Buttermilk & Molasses

Goldman Breaks for the Bottom

He may not be mayor, but Paul Goldman has finally launched an idea that has captured the imagination of at least five members of Richmond's City Council. Not that the online readers of the Times-Dispatch give a rip -- to them, apparently, ever idea that involves the government is of Satan.

Rewind.

Back in the early summer, Paul Goldman posted a mildly crazy idea of his new Style Weekly weblog. It created what felt like a gentle breeze. Until Manoli Loupassi gave it a bit of a kick-start from his new vantage spot at the General Assembly; that showed up in a little noticed blurb in the Times-Dispatch a few weeks later.

First Goldman:

With additional resources, and a bold new public-private partnership, they can be the foundation to build a world-class medical complex centered in the Bottom.

By 2020, we can give downtown Richmond a true field of dreams to rival those health care venues in President Obama’s cities of the future. Close your eyes and envision the green acres of a futuristic medical complex rivaling the best in America. Try to see, for example, advances such as gene-based technology tailoring treatments to meet people’s gender, racial and ethnic origins.

The area’s specialties could also include cutting-edge biotechnology, through frontline advances in addressing the needs of the population which lives longer all the time, and taking the lead in community medicine sure to be demanded by the coming national health care plan.

This complex would not only serve patients in need, but offer world-class training to the next generation of medical professionals, lure innovative medical software companies and provide the perfect venue to house a new science high school.

In terms of community medicine, envision a state-of-the-art community health center, accessible right to the front door from anywhere in Richmond, by putting the GRTC System transfer station next to Amtrak’s high-speed rail station.

By turning the Bottom into the top of the medical world, we would be in a unique position: No other such complex in America would be a destination — within a short walk of the high-speed rail line being planned for our part of the country. The facility would be an employment machine, thus attracting residential and retail development and eventually revitalizing the East End to the Henrico County line, where a commuter shuttle could run on the train tracks that run parallel to the James River.

But this vision cannot happen unless city government takes the lead in bringing together the necessary players, and passing the legislation needed to create a public-private partnership — a first-ever downtown medical authority — to coordinate the planning and collective financial support needed from the key stakeholders. Between Virginia Commonwealth University, state government, and leaders in private-sector health care, we have the talent to mesh all the moving parts, but City Hall and City Council have to get the ball rolling.

Skip Loupassi for a second and fast-forward to this afternoon, when the Times-Dispatch announced that Goldman's dream was beginning to take shape. That's when what passes for electronic mob rule ran roughshod over Goldman's dream:

Five members of Richmond City Council are joining forces to issue a resolution seeking to establish a medical complex commission that would study the feasibility of creating a medical, research, education and hospital complex in Shockoe Bottom.

Council members Douglas G. Conner Jr., Chris A. Hilbert, E. Martin Jewell, Reva Trammell and Bruce W. Tyler are patrons of the resolution.

Such a medical complex "is a proven catalyst for enormous job creation, greatly improved health care, cost-efficient health care delivery, expanded educational opportunities, improved public health, attracts new citizens and greatly enhances a state's and city's quality of life," Conner read from the draft resolution this morning.

Just to prove that Richmonders will sink any idea -- baseball, public transit, medical science -- the Times-Dispatch's comment section quickly loaded itself with naysayers:

• Like others here, I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Am waiting for the punchline on this.
• So instead of all the gunshot and stabbing victims going up the hill to MCV, they can just stay in the bottom. Anyways, makes no sense unless MCV is totally swamped and overcrowded? I don’t live in the city to built it! I’m not paying for it.
• How does this benefit Richmond citizens?  MCV is already serving the needs of Richmond with healthcare (both insured and non-insured), research, medical education, and research.  And Bon Secours has a hospital in the Churchill area.
• So it’s OK to put a hospital with sick people in a flood plain, but it wasn’t Ok for a baseball stadium?
• Another ill-conceived contrivance of local politicians to fleece taxpayers and duplicate services within walking distance.

It would be a mistake to wait for details when you can trample an idea to death before it's really been floated.

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.

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.

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.

The Downtown Plan: Is It Too Late To Hire the French?

Hand it to the French and the New York Times -- one creates a grand vision, and the other introduces it to the world.

Having been introduced to the proposals for Paris' new master plan, I'm almost ashamed to have participated in a very engaging master planning process for downtown Richmond. As the article do directly notes: "even if none of the proposals are ever built, they show a daring that has not been seen in a Western city for decades".

There are some amazing designs, but what is even more amazing is that the city of Paris was so intentional about the purpose of its future plan -- and that the architects responded so passionately to the challenges:

The aim of the study was twofold: to create a plan for a greener, more sustainable city, and to break down the isolation between the outlying neighborhoods and the historic center. The most thought-provoking designs operate on multiple levels, reaching beyond the issue of sustainability to address deeply entrenched social ills.

Among the most audacious is Mr. de Portzamparc’s plan, which proposes demolishing both the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est and replacing them with a single massive European train station just outside the city center. The station would link to the Eurostar train lines to London and Brussels, as well as to a new elevated maglev train that would run above the périphérique. It would also anchor a towering new global business district, a rival to La Défense.

Mr. Rogers’s plan is equally ambitious. Noting that the tracks that connect to the city’s main train stations cut Paris into wedges, like slices of a pie, he proposes burying them all underground. A vast system of public parks would be draped over these new underground tracks, connecting poor and middle-class neighborhoods.

Check out all of the designs at Bustler.

I wonder what it would take for the Richmond region to step back and design a future urban center that reconnected our communities, embraced green technology, emphasized public spaces and dreamed of genuine transformation...

I mean, besides an entirely new generation of leadership.

What a Difference a Streetscape Makes

Richmonders got a taste of what urban planners can do to provide a sense of what's possible a few years ago when the folks at Dover Kohl blew through town to help develop the Downtown Master Plan. But I'm still occasionally struck by how simple changes can transform the look and feel of urban spaces -- and how many words a good picture can really say.

Chris O'Brion tipped me off to a NYTimes article on New York City's first street design manual, which is focused on transforming the vacant, utilitarian streetscapes that were so popular in the 1970s into spaces that welcome pedestrians, bicyclists and horseless carriages alike. The article comes with a nifty Flash image showing what a transformed Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn might look like with the new designs in place. I've captured the before and after photos below.

All of this makes me think about Richmond's amazing Downtown Master Plan and its emphasis on language -- using words to describe what a future urban center could become. It would be awesome to see what more future-themed pictures could tell us about a revitilized downtown, and how they might inspire more Richmonders to envision a future different from our past.

Even more exciting than what New York has been doing is what the smart-as-whip folks at GOOD Magazine have been doing -- running their own street redesign contest. "Project Design A Livable Street" uses a redesign of the intersection of Manhattan's Amsterdam Avenue and West 76th Street as a starting point. (Click on the before and after images below for more detail; or go to the interactive graphic at GOOD to see exactly what's going on here.)

The winners included a redesign of a Portsmouth, Virginia, streetscape. Go check them out -- it's some amazing stuff, and a good model for how we could do a better job of imagining our future streetscapes.

New Chris OBrion Cartoon: Richmond as Ancient Rome

He's simply the funniest editorial cartoonist around, and maybe the only living, breathing one regularly tackling Richmond-centric issues. Check out Chris OBrion's other stuff at Richmond Cartoon.

The Downtown Plan: Flynn Becomes the Fulcrum

Love her, hate her or have no opinion about her, one thing's for sure -- you can't argue that Richmond's Director of Community Development hasn't made an impact on local politics with the process for a new Downtown Master Plan her department introduced almost two years ago.

The extremely public process, which has stepped alternately on the toes of the state, private business, Virginia Commonwealth University, and individual residents, ran into the rather inflexible wall of governmental bureaucracy early in 2008. It has spent the better part of a year being chipped away at by politicians and developers.

In the process, Rachel Flynn has somehow found herself in the center of a debate about the role of government officials, the motivations of politicians and the desires of developers.

Style Weekly recently wrote about Flynn's collision with several members of Richmond's City Council, who apparently feel the director might want to decrease the volume of her public advocacy and host more coffees with private developers.

This week, two readers respond. One speaks with a degree of authority about the appropriateness of Flynn's advocacy. Architect Sanford Bond once served on the very Planning Commission that has been a significant speedbump in the adoption of the Downtown Master Plan, and writes:

As reported May 6 (“Flynn’s Last Stand,” News & Features), it seems that the developer and certain members of City Council and the Planning Commission want us to believe that the planning department, led by its director, Rachael Flynn, is unreasonably obstructing the approval of the development of the property. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The city would not stand in the way of the property being developed in accordance with its existing zoning, M-2. However, the developer bought the property with full knowledge that his proposed residential development did not conform to that zoning and that he would require a rezoning in order to do what he wanted. In fact, it seems that he has applied not only for a rezoning but also for a special use permit because he does not even want to conform to the height requirements of the rezoning. Unfortunately, it seems that he made a rather imprudent decision to assume that he could do whatever he wanted.

Getting this development right is something in which the whole community has a stake. While the owner’s interests should certainly be taken into account, rezoning and special use permits must reflect the public’s interests before private interests. I think it is entirely appropriate, even essential, that the planning director weigh in on the debate on behalf of the greater good for the whole community. Flynn’s sound professional judgment, detailed knowledge of good planning practices and clear vision of Richmond’s future will enable city policy-makers to make the right decisions on Echo Harbour. Far from being condemned as an obstructionist, she should be commended as a strong and principled advocate for the public interest and Richmond’s future.

Baseball in the Bottom: Three Ways Forward, Only One Way To Win

It seems to me that a bit of a substantial shift is happening in the ongoing (and going and going) debate about the future of baseball -- in Richmond, generally, and in Shockoe Bottom specifically.

Part of the shift happened over time as a series of public discussions organized by the developer of a proposed $360 million-plus mixed use reinvention of the Bottom were more divisive than decisive -- most in attendance at the sessions appeared more captivated by the details in Highwood's balance sheets and financial calculations than in the vision the developer and local baseball afficianado Brian Bostic were pitching.

When financial statements tank a compelling vision, it's probably a good time to find a relief pitcher.

With public opinion increasingly fractured, this week's press conference in which Mayor Dwight Jones discussed the results of a $100,000 financial study of the proposed development and accompanying ball park was not what Highwoods wanted. Jones changed the game with a very simple change-up -- figure out how the proposal should factor in a GRTC bus transfer station, a future high-speed rail connection, and the deep African-American historical roots of the area.

Not what Highwoods wanted. But maybe exactly what they needed.

 There are three ways Highwoods can proceed with their multi-million play. Two paths are sure-fire ways to lose everything.

They can call the game due to inclement weather -- the collision of two fronts, an economic low pressure system and increasingly high pressure of public dissatisfaction. Highwoods walks. The Bottom continues to increment its way forward. Hello, status quo.

They can keep on slogging through the game, relying on an inning-by-inning strategy developed long before the game got interesting. It's always fascinating to watch a team run the same play, again and again, even as the entire game has transformed around them. Fascinating in that sick, car crash sort of way. Recent articles in the Times-Dispatch about parking challenges and prospective teams waffling -- along with Style Weekly's consistently solid reporting on the numbers -- are an example of the water torture that will ultimately ensure the plan falls apart.

Shared Air's Mark Brady alludes to the third way, the way opened up this week by Jones:

This thing is on life supoport unless Highwoods and GRTC, the two organized projects many oppose, get their acts together and find a way to integrate their missions/goals and offer one hellacious destination that brings along, in a meaningful clearly explored way,  the other two pieces of unfocused heritage projects people like — historic green market, Lumpkins 1/2 acre — into the mix. When it comes to Shockoe and it’s potential, maybe some folks are suddenly realizing they hang together or they hang separately. Maybe.

The real opportunity -- the bold, visionary one that Richmond will most likely resist -- is to bring all the players into a new conversation. Using Highwoods' proposal as a starting point, organize an aggressive, hands-on charrette that includes the developers, the ball team investors, GRTC, Virginians for High-Speed Rail, representatives from Shockoe Bottom and adjoining neighborhoods, the Capital Trail folks, champions of the Slave Trail, the city's community development division, the Sierra Club, the James River Park system, property owners and more.

Transform the conversation from one about baseball into one about transforming the former heart of the city back into a healthy, vibrant organ -- one that is green, sustainable and energetic. One that connects the people of the region with transportation, history and soul. A place with a ball park, perhaps, but certainly a place that transcends America's pasttime by creating a space that represents the best of America's values -- built on community, connection, conversation and commerce.