One permission could be granted Monday night, if the City Council approves rezoning the Driver Street property to re-legalize its use for education, in the form of the Maureen Joy Charter School.

"This puts us in the heart of East Durham," said Alex Quigley, Maureen Joy's principal.

And that's a good thing for the school. Maureen Joy is an academically rigorous K-8 institution currently located on Cornwallis Road near U.S. 15-501 -- a long way from home for the largely low-income, largely East Durham youngsters the school was established to serve.

It's also good for the neighborhood, said Samuel Jenkins, who owns the Samuel and Sons Barber Shop on nearby Angier Avenue.

"A wonderful idea," Jenkins said. "All around, everyone profits."

Plans are for the Durham nonprofit Self-Help Community Development Corp. to buy the building from its current owner, TROSA, rehabilitate the building and then lease it to Maureen Joy. First, though, Self-Help needs the zoning changed back to permit a school on the 2.8-acre campus at 107 South Driver Street.

TROSA (Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers) bought the property in 1998, and later got it rezoned to allow elderly housing, which disallowed a school. But the elderly housing idea didn't work out and the building has remained disused and deteriorating.

Now, as it happens, Maureen Joy needs more room. The academically rigorous charter school has 325 pupils and 360 applications for 90 open slots this fall.

"We'd like to grow to over 600 students," Quigley said.

The school and Self-Help Community Development Corp. saw an opportunity in the 48,000-square foot former Y.E. Smith.

"It fits with our overall social mission," said Dan Levine, project manager at Self-Help CDC. Two of the CDC's main interests, he said, are "real-estate development that stimulates community development and lending to charter schools."

Decades ago, East Durham was a thriving cotton-mill district. The mills, though, closed a long time ago and in other parts of town the term "East Durham" became synonymous with blight, crime and poverty.

Things are getting better, though, said Jenkins, and he thinks a school in the neighborhood will help give East Durham a new image and add to its new-found vitality.

"Any time you've got education, you're helping children, and if you're helping children you're going to have more children coming into the neighborhood," he said. "It brings parents over to get a visit to and eyesight of East Durham."

Instead of accepting a reputation, they will see remodeled historic homes and new businesses in historic buildings.

"You heard it was a bad area, but it's not," said Jenkins, who has cut hair in East Durham for almost 20 years.

Besides rezoning, Self-Help has permits to get and financing to arrange before it tackles its anticipated a $10- million job at the old Y.E. Smith building. There is asbestos to deal with, unstable floors, a hole in the roof and similar problems an old, abandoned building is heir to.

Built in 1910 and enlarged in the 1920s, the old Y.E. Smith is a Classical Revival brick building, within the East Durham National Register historic district and two blocks from the new TROSA grocery and popular Joe's Diner, as well as Jenkins's barber shop, at Driver Street and Angier Avenue.

In 1967, a new Y.E. Smith Elementary School opened on Main Street, farther east. The school system used the old building for teaching disabled children; later it became a sheltered workshop before TROSA eventually bought it.

Maureen Joy began in a low-income area near Bragtown, in 1997. Soon needing room to grow, it moved to Cornwallis Road. Now, it hopes to move again for the same reason, in time for the 2013-14 school year.