CityView Magazine

Franzblau has operated Om Yoga Studio on the first floor of her building since 2001. By the time Betty Friedan’s iconic book, “The Feminine Mystique,” was published in 1963, Franzblau and her husband had two young children, Rena and David. She read Friedan’s book, which launched a wave of feminism in the United States, and she realized that it was all about her life. She decided she wanted something different, so Franzblau left her family and started school at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She continued straight on to her doctoral degree in psychology and then took a teaching job at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. About the same time, she joined the political movement, ultimately leaving her position in Tennessee to move to Washington, D.C., where she protested the war in El Salvador. From Washington, she moved on to Boston and a job as a paralegal to make ends meet. After four years without teaching, she realized she missed it and took a job at the University of 58 | Food & Wine • 2010 Massachusetts Boston. She needed a tenure-track position, and that need took her to a university in Fredonia, N.Y., but Fredonia is situated on Lake Erie, and the winters were harsh. So Franzblau followed the sunshine south, to Fayetteville, and Fayetteville State University, where she has been since. When Franzblau arrived in Fayetteville in 1992, she drove downtown as part of her exploration of her new city. At that time, many of the buildings on Hay Street were dilapidated and shuttered. The Point News still operated where Hay and Old streets meet. A few other shops, the Hay Street Shoe Shop, Holmes Electric and Sunny’s Men’s Wear, were open for business, as was the legendary Rick’s Lounge. The Arts Council of Fayetteville- Cumberland County was there. That was about it. Many people were afraid to even venture downtown. “I saw it all,” Franzblau said, “and my first impression was, ‘What a shame that this wonderful street was all boarded up.’” Four years later, Franzblau had just sold her house in Haymount and was looking for something else. She ran into her real estate agent, John C. Malzone, a strong proponent for downtown redevelopment, at a festival on Hay Street. “I had just listed what was the Big Dish Restaurant,” Malzone said. “Frank Brown owned it, and he had just closed it because, at that time, downtown had not come back yet.” Malzone gave Franzblau a tour of the building, which was little more than a shell. “Imagine this as a loft apartment,” Malzone told her. “It would be so cool. You could make a rooftop garden. It would be the first one down here.” The city had just approved mixed-use zoning downtown, which would enable people to live above the storefronts for the first time in a century, Malzone said. “She saw the vision. Then Elva came and saw it, and she went crazy for it.”

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