Sunday's Times-Dispatch features a column penned by your truly looking at the trajectory of Richmond's proposed Downtown Master Plan as it heads to City Council next Monday for a final vote. I'd like to think it's a nice capstone column, urging Council to pass the plan and closing the loop on a piece I wrote before the first public discussions on the plan last July -- an unbelievable 15 months ago.
I've added links to these text of the TD column that take you back to the original source posts referenced, which include a key handful of posts from my 15 months of coverage of the Downtown Master Plan process:
"Anatomy of a Highly Public Plan"
By JOHN SARVAYTIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
In July, Richmond celebrated the one-year anniversary of an exercise in citizen involvement with the approval of the Downtown Master Plan by the Richmond Planning Commission.
This month the City Council will either give the proposed plan a green light, or give it the boot.
The Downtown Master Plan, a document required by the state, gained traction in July of 2007 when almost 400 residents, developers, business owners, and public officials came together at Plant Zero in the Manchester District for a crash course in urban planning. That more than a thousand Richmonders got -- and remained -- engaged as the plan moved from creative brainstorming to hyper-bureaucratic editing speaks volumes about the desire for the community to be engaged in the creation of its own future.
It's the sort of process Richmond's next mayor should insist be part and parcel of his administration.
From the beginning, I have been covering the Downtown Plan process on my Weblog, Buttermilk & Molasses. Over the course of a year there's been plenty of opportunity to watch the gears of government turn -- in many directions.
As the plan heads to Council for consideration (a public hearing is set for Monday, Oct. 13, at 6 p.m.), it might help to look back at how an exercise in bureaucracy turned into a model for civic engagement.
The public portion of the Downtown Plan process didn't start smoothly. The city's Department of Community Development and Mayor Wilder's robust PR machine stumbled in the early days. At the time, a number of people saw the possibility behind the process, but wondered whether the administration could pull it off.
But interviews with Director of Community Development Rachel Flynn, and with Margaret Flippen, the project manager from Dover Kohl, the consulting firm helping the city, were reassuring. There was a genuine desire for public involvement, but would it materialize at the July 20 public kick-off? It depended on who you asked.
Demands for perfection would chase the planning process from the get-go.
The opening salvo was a design charrette, a week-long opportunity for the public and other stakeholders to brainstorm with the design team about the future of Richmond's downtown. And despite genuine concerns about inclusion, it became obvious that this was going to be a far different planning journey than Richmond had ever experienced.
"To the region's residents, planning -- or the perceived lack thereof -- can be puzzling," I posted. "Meetings designed to solicit input are often under-publicized to the public and over-attended by developers. News coverage pops up like a bottle rocket -- a brief moment of illumination in a multi-year development calendar, followed by darkness, followed by a new mall, or subdivision, or office park. When public participation tends to be the last box checked on a bureaucrat's to-do list, everything is a surprise. A week-long planning and design process that is open to the public is a breath of fresh air."
On kick-off night, Plant Zero was packed past capacity for the Dover Kohl roadshow on urban development; the Miami-based firm is among the best in the country, and their team was impressive.
Planner Victor Dover raised the stakes for residents: "You are not being asked to come to a planning workshop and take your two-and-a-half minutes at the microphone," he said. "I urge you to think of this as a Continental Congress for your city and its future. You are at a real crossroads in your history. It's a historic moment in the way you view your river -- as a place for people."
A day later, almost 200 people returned for Round Two. Armed with colored markers and large maps of downtown, they went to work. By the end of the morning, their best ideas were slathered across more than 60 maps. For the next week, the planning staff worked out of an open office in Manchester. People wandered in and out, watching the planners do their thing.
I spoke to one of the planners from Dover Kohl about the process.
"We started on Sunday by creating one big map we call Frankenstein," said [planner Canan] Mutlu. "It doesn't look nice, but it gets everyone's ideas onto one big sheet. Now we're talking to different experts about how realistic the ideas are." The week ended with a final presentation by Dover Kohl, and a promise for additional follow-up.
That follow-up came earlier than expected. In September, another public hearing was called -- part attempt to continue the conversation; part effort to bolster the diversity of voices. And while that late September meeting felt like a bit of a do-over -- a good refresher for return attendees-- it was an important crash course for several hundred newcomers to the process.
This was the night when the James River emerged as the heart of the Downtown Plan. Dover's patented phrase became coin of the realm that night. "The James River," he said, again and again, "is your great, wet Central Park . . . If the James River is the gold mine of tomorrow, if you buy that idea, it is important to protect.". The river, the architecture, transportation, building a sense of place and community downtown -- these were the ideas beginning to emerge from the conversation.
In November, a draft of the plan was finally released; printed, the document was close to an inch thick.
Richmond's Planning Commission was the next step in the process. A public hearing was set for early December. Another 200 people mostly supportive turned out at that hearing. By this point in the process, more than 1,000 people had actively been engaged by the process.
By April, developers and large property owners -- including Virginia Commonwealth University, which was feeling some heat about their proposed demolition of the architecturally significant West Hospital -- were finally ready to speak their minds.
Major components of the draft Downtown Master Plan came into question -- from proposals to create more public greenspace along the James River, to efforts to save the West Hospital. Changes were made in the plan's language and tone. A very public process suddenly went very private, as lawyers and planning staff met in closed meetings to wrangle over language and intent.
Yet, one year and a day after the public process began, the Planning Commission held its final hearing on the proposed plan and sent it forward to City Council for review.
On Oct. 13, City Council has an opportunity to approve a vision for Downtown Richmond generated by hundreds of its residents, one of the best urban planning firms in the nation, and an impressively competent team of city planning staff.
A "thumb's up" by City Council is not just an affirmation for the Downtown Master Plan, it will serve as recognition for the sort of democratic process the entire Richmond region should embrace.
John Sarvay is a leadership consultant for Luck Stone Corp. and editor of several local weblogs, including Buttermilk & Molasses (floricane.typepad.com).
