Four years ago, developer Bob Chapman said the area where Foster and Geer streets cross near the Durham Athletic Park was "an area that has really lain fallow."

Since then, Chapman and others have sown some seeds. In 2006, he bought three buildings at Foster/Geer's northeast corner for $575,000. Now tax-valued at $707,138, they've been converted into busy offices, a gym and a yoga studio, among other things.

Last year, Chapman bought the long-abandoned Fletcher's Gulf - an architecturally quirky filling station. It's currently under renovation for chef Andy Magowan, former partner in the internationally acclaimed Piedmont a few blocks to the south, who plans to open a new restaurant/beer garden there later this year. That project, Chapman estimated, represents a total investment of $520,000.

The Foster/Geer area "really is coming around," Chapman said. He and his neighbors have even coined a nickname for it: "NoCo" - for "North of Corporation, he said.

"It's been kind of amazing," Magowan said. "It's great."

As businessmen in NoCo, Chapman is a relative newcomer but his optimism is shared by an old-timer.

"I think there's a lot that will still come," said George Davis, owner of Stone Bros. & Byrd, a lawn and garden store in business just down Geer Street from King's since 1968.

What's happened

Here is some that has come already:

On the northwest corner of Foster and Geer, T.J. and Maggie McDermott bought the closed-down King's Sandwich Shop in 2009. They fixed the building up and, last August, reopened King's in the style to which Durham was accustomed since 1942. They've met acclaim - and patronage - from the shop's old timers and of Preservation Durham, which gave him its Pyne Preservation Award for historic preservation.

Around the block from the old Gulf station, in 2007, New York architect Alex Washburn and partners bought a former car lot at 723-721 Rigsbee Ave. that opened last September as the hot Motorco Music Hall.

Right across Rigsbee Avenue, Chris Davis and Sean Wilson leased the former Seven-Up plant and opened Fullsteam Brewery there last summer, along with a tavern to showcase its craft beers.

"You come down here on a Friday night and there are all kinds of things going on," said Magowan.

"Some of the projects that have been on hold are starting to raise their heads," Davis said. "It's just going to take banks wanting to lend money."

'Very, very viable'

Banks may be skittish, but other investors at downtown's northern tip are demonstrating bullish expectations with their cash; or their credit, as the case may be.

Washburn and his partners paid $825,000 for Motorco's home; the last tax valuation listed it at $349,685.

The McDermotts paid $150,000 for King's, valued at $39,232.

Fletcher's Gulf is valued at $121,000, but Chapman paid $225,000 for it and, with repairs and renovations, estimates his total capital investment there at $520,000; City Hall evidently shares his optimism, chipping in a $75,000 incentive grant earlier this week.

"Downtown, I think, is very, very viable and it's coming on," said Davis.

Up to now, though the downtown sections that have come on most are in the south, around American Tobacco, and on the west, around Brightleaf Square and West Village.

Pioneers

Invigorating the northern, "Central Park," district is one priority in the 2007 Downtown Master Plan. Several factors make NoCo attractive for entrepreneurs, Chapman said.

"There were some classic buildings that were vacant and had been vacant but were very handsome," he said, among them the former Lincoln-Mercury showroom that is now Motorco and the old Gulf station.

"I've always loved that building," said Magowan. "For years I've walked by it and thought, Man, that would be a great cafe. It's an iconic building in Durham."

Some artistic enterprises were already drawing the public. Manbites Dog Theater, begun in 1987, has made its home next door to King's since 1997. Claymakers pottery studio has been on the theater's other side since 2000, and the SeeSaw craft studio is one of Chapman's tenants.

A "real breakthrough," Chapman said, came in 2003 when Central Park School took over the former Army Reserve Training Center across Foster Street from the theater and Claymakers. That exposes the neighborhood to 200 parents coming in twice a day, he said; the nearby Scrap Exchange, Durham Central Park and Farmers' Market also draw traffic.

"Having King's reopen is a help" as well, said Magowan.

'Different vibe'

The city re-created an attraction with its $5.5 million makeover of the 1939 Durham Athletic Park. The DAP reopened in 2009, and Minor League Baseball operates the park for training ballpark personnel.

"I don't know about benefit in terms of financial reward," Davis said. But, "The ballpark itself and the renovation it went through - it's quite an expression of grandeur."

However, NoCo's new life hasn't come from a government plan or a developer's big-picture vision. Rather, it has come slowly, project by project and business by business. Chapman quoted Sean Wilson of Fullsteam, who calls NoCo "the do-it-yourself neighborhood."

It's a neighborhood where an old ballpark and old-style hot dogs blend well with Summer Basil beer and Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band, cutting-edge theater with okra plants and fertilizer.

"There's sort of a different vibe over here," Chapman said. "It's turning into a really cool place."