By Jeri Rowe
2/24/2012, Greensboro News & Record
GREENSBORO — From the sidewalk, he looks like Albert Einstein. His white hair is curly, disheveled, looking like it was combed by electricity rather than a brush. His moustache is bushy, and with his glasses perched atop his head, he looks like a professor needing a class.
But really, he’s an old portrait painter following his house. And it’s crawling down Lexington Avenue. “I did not sleep a wink all week, but this is a relief,’’ Bulent Bediz said in his heavy Turkish accent, taking photos as he walked. “I finally pulled it off.’’ He did. He paid at least $25,000 to move a house less than a block — down Lexington and around the corner on Haywood — to save it from the blade of a bulldozer making room for a new UNCG dorm. Bulent saw it as important.
The house came from a Sears kit brought to Greensboro by train more than a century ago and built on Highland Avenue where it stayed — until this month. A week ago today, it crept down Lexington on wheels and steel beams.
Bulent had wanted to move six houses on and around Highland he had earlier sold to UNCG. In late 2010, UNCG agreed.
UNCG officials gave Bulent until April 2011 to move the houses — and give him some money for the move — to make way for its $225 million construction project.
It’s a campus expansion into Greensboro’s Glenwood neighborhood, and it’s huge. You see the backhoes and construction fences in Glenwood. UNCG’s campus expansion will cover 30 acres of Glen-wood’s 770 acres.
That included Bulent’s six houses.
UNCG gave Bulent at least a half-dozen extensions. But the houses didn’t budge because of all kinds of problems, including an unscrupulous house mover.
So, two weeks ago, UNCG demolished them. All except one.
Bulent saved it. To him, he sees that house as an example of working-class art, worthy of saving, despite the expense.
Crazy? Depends on who you talk to. But one thing’s certain: At 66, Bulent sees his legacy and it’s Glenwood.
He believes his longtime neighborhood off West Lee can become a haven for artists, writers, musicians, just any creative types who believe inspiration lies along the streets of Lexington and Haywood.
So, for nearly 20 years, Bulent has played a real-life game of Monopoly in Glenwood by buying houses. At one time, he owned 70 properties in a three-block area. Today, he owns half that.
The economy clocked Bulent. Since 2008, he’s lost 24 residential properties and four commercial properties to foreclosure. That’s not all. Since then, he’s lost his dogs, his mom, his money — he declared bankruptcy — and at least $300,000 in equipment and materials to thieves.
And he got beaten with a hammer.
It happened in May 2008, right after 5 p.m. on a Haywood Street sidewalk. Bulent caught the guy stealing copper pipe from one of his houses across the street from his home. When the guy walked out, Bulent tailed him.
He followed him for about a block. Then, the guy turned around.
He hit Bulent in the jaw, right elbow and right side before Bulent wrestled him to the ground and waited for the police to arrive. The thief got an 18-month stint in jail; Bulent got a swollen jaw and welts the size of half dollars riding up his right side. For two months, he could only open his mouth an eighth of an inch.
And Bulent stayed.
He’d been in Glenwood since 1976. There, in a house along Lexington Avenue, he took care of his son, David, during his early years, and he took care of his mother, Samime, during her later years. She died at age 91.
Now, Bulent is trying to take care of Glenwood.
Bulent has his share of critics, particularly in his neighborhood. Bulent’s properties fell into disrepair because of his money problems, and some saw Bulent as a cause of the community becoming dilapidated and rundown.
Money problems continue. Yet Bulent soldiers on.
“I’m not a quitter, you know?’’ he said Thursday from his Lexington Avenue house. “From the very beginning, I’ve always thought this is a jewel in the rough. I had to do it. Somebody had to do it. What is that cliche? It’s not waiting for the storm to end, it’s learning how to dance in the rain. That’s me.’’