Whenever former NFL quarterback Aaron Brooks returned to his old stomping grounds of Newport News, Virginia over the summers while attending the University of Virginia, one thing stood out: his hometown needed help. “I would come home and there was nothing for me or my friends to do,” Brooks toldYahoo! Sports in an article published Friday. “I spent a lot of time going back and forth to UVA thinking about what I could do to improve the community.” It was a thought that stuck with him well after his college years, so after playing his final NFL snap in 2007, Brooks spent his post-football life reviving his hometown.
After a brief stint as a real estate development in Williamsburg, Virginia, Brooks focused his attention on revitalizing the southeast portion of Newport News, which has been met with nearly a decade of peaks and valleys. With the help of Newport News officials and developer Amanda Hoffler, Brooks took a resident-focused approach to create a new “retail-and-residential development” called Brooks Crossing.
After eight grueling years, Brooks still spends his time bouncing from Newport News to his home in Richmond. But he feels like it's the burden he must undertake. “I quote-unquote ‘made it,’” Brooks said. “I went to a great university, I was successful in my career, I was very fortunate. But I would come back and see that there was nothing to do, that generations of families were just lost. There was no one looking out for their best interests.” Now, it looks like progress is being made.
This year, Brooks Crossing has opened a police precinct, a grocery store with a daycare center, and a beauty supply store. There's also a Family Dollar on the way. According to Newport News EDA’s Director of Development, Florence Kingston, the nationally-known Family Dollar store will prove that Brooks Crossing is heading in the right direction. “We’ve needed a strong anchor, not just locally but nationally,” Kingston told Yahoo! Sports. “We’ve had to sell our community that much more, spend a lot more dollars to convince people this is a prime location in which [retailers] can thrive, and there is a profit to be made.”
Brooks' work is far from done, but he remains motivated to turn Newport News into the community he knows it can be.
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