Anchoring the Neighborhood
At St. Mark AME Zion
Anchoring Hayti since 1890, St. Mark AME Zion is asking how its building and land could serve the neighborhood for another generation.
Church placemaking at St. Mark AME Zion
St. Mark AME Zion has anchored Hayti since 1890, through decades of change in the neighborhood around it. Its story is one of standing with the community, including in the years when urban renewal threatened to erase it.
Through New Chapter Ventures’ placemaking cohort, St. Mark is exploring what that legacy asks of it now, alongside five other historic Hayti churches. Placemaking begins with listening, not building. Before any plans are drawn, the church is sitting down with its neighbors to understand what the community needs.
This is the story of those early conversations, and of a rooted congregation asking what it wants to become.
Who they are
St. Mark AME Zion has anchored Hayti since 1890. When urban renewal threatened to tear the community apart, the church stood with its neighbors and made room for the meetings that held people together. More than a century later, that history of showing up is still the foundation, and one of Hayti’s most rooted congregations is asking what it wants to become next.
Why placemaking
St. Mark’s has always been a gathering place. When urban renewal threatened Hayti, the church opened its doors to the meetings and civil rights rallies that held the neighborhood together. In the decades since, waves of development have scattered much of that community, and the shared work the church was built on has grown harder to do.
Placemaking is a way to gather it back. Through the process with New Chapter Ventures, one of Hayti’s largest and most rooted congregations is drawing on that long legacy of leadership, sitting down with its neighbors to imagine a church that belongs to the whole family again, listening first and planning second.
The vision
Placemaking begins with a question rather than a blueprint: what does the neighborhood around St. Mark AME Zion actually need, and how could the church’s space help meet it?
The congregation and its neighbors are early in that conversation, imagining together how shared land and underused rooms might serve the community. Nothing is decided yet, and that is the point of this stage. The ideas are still taking shape, drawn from the people who live around the church.
Voices
My dream is that we can be community to the whole family. That we can participate in this good process of saving bodies and souls.
Rev. Dr. Julian C. Pridgen, Senior Pastor
We had civil rights rallies here when urban renewal was threatening to tear Hayti down.
Rev. Brenda McCormick, Associate Minister
Where things stand
Summer 2026. St. Mark AME Zion joined the Hayti Cohort, six Durham churches going through the placemaking process together. The congregation traveled to Asheville for the cohort’s immersion weekend in June, and New Chapter Ventures completed a walkthrough of the church’s buildings and land.
Fall 2026. The church is now in the storytelling and visioning phase alongside its five cohort partners. That phase is expected to wrap up by the end of 2026, when the cohort gathers to share what each church has envisioned for its corner of Hayti.
The Future
Looking ahead, 2027 is when pursuing the vision begins in earnest. With the cohort’s storytelling behind it, St. Mark AME Zion expects to take its next steps toward the ideas that emerge, testing and refining them alongside its neighbors before anything is built. The story on this page is an early one, and it will keep growing as the church moves from imagining what is possible to shaping it, together.
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