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.