Buttermilk & Molasses

Maps Bolster Global Awareness

It's been a while since I've check out Google Earth, the application that allows casual users to explore the globe and more intrepid cartographers to provide others with new windows to the world. Today's Washington Post spotlighted a new partnership between Google and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to allow Google Earth users to explore the plight of the globe's many refugee populations.

Click on the United Nations' "visit a camp" button in Google Earth, for example, and an online depiction of the globe spins and zeroes in on a satellite view of a refugee camp in Chad. There, visitors learn about the refugees who have fled to that country from western Sudan's Darfur region. Click on a button and users can find out how much money it costs to install, say, a new water source at the camp. Click again and users can donate that amount.

"The great thing about Google Earth is it gives you that ability to be there," said Tim Irwin, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee organization. "We're hoping to take something that might be a little abstract for some people and make it very real."

Other organizations and causes partnering with Google Earth provide views of our world that are both revealing and comprehensive -- the maps created by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum showing the hundreds of villages destroyed in Darfur, for instance, or the "Every Human Has Rights" campaign launched by The Elders.

And on a more local level, the number of buttons linking Google Earth viewers of the Richmond area to focus in and learn about all things Richmond is astronomical. My personal favorite for its title alone: "Apartment F1: let's Go Smoke Crack."

Leadership with a Stopwatch

Thank God for the columnists.

Last night's conversation about the state of leadership in the Richmond region, sponsored by the Coalition for a Greater Richmond, was a little bit of interpretative data wrapped around the spicy candor of Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams. All-in-all, the entire affair felt rushed for time and lacked a real chewy nougat center.

Close to 100 people crammed the second floor of Bank in downtown Richmond to hear Christopher Newport University professor Quentin Kidd share the results of CNU's Center for Public Policy survey about political leadership in Richmond. Williams and Style Weekly's news editor Scott Bass were tapped to sit on a panel with Kidd to give his survey data some context and flavor.

The evening began with traditional Richmond elbow-rubbing and a too-long introduction to the Coalition, its history, its political baggage and its ambitions. Then Kidd stepped the audience through his survey results:

"We asked voters an initial question about the direction of the city, and 50% said the city was headed in the right direction," Kidd told the crowd. "My question was what do they want to see ... why is it that voters were split 50/50? So we asked about the political leadership in Richmond."

Kidd went data point by data point, and concluded that the residents of the City of Richmond are genuinely split -- and not yet totally dissatisfied with leadership in the city. (Or not as of mid-February.)

Leave it to Michael Paul Williams to throw the crowd some raw meat. Apologizing that he would have to duck out early to get to a VCU class he teaches on Wednesday nights, Williams let loose with a series of observations. Here are a few of them:

• On Richmond's leadership: "I don't know if we can talk about failures of city leadership without talking about failures of regional leadership. The watchword here is collaboration. What we have here is a failure of collaboration."


• A note to voters: "Be careful what you ask for. Change is messy, but it doesn't have to be this messy. I sense that people like the idea of cleaning out the mess in City Hall, but they don't like the mess involved."


• On regionalism: "I'm far more pessimistic than Dr. Kidd's poll with the city's standing with the counties. I think the city has declined ... and has not come to terms with the counties' growing power. The dynamic has changed so much that you have to ask what's in it for the counties [to cooperate with the city]."


• Richmond under Wilder: "The new form of government is more dynamic, but less professional."


• On Wilder: "Who needs the counties to trash Richmond if the mayor keeps talking about how much the city stinks?" and "I don't think people are that patient -- to wait a full term for change, or that the [chaos] was necessary. The mayor had [the voters] at 'hello'. It didn't have to be this way."

Style's Scott Bass was less strident in his remarks, which were largely observations about Mayor Wilder. "Envisioning Richmond without Wilder is kind of depressing, simply because of all the drama," he said.

The Lost Art of Reporting

After the Washington Post landed six Pulitzer Prizes today for its robust reporting on a variety of topics, Post columnist and weblogger Joel Achebach pointed out the obvious:

The Post has just won six Pulitzer Prizes, which looks like a typo. It was a newsroom-wide triumph -- Metro, National, Investigative, Foreign, Financial, Magazine. Within that Variety Pack of journalism, there's a common ingredient -- something we too seldom discuss when we cogitate about how to reinvent the business model: Reporting.

Original reporting still matters. It's probably our best gimmick. It's what we do (imperfectly to be sure) better than anyone else in the news business. It also can't be easily replaced on the cheap by some other information-delivery system.

True that. People are the strongest resource of any newspaper or magazine -- a good reporter and a good editor are worth their weight in gold. Without good writing and solid reporting, newspapers are nothing more than advertorial containers for rewritten press releases, minutes from public meetings and obituaries (all of which can turn into magic with guidance from a genius editor).

A weblog with three good reporter/writers and a solid copy editor could turn Richmond on its head.

Keeping Up With North Richmond

After a hack-induced hiatus, North Richmond News is back online with several dozen new posts of interest to residents of Bellevue, Lakeside, Ginter Park and other North Richmond neighborhoods. For more hyperlocal coverage of Richmond neighborhoods, check out RVANews with its aggregation of more than a dozen neighborhood weblogs.

As always, email north [dot] richmond [dot] news [at] gmail [dot] com with calendar listings or news related to the North Richmond community.

The Downtown Plan: Richmond's Balancing Act Along the James River

For more than two centuries, the James River was a means to an end for residents of Richmond. It was a commercial superhighway that connected Richmond to the world, and a depository for the city's waste -- biological and chemical.

That changed in large part because of the advocacy and hard work of Ralph White, who began a 20+ year effort to reclaim the James' natural wonder when he arrived in Richmond in 1980:

When Ralph White began work on the James River Park as a volunteer in 1980, the Park was an unfriendly and little used resource. But thanks to over 25 years of service he has changed that by connecting neighborhoods, children, and the city with all the natural wonders the Park and James River have to offer. Having moved to Richmond to become the Chairman of the local Sierra Club group in 1978, Ralph was eventually hired as a naturalist by the City of Richmond, and for many years, worked alone in the park with volunteers. Now manager of the James River Park System for Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities, the Park has a budget of more than $255,000, an environmentally-friendly management policy, and the strong support of the community.

The James River is at the heart of Richmond's proposed Downtown Plan, which somewhat famously calls the James River "Richmond's great, wet Central Park." The Downtown Plan calls for the development of "a comprehensive system of natural open space along the river and the [creation of] green connections between city parks and the riverfront."

The latest issue of Virginia Business magazine wonders whether Richmond is prepared to fully appreciate and protect the region's most significant natural resource even as it is pursued from many directions by developers. As the article by Nicole Anderson Ellis notes, everyone is talking about preserving the James -- politicians, citizens, conservationists, the Crupi Report, the new Downtown Plan. The question is whether anyone is seriously focused on doing much more than talking about it.

While there appears to be consensus on the river’s economic value, two key hurdles complicate the push to tap its potential.  The first is balancing public and private interests. “Richmond’s downtown population is going to grow,” warns Victor Dover, urban land planner, architect and principal at Dover, Kohl & Partners, the Coral Gables, Fla., firm that produced the new master plan.  “That high density is going to put pressure on park space.  There’s going to be a real need for public land.”

Concerned Richmonders already are filling master plan review sessions, City Council meetings and editorial pages urging support for expanded riverfront parks and limits on construction projects that might block long-loved views. 

Also vocal are real estate investors, upset to find that the Downtown Master Plan and Crupi Report deem their high-dollar riverfront land best-suited for parks.  “The Master Plan is way too specific and way too detailed,” says James Theobald, an attorney with the Richmond law firm Hirschler Fleischer.  He represents the hopeful developers of a $160 million project on a 5-acre parcel on the east edge of downtown; a parcel labeled “green” in the draft plan. 

City officials are caught in the middle.  Encasing the river in a concrete-and-chrome canyon would spoil the draw of downtown, says Pantele.  But many riverfront properties still are zoned industrial, limiting the city’s influence.  “They can build a factory or an apartment building 300 feet high, by right,” says Pantele.  “Should they be able to do that?  No.  Are they allowed?  Yes.”

As with many challenges confronting Richmond, the future of the James River is wrapped in the sort of debate that continues to confound area leaders -- one that requires a compelling vision and that embraces the long-term over short-term gain.

This attitude toward urban development is the way of the future, says Dover.  “Being green is a good story to tell.  River preservation generates a special attractiveness and increased value.”

To Dover, whose planning clients range from Istanbul to Atlanta, Maui to Miami, Richmond’s economic growth hinges on a willingness to bank on long-term returns.  “There’s going to come a time when future generations are going to say, ‘Richmond was so smart,’ or, ‘What were they thinking?’”

New Partnership Expected to Tackle Crupi Report

When strategic consultant Jim Crupi returned to Richmond last year to deliver his assessment of the region's challenges and opportunities, it came as no surprise that he not only laid out some specific ideas for the region but that Crupi took Richmond area leaders behind the woodshed for their proven inability to consistently lead with a vision or move ambitious strategic initiatives forward.

For a while, it felt like Crupi's November report would be another set of good ideas to fall through the cracks in the region's overly tactical leadership playbook. But behind-the-scenes, key members of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce -- including outgoing Chamber president Jim Dunn and current chairman Ted Chandler -- have been hard at work trying to turn Crupi's suggestions, and other key regional proposals, into reality.

I sat down with Dunn several weeks ago to discuss the Crupi Report, which was funded privately but delivered to the community in November as a Chamber of Commerce initiative.

"The biggest takeaway from the Crupi Report was the disconnect we still have as a region," Dunn said. "Our real challenge, if we're going to evolve as a world-class region, is to connect the elements that create a community and move them forward."

"What people really began to understand is that we have got to get out of the silos and see how each of the issues we face fit together hand-to-glove," Dunn continued. "Crupi said we're doing good work in a lot of areas, but we have got to emerge the next generation of leadership and to move forward some of the things on the table that matter to the region."

In order to do that, Dunn and others believe a new mechanism is needed to create collaboration on those key issues, which include transportation, education and tourism. With the working name "Capital Region Tomorrow," that proposed mechanism is a new entity that spans not only the nine jurisdictions of the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission (Ashland, Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent, Powhatan and Richmond) but potentially include representatives from the rapidly growing Crater Planning District Commission that surrounds Petersburg.

The goal of the proposed new group? To create "a future vision for the capital region and the oversight to achieve it."

Dunn believes that Capital Region Tomorrow is needed in part to help the region shake off past baggage.

"We're saying let's hand this off to a group that doesn't have the baggage that you'd have if, say, the Chamber owned this," Dunn said. "And to have a communication strategy that reaches out to everyone in the region and not just the typical cast of characters who tend to show up."

The idea for a new entity to provide regional leadership is just taking form, Dunn said. "I think we're doing to right thing by taking a step back and figuring this out -- not just jumping off the cliff. There's going to be a process as we develop this, but there won't be a lot of public movement on that process for a few months," he said.

Richmond Looks to Charleston for Clues

A group of 110 Richmonders spent a chunk of last week in Charleston, South Carolina, looking for the secret to success. According to Times-Dispatch reporter Will Jones, at least part of Charleston's secret will be tough to replicate -- it lives in the head of that city's mayor.

Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., who has guided much of Charleston's progress during nine terms in office, said his strategy has included focusing on development that pays attention to the needs of humans and settles for nothing short of perfection.

Apparently, Riley struck a similar chord with many of the group as he struck years ago with Richmond's director of community development, Rachel Flynn. Flynn has evoked the spirit of Mayor Riley frequently in her many public discussions of Richmond's proposed Downtown Plan over the past year.

The attorney pushing for the development of Echo Harbor, a private condominium development proposed for the James River, reflected the perspective more typical of Richmond's traditional, "can't do" approach to big ideas. Of Charleston's ability to balance public and private interests, attorney James Theobald said, "That's a terrific goal, but the devil is always in the details."

Which was essentially Riley's point. The devil is in the details because details matter, and because they matter they require strong, focused leadership.

Riley said he has butted heads with bureaucrats and others at times, insisting that a dilapidated building be restored rather than demolished, or that a sidewalk be widened to make a project work despite inconvenience to motorists.

He said a city's downtown is vital to a community's health because "it's the place where citizenry is reinforced."

"Anything beats the rats and rain, but the fact is we shouldn't build anything in the city that doesn't add to the beauty of it," he said.

In other comments to the Richmond group, Riley reemphasized his point:

Riley described how he once instructed city workers to roughen the edges of new bluestone pavers after they had been placed because the crisp corners didn't look right in a city of worn bricks. He said downtown development must be perfect. "It's the democratic space."

The Downtown Plan: Creeping Toward Approval

Nothing beats the momentum of a one-week, intensive charrette process involving hundreds of highly engaged residents, unless you're really turned on by the slow drag of the bureaucratic, political process that has taken a week of ideas and turned it into a year of refinement.

Yes, Richmond, there is a proposed Downtown Plan and by the end of April it may transition from the desks of the Richmond Planning Commission into the hands of Richmond's City Council. It's all part of a lengthy approval process which has allowed a broader swath of stakeholders -- residents, developers and builders, policymakers and the like -- to weigh in on the plan's specific recommendations for Richmond's future downtown development.

On Monday, April 7, the Planning Commission will hear from staff from the Community Development department on accomplishments achieved from the previous Downtown Plan. And on Monday, April 21, Planning Commission members will discuss priorities for the implementation of the proposed new Downtown Plan. Both meetings are open to the public and will begin at 1:30 pm in the fifth floor conference room of City Hall (900 East Broad Street).