Larry and Denise Hester founded M & M Real Estate Development and Consulting after successfully developing two neighborhood shopping centers in Durham, North Carolina's historic Fayetteville Street corridor. They knew that this same success formula could be duplicated in other urban areas to rebuild neighborhoods, preserve historic assets, create jobs and ensure that small business people have an opportunity to invest in themselves and have access to affordable commercial space. In short, their mission was transforming urban neighborhoods through economic development.

     When Larry Hester and Denise Hester returned to their hometown of Durham, NC after absences of ten years and twenty years respectively, they were dismayed that their Fayetteville Street community seemed to be at a standstill. Both had grown up when Hayti and Fayetteville Street were vibrant parts of Durham and they remembered the dual legacy of business and the arts that had flourished here for almost a century. This dual identity, an energetic entrepreneurial community alongside a creative one, made Durham’s African American community unique in the State of North Carolina and in the United States.  

     After Larry Hester returned to Durham in 1979 after being honorably discharged from the US Air Force and pursuing a corporate retail career in Boston, he created a chain of retail shoe and shoe repair stores in Durham and Chapel Hill. He had also developed Phoenix Square Shopping Center to provide commercial space for sixteen business owners displaced by the urban renewal efforts of the 1970’s.  A decade later, Denise Weaver returned to Durham in 1989 to run the family’s dry cleaning business, after working as a telecommunications engineer and a real estate agent/developer in Atlanta.

     Although both followed different career paths before returning home, once thing was clear -- Fayetteville Street lagged far behind other areas of Durham that were growing at a double-digit rate. Both realized that you can’t return to the past but they saw great potential for growth along the corridor and began to work together and with other community advocates to restore neighborhood-friendly development to Fayetteville Street and to make the area an African American cultural destination. Along the way, they were married and have spent the past twenty years working together as partners in real estate and in life.

     In 2000, they developed Phoenix Crossing Shopping Center which added more commercial density to the Fayetteville Street corridor with 40 more local businesses finding affordable space for start-up and expansion. National and regional businesses also located on the corridor, taking advantage of the area’s demographics and geographic proximity to dense populations and employment centers. 

     Their development of larger footprints along with space for small businesses provided a “place” where a mix of national, regional and local businesses could locate and grow. New businesses have invested millions of dollars in private capital on the Fayetteville Street corridor, added to the city’s tax base, created hundreds of jobs for local residents to help reduce the area’s persistently high unemployment rate and provided much-needed products and services for local and Triangle consumers.

     Twenty years later, Denise and Larry Hester are more optimistic than ever that the Fayetteville Street corridor can continue to grow without disrupting the historic community around it. Their neighborhood economic development initiatives have added 55,000 square feet of commercial space to the corridor -- during recessionary times and in areas with persistently high unemployment.

     Their initiatives also created hundreds of jobs for local residents, helped create Durham’s only African American local historic district and guided the creation of the Fayetteville Street Neighborhood Master Plan. But most of all, their model holds promise for rebuilding urban neighborhoods across America.