Revitalization, 7/27/07, Full Text

To Jane Goette and the Downtown Revitalization Committee:

A selection from a brief and compact statement I had sent to the council just before the double hearing May 29 contains some of my relevant thoughts about downtown:

"I have been observing a steady decline of diverse downtown commercial life and occupancy. In perfect accord with this phenomenon the town has been failing to pursue some of the proven current American planning strategies and understandings advanced in [Tech's urban design]....degree program and in current planning and design literature. Now,The Experience of Place (Tony Hiss) in Blacksburg is fast approaching The Geography of Nowhere (James Howard Kunstler). Allowing the competition of a big box store in the location currently applied for would [can be expected to] accelerate the fading of Blacksburg as a place with a face."

And now thoughts for the Committee: Many of the recent decorative efforts and the tree banners on South Main St. are attention-getting devices and are what I referred to in my first note to our revitalization committee before our first meeting: makeup on a corpse. The increasing number of dead, unoccupied store fronts on Main Street and College Avenue exude a depressing feeling of emptiness and rejection instead of the lively substantial concentration of active business expected in a town center. What is increasingly missing downtown is the feeling that it's the *center* - of *anything.* Before talking about being "special" we first need to return to life! For revitalization to be real and believable, decorating hype must be avoided. Expecting the hype to fool the people is insulting. Most likely, if the downtown became healthy it would sell itself without the use of these gimmicks. As I said, the town is losing its center. You know what happens to people who are not "centered:" Their personality is lost.

Successful towns are user-focused. Two symptoms that could be symbolic of failing to respect and care for the public are the condition of the sidewalks, building facades and alleys on North Main St., and the almost complete disappearance of children on the street, as one of our members has noted and is working to alleviate. After consultant-"assisted" resurfacing with our public money, some of the hardest-to-repair sidewalk places remain untouched and we still have heaved concrete portions and tree well grates, and even some new bricks lifting, all of which are sloppy and present huge tripping hazards, right on College Avenue. In winter, Roanoke fines owners who fail to clear or salt/sand sidewalks against snow and ice but Blacksburg apparently doesn't want to "disturb" the property owners in that regard. And as for the lacking children - no local schools any longer generate traffic from them, and stores like Seeds of Light for bead shopping etc. no longer exist. David Sucher (CITY COMFORTS) likens the presence/absence of town kids on the street to the testing canaries in mines: their demise spells a lack of healthy conditions, their presence spells wellness/wholeness.

Christopher Alexander in A NEW THEORY OF URBAN DESIGN establishes the concept of town wholeness as the guiding principle for all planning/development decisions and actions. That means the awareness that all the choices made regarding growth and changes affect the whole town organism and should be evaluated as being either beneficial or detrimental to the whole physical function and appearance of the existing structures and pathways and to the well-being of the townspeople. The criteria for this evaluation, aside from financial feasibility, are things like contextual appearance (no, not fake antique looks but a respectful visual relationship)- orienting/wayfinding legibility (where's the building entrance? what does this alley lead to? is it public or private? is it part of the continuous pathway and alley system of the town?), a safe feeling, a spatial arrangement conducive to people mingling & talking to each other. Such considerations are conducive to the personal and group comfort that Sucher (last ¶) speaks of. No matter how special, glitzy, new, faithfully-modeled-on-colonial times or innovative public space installations may be, they do not necessarily produce the socially desirable results I have just listed: wayfinding legibility,comfort, contextualness, safety and a good state of repair/maintenance are what produces comfort for the people. Two tiny examples of comfort zones are "consultant-free" seating arrangements provided by Bollo's and by She-Sha (sp.?): locally hand made wooden sidewalk benches just outside these two establishments. Really special conversations occur there sometimes. (yes, smoking too).

Two specific areas of correction that to me would lead to genuine downtown improvement and show a respect for the citizens' real needs are
1. A consistently legible and fully connected walk/bike and alley system. A dependable and uniform design and maintenance pattern and signage can bring this about. In some cases there may need to be a little land acquisiton to achieve the pathway continuity - which would be public money better spent than on fees for decorating consultants. Public alleys needed as part of that system should not be sold - as some have been. In addition, there are certain cut-throughs "everyone" uses, located on land owned by business concerns, for which the town could negotiate an orderly public right-of-way privilege and thus make them part of the walk/bike system. The land owner could be rewarded by the town through a small tax credit and town provision of good surfacing and maintenance - thus incorporating into the pathway system, without purchasing, these tiny pieces of land, so precious to the public whom the town supposedly serves. The several alleys between buildings on the west side of the first North Main St. block would be perfect candidates for clean, civilized cut-through walkways leading to the farmers' market parking lot, Champs, Chocolate Spike etc. But so far as our Mike Hudson has researched and discovered, Town has failed to apply and enforce any of the even most basic trash and maintenance requirements in these filthy and crime-inviting places in our "special" town, right in its very center. A very small amount of public money spent in that regard would produce an effect more healing than hugely expensive consultant generated decorative efforts "out front." The recent re-arrangement of the lot of the old post office, on the other hand, contains a good example of an attentively provided small walkway where really needed, though on land already public.

2. Stopping the hemorrhaging of business life. Contrary to most of the private and public talk on the subject, the nearby malls are not the only reason for stores and restaurants leaving downtown. They do however provide a convenient diversion from an internal task that has been avoided. This task is evaluating the total lack of performance and maintenance obligations placed by the town on owners of the downtown commercial properties. In my casual conversations with those tenants that have now left, a pattern emerged of grave unaccountability for things like leaky roofs and lack of hot water in the lavatory, sidewalks sloping toward the door, air conditioners that drip on the shoppers' heads as they enter from the sidewalk, non-functioning climate control systems etc. - all combined with rising rents. Building facades weren't even mentioned but the town does tolerate total neglect of some that once made up the "look" of Main St. Don Langrehr's earlier recommendation of a maintenance code for these buildings in the business zone makes total sense to me. I truly can't understand why rental owners who derive income from Blacksburg residential properties need to be held to town standards by the residential maintenance codes while commercial property owners must comply to nothing while occupying, and determining the appearance of, the very center of our town. Having such owners in our group, I hope to be enlightened in detail about this puzzling disparity. My knowledge/impressions of this subject may be incomplete and/or incorrect. But this pattern *does* appear to me to be a major cause for commercial tenants vacating downtown. It seems to me owners should bear more of the burden of assuring good sidewalk and building condition. A more subtle negative phenomenon in this connection is the nefarious effect of what I call the merry-go-round of brief occupancy of business properties. Another planning quote: "Familiarity breeds comfort" explains the feelings of discomfort and disorientation we have when aiming for store A that we just started to get to know, and find now it's already become store B who doesn't have what we came for. Witness by contrast the comfort feeling re. places that have lasted like Bollo's, the goldsmith, the Clothes Rack, Gillie's etc. An additional discouragement for shoppers or restaurant patrons is an unpredictable pattern of business hours. Some stores don't even post theirs *and* don't keep regular hours. Can these validly complain of a dwindling customer base?

I consider an improved walkway system and realistic steps toward return of local businesses two primary areas to target for downtown revitalization.

Finally, it often appears to me the psychological and financial efforts made by the current town government stress "branding," - competing with other places, marketing Blacksburg in glowing colors etc., at the expense of the daily well-being of permanent and student residents. This mode of operation appears detrimental to the downtown life.

E. Maria Roth
July 27 2007