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How Oak Ridge’s
commercial core came to be From farmland to shopping centers, family perseveres to build their dream by PATTI STOKES
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Shower Doors? 6
Fall 2019
In 1972, changes in the Greensboro City school system prompted Jerry and Phyllis Cooke to make a decision that would ultimately lead to much of the commercial development Oak Ridge has experienced in the last 25 years. “We spent two years looking at what was available (in the rural part of the county),” Jerry Cooke said. During their search, he created a 3x5 card system and wrote down every tract of undeveloped land in northwest Guilford County that had recently sold, and the selling price. Cooke said he had spent many Saturday mornings looking at land when in 1974 an acquaintance told him about some farmland in Oak Ridge for sale. The 130-acre tract, which bordered N.C. 68 on both sides, was owned by five heirs. Almost immediately after seeing the property, Cooke said he made an offer. It was accepted, and within a month he and Phyllis agreed to owner-financing at 10 percent interest; compared to the going interest rate in 1974 of 22 percent, it was a bargain. The couple also agreed to make a $30,000 payment at the end of the first year, with the balance due at the end of 10 years. Cooke said he later found out a local resident had been offered the property, but declined to pay more than $500 an acre for it. Insulted, the heirs’ family manager said no one in Oak Ridge would own his family’s farm. “That was my opportunity, but I didn’t
Photo by Patti Stokes/NWO
Oak Ridge resident Jerry Cooke, soon to be 84, credits his wife and youngest son for their help and support in commercially developing much of the 130-acre farm he purchased in 1974. know that at the time,” Cooke said. “The asking price was $1,442 an acre, and that’s what I had offered him.” Before construction could begin on the Cookes’ new home, to be located on the farmland, trees and brush had to be cleared for a driveway. For about a year Cooke and Philip, the couple’s son who at the time was 7, spent almost every Saturday cutting out the ¼-mile driveway that led from N.C. 68 back to where their new home would be. “We drug all that brush back here (into the woods) and burned it,” Cooke told the Northwest Observer while sitting in his former home, which is now where the company’s offices are located. At the end of the workday, the two tired and hungry workers would go to Libby Hill Seafood on W. Market Street for dinner and pay $3.50 a plate for all they could eat. He said they got their money’s worth. In the spring of 1975, a $30,000 loan payment came due on the Cookes’ farm property. Concerned about falling short, Cooke sought help from his father.
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