Buttermilk & Molasses

The Downtown Plan: We're Champs at Long-Distance Quibbling

If you can believe it, City Council put the final stamp of approval on the Downtown Master Plan this week. That's the plan that took shape over the summer of 2007, and moved from the hands of the people and urban planners into the hands of the bureaucrats and politicians in November of 2007. It takes time to squeeze the imagination out of a planning document.

Richmond BizSense reports today that the Ghost of the Downtown Master Plan might resurface this fall when the developers of Echo Harbor, a development proposed at the foot of Church Hill, may be the first, best test of the plan as a guiding document.

[Attorney James] Theobald said he expects the proposal to go before council in the fall.

He said the development would generate $3 million in annual tax revenue and create 500 full-time equivalent jobs. He also said they have committed to dedicate and construct a portion of the Virginia Capital Trail along the entire length of the property at no cost to the city.

“That represents the merits that the council will ultimately need to consider,” Theobald said.

For those opposed to the development, the approved downtown plan is another arrow in their quiver.

The Times-Dispatch has details on the final changes to the Downtown Master Plan, as well as council's approval of $2 million to purchase the 1.6 acre Lehigh Cement property near the Echo Harbor site.

Speaking of Old Rail Trails -- Learn More in Person

Southside Richmond, the community blog for the southern leg of the city, has details on a meeting tomorrow about the Rails to Trails Conservancy and plans for Richmond proposal to convert an old rail line into a greenway.

The presentation and discussion happens tomorrow, July 28, from 5:00 until 7:00 p.m. at the Southside Baptist Christian School, 5515 Bryce Lane. (Bryce Lane is located off the 5500 block of Hull Street Road, near the Food Lion.)

Rail Trail Gains Momentum (and Doug Conner Gains Fan)

I intend for this post to be more about a great new greenway being considered in South Richmond, but I'd be remiss in not noting that 9th District City Councilman Doug Conner has emerged in our new political landscape as a regular mover-and-shaker. In the last month, Conner's name has come up in conversation and in print as an advocate for and leader around several key issues -- a regional technical school, the city's admissions tax on tickets to cultural events, and now an effort to connect Reedy Creek, Forest Hill Park and the James River Park to a new trail running deeper into Southside.

The Times-Dispatch's Michael Martz has details:

An abandoned and overgrown rail line in South Richmond may get new life as an urban trail.

The rail spur extends nearly 2½ miles from Cofer Road to Westover Hills Boulevard, where boosters hope trail users eventually will be able to connect to a possible trail along Reedy Creek to Forest Hill Park and the James River Park System.

"The big picture is wherever possible to connect parks to parks," said John R. Pope Jr., director of the Richmond Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities.

The proposed South Side "greenway" is part of a broader regional initiative to link recreational trails, said City Councilman Douglas G. Conner Jr., who is leading the effort to buy the abandoned rail spur from CSX Transportation Corp.

"We're trying to get all of our regional trails together," said Conner, a South Richmond businessman who represents the 9th District.

It's no done deal yet, as the article explains, but it's a great initiative.

Is Rail Without Vision Better Than No Rail At All?

Look, I'm a big fan of trains. I'm particularly fond of trains that move large groups of people over large distances for a reason. The reason could be tourism, or finance. It could be to connect families or drive the economy.

In the abstract, I'm very much behind the idea of a high-speed rail system that connects Richmond to the rest of the world. And I'm pleased to see the regional and state leadership come together to champion high-speed rail.

I just wish they were leading with a compelling vision that couldn't be summed up as "Richmond will be a great commuter city for workers in Washington."

Because I think that's what I heard Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones say yesterday. It's certainly what the Times-Dispatch's Michael Martz heard. Oh, wait. Here is is: "Becoming part of the Washington area metroplex is going to absolutely change the way we do business," Jones said.

There are reasons to be dismissive of the entire endeavor, and Style Weekly's Peter Galuszka did a reasonably good job mapping those out a few weeks ago. (Though I could have done without his extraneous asides about former Amtrak executives.) There are also reasons to be utterly optimistic about the regional pitch, which would be a major catalyst for change if it crosses home plate.

Color me Paul Goldman, however, when I suggest that our region's leaders might want to spend a half-day brainstorming ways the region will benefit from a dramatic shift in how we move people -- other than selling us on the idea of becoming Washington's next bedroom community.

High-speed rail decoupled from a vision that embraces the best of the Richmond region might just be a one-way ticket to the wrong sort of growth. I'd hate to see Church Hill become another Reston.

There are reasons to be excited about high-speed rail coming to Richmond, but only if we proactively lead around them.

We need to create a future Richmond around a vision with hgih-speed rail as one mechanism to help us achieve that future. Following the tracks wherever they may lead is just a hobo's life.

What the Bottom Needs Now Is Not Another Rock Club

The only live music venue Richmond needs downtown falls into one of three categories:

• A swankily appointed live jazz club

• A snappy live blue club with all the trappings

• A completely over-the-top, punk rock, stage-diving, bottle-throwing club

I say this with all the earnestness of a 41-year-old white male who remembers the last time teen spirit really raged in Richmond (Hello, Winkies!) and wishes the city would burst forth with a little more youthful angst.

I'm pretty sure the buttoned-down crowd on 7th Street agrees with me. At least about the jazz. I'm not sure punk rock or true blues go well with French cuffs.

The Times-Dispatch's Will Jones (who once had a bit of angst about him, I seem to recall) reports that the owners of the Lady Bird Hat building (the building formerly known as Toad's Plce) are "close to something really exciting for that space."

You can't imagine how nervous that makes me.

The last time someone launched something really exciting around Richmond it came in the form of Oliver North hawking bumper stickers in the middle of the Watermelon Festival.

I particularly like that both comments on the TD site talk about "thugs". Isn't that a euphemism for something here in Richmond?

The Downtown Plan: Conversation Returns to the River

Richmond's Downtown Master Plan has always been focused around the James River. The initial design of the first public conversations made the river impossible to ignore -- it expanded the definition of downtown Richmond so that it spanned the James River, stretching into the city's old Manchester district.

The James River has been the anchor of the Downtown Plan in more ways than one. The proposed Echo Harbor development -- sitting in the river's flood plain smack in the middle of the Church Hill viewshed -- has been one of the political footballs that has kept the Downtown Plan's approval an attorney's dream. Nothing beats 24 months of billable hours.

Two years into the Downtown Plan conversation, an opportunity for a renewed dialogue was created last Thursday when Richmond businessman Elliott Harrigan paid the bill for a Project for Public Spaces-led community forum on waterfront development. Michael Martz at the Times-Dispatch has all the details on Harrigan's role in organizing the forum, and the response from some of the attendees:

Elliott M. Harrigan, a Richmond businessman and chairman of the board of commissioners at the Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority, engaged a New York-based nonprofit venture for a 90-minute presentation last week on how to create public places that will draw people to attractions along the James River.

Harrigan said he was acting as an interested city resident rather than as board chairman when he invited the Project for Public Spaces to talk about how to build the riverfront vision outlined by the new downtown master plan. He even paid the bill for the organization, though he prefers not to say how much.

"I offered to do it because I felt very strongly that this could help the city in the next step in the process," he said.

(Read Martz's entire piece on the forum here.)

RVANews was out of the gate several days before the Times-Dispatch with their coverage of Thursday's forum, and the comments threading below the RVANews story go a long way toward explaining some of the issues that sit below the waterline of the riverfront development conversation.

And Paul Hammond's Lost Art of the City blog also had some early response to the forum and its companion presentation:

There were lots of examples given on waterfront projects that enhanced public interaction with the water each other and had tremendous economic impact on their communities. Almost all of these involved public/private partnerships, mixed use developments that were part park and part private development including condos, shopping and recreation. The idea is to raise the profile of the river, lake or bay concerned to the benefit of that body of water. The more people that interact with the water, the more they value it and are willing to invest in it's protection.

The Downtown Plan: Tweeting the Confusion

A hastily scheduled discussion of Richmond's now two-year-old Master Plan at City Council this evening may have been one of the more confusing exercises in democracy I've ever seen. I'll try to have a summary up tomorrow -- borrowing heavily from Will Jones at the Times-Dispatch, I'm sure -- but in the meantime, enjoy the Twitter feed featuring (mostly) me, John Murden and Mariane Matera. It's right here.

Reburbing the Suburbs

There's been a growing conversation about the future of suburbia in America, driven in no small part by the expectation that a car-driven society will soon become unsustainable and the more immediate impact of an economic backlash against the very consumer model that built our more modern suburbs.

BLDGBLOG just posted a tidbit about a new ideas competition called Reburbia:

In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? It’s a problem that demands a visionary design solution and we want you to create the vision!

Reburbia is sponsored by some of the more innovative voices in modern design out there, including inhabitat and Dwell.

Naturally, this made me think of Richmond with its incredible sprawl of recent years -- massive housing blocks carved out of once-distant counties like Powhatan and Amelia, huge shopping complexes rising up out of western Chesterfield and Henrico. But it also made me think of Koln, Germany, where I spent a summer during high school riding whatever passed for a metro/light rail system from Germany's version of suburbia to the center city. Koln had long strings of villages cascading outward from its core, connected by trains.

I could re-imagine a Richmond with a rail/hub transportation system with one main east/west line essentially running along Broad Street/Main Street from Church Hill to the Goochland County line, and three north/south lines following 288 (western Henrico and Chesterfield), Powhite and I-95. But eyeballing an aeriel view of the region, there would still be vast tracts of surburban property sitting outside of those corridors and their interconnected hubs.

And as the Baby Boomers make their way into assisted living facilities or the downstairs bedrooms of their middle-aged Gen X children over the next 15 years, I wonder what sort of smart planning is going to be needed to help shape new population patterns that are smarter, more efficient, and account for a significant drop in housing demand for the foreseeable future.

It'll be interesting to see what emerges from the Reburbia project.

A Rare Moment of Brilliance from City Council

WWBT NBC-12 reported this evening that the City of Richmond is preparing to up the ante -- in a significantly big way -- for developers interested in building in and new home owners willing to move into areas of the city with a large number of vacant lots. I was tipped to the story by the Church Hill People's News and Richmond Good Life, but the reporting machine known as Rachel DePompa delivers the goods:

How about paying no real estate taxes for five years? The city of Richmond is considering a new ordinance that would do just that. The goal of the tax exemption is to help spur growth in certain neighborhoods in the city.

The ordinance being considered says if you build a house on an empty lot, in designated areas around the city, you would not have to pay real estate taxes on the new home for five years.

John Murden at Church Hill People's News cites North Church Hill, Carver, and Highland Park as several of the neighborhoods being considered.

What should be exciting about this for residents of the city is that we're essentially talking about taking tax money that does not exist and leaving off the books for five years. It's a net neutral tax proposition, essentially -- with significant tax gains for the city kicking in after year six.

It should also drive down blight in certain neighborhoods, and decrease the absurd number of vacant, residential properties that make our community less safe, less attractive and less livable. The current number of vacant residential properties in the City of Richmond? Somewhere north of 1,500.

The Downtown Plan: Did Somebody Say "Implementation"?

It's come full circle, and in a good way.

Almost two years exactly since Richmond's Department of Community Development invited the public to Plant Zero in Manchester to roll up their sleeves and create a vision for a revised Downtown Master Plan, they're doing it again.

Only this time it's an actual step in the implementation process.

On Saturday, June 27, from 9:00 until 11:30 a.m. there will be a charrette-style kickoff meeting to explore the potential rezoning of the Manchester area. The meeting is open to the public and will be held at the Sacred Heart Center at 1400 Perry Street.

From the announcement:

The study area is generally bounded by the James River to the north and east and Cowardin Avenue to the west.  The southern boundary is generally defined as the Hull Street corridor west of Commerce Road and Maury Street east of Commerce Road.

The purpose of the meeting is to seek input on the future of development and land use in the Manchester Area.

In support of the discussion, City staff will:

• Review the recommendations of the Downtown Plan
• Present best practices in planning and urban design
• Conduct a hands-on session with meeting participants

If you are unable to attend this meeting and would like to be added to our mailing list, please call or email the Department of Community Development at 646-6310 or [email protected]

I'll be out of town that weekend, so someone else is going to have to dish on the actual event.