities and women.

The city released guidelines for conducting a disparity study, which will break down in three parts. When each phase is complete, it wants a consultant to present the findings to council members, “provided the city completes all three tasks.” After The Virginian-Pilot’s story published online Friday, a city spokeswoman said that language would be removed from the document.

Bruce Smith, an NFL Hall of Famer turned real-estate investor and developer, said he thinks the city used that wording so it can drop the study if it doesn’t like the findings after the first phase.

“This is called a bait and switch,” Smith said. “They promise you one thing, but in fine print, they are giving themselves wiggle room to get out of it.”

Smith said there’s a good reason to question the city’s commitment to the issue.

In 2012, the Minority Business Council asked the City Council to do a disparity study, but their request was ignored.

After Smith publicly called for a review in November, Sessoms said he would not support one because it would be too costly and detract from the city’s ongoing efforts to increase the number of contracts awarded to minority businesses. Since then, the city has pitched doing a partial study, and Councilman Bobby Dyer suggested putting limits on what the consultants can recommend.

The city is lagging behind on its existing goal of awarding 10 percent of its contracts in three categories to minority-owned businesses. Last fiscal year, goods and services was at 9 percent; construction, 2.7 percent; and architecture and engineering, less than 1 percent. Between 2015 and 2016, city spending with minority vendors increased from $14.1 million to $17.4 million.

City officials say more minority-owned firms need to apply for contracts to improve award rates. Last year, no architectural firms applied for contracts and just two engineering companies owned by minorities submitted bids, said Taylor Adams, a Virginia Beach purchasing agent. One of the engineering companies was awarded a contract.

McCollum fears the city won’t complete all of the study’s steps or will deviate from the way case law mandates a disparity study should be done.

“His words sound great, but we don’t buy it,” McCollum said of the mayor’s promise. “He is trying to manipulate the outcome of the study.”

Sessoms acknowledged the lack of trust over this issue from the study advocates. He said he is working to rebuild it and vowed to complete the review.

“I don’t think the mayor of Virginia Beach really gets it,” Green said. “I can’t blame him because most people that are in the good ol’ boys’ club live in a bubble. They don’t have to worry about the struggles we are going through.”

Green said minorities and small businesses aren’t applying for city construction and engineering contracts because they don’t have the time and money to put into proposals that are not chosen.

He said many minorities believe top city officials are buddies with the major players in town, running in social circles that minorities often aren’t a part of.

“They play golf with them, belong to the same fraternities and schools and look out for each other,” Green said.

Green said he has earned a living by doing projects in the private sector. The majority of his clients are African American. He has drawn plans for churches, daycares and even Kenny Alexander’s funeral homes before Alexander became mayor of Norfolk. Green has been awarded a few federal contracts, too.

After graduating from Norfolk State University in 1970, Green worked for The Livas Group Architects, a firm he called the beacon for minority architects. He briefly moved on to Shriver and Holland Associates in Norfolk, then returned to Livas. He has also taught at Tidewater Community College.

After 21 years of perseverance, he passed the exam to become a registered architect. He opened his own firm, WTG Design Architects, LLC, in Chesapeake in 1999.

Green said Hampton Roads doesn’t have enough registered architects, leaving the area with few minority-led firms. He knows of about a dozen minority architects in the region, and eight of them work at big firms.

He said he often thinks about retiring. He won’t, though, because less experienced architects can work under him until they can obtain the highest level of certification and start their own firms.

Whenever he feels like quitting, Green said, he thinks of the statute in front of the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Torchbearers.

He views himself as the older man on the ground handing a torch to a younger man on horseback. Green said the torch is a symbol of passing knowledge onto the next generation.

And so he marches on.

Going to the Faith, Freedom and Justice March?