As the town of Blacksburg prepares for inevitable growth, a series of public meetings and online surveys have run from fall to spring working to inform and guide that growth by combining citizen insight with objective development knowledge.
This week, the third of four public meetings was held at the Blacksburg Rec Center orchestrated and facilitated by outside entity, Development Strategies, a St. Louis-based development-consulting firm and design partner MKSK, driving and managing the months-long process that is focusing on the central downtown area.
“There is growth coming to this town, and if we don’t accommodate it, housing will become more expensive, and if we don’t accommodate it in the right way, town character will get lost,” Justin Goodwin, associate planner of MKSK, said in his opening remarks.
Through these three meetings, the consultants have worked to both educate citizens in the principles of good urban development while at the same time collecting their ideas and input.
With Powerpoint presentations, yellow sticky-notes and online surveys, the process sought to find the overlap in the Venn diagram the town’s potential and its aspirations.
“They’ve come in and looked at our community as objective, knowledgeable outsiders,” said Matt Hanratty, assistant to the Blacksburg town manager. They’ve asked, “what can our community be?” and the community also asks, “what do we want our community to be?” Then we look for the middle point, the overlap.”
While meeting attendance declined over time with 110 people attending the first meeting, 80 the second and 65 the third, 750 people completed responses to the first online survey and 310 responded to the second, more detailed survey, requiring about 30 minutes complete.
The third meeting, the phase called “strategize,” used data and comments from the second meeting and from online feedback to inform the consultants who suggested splitting downtown into five distinct districts.
At the third meeting, attendees were asked to respond and comment on a series “alternative visions,” sketches of aerial town views describing options such as a car-free green spaces in what is now the cul-de-sac car park above Main Street in front of Chipotle and the Cellar.
A number of small ginnel alleys, called “vias” in development parlance, were proposed to connect hidden parking behind Main Street businesses to Main Street.
Among the alternative visions is the fate of the four-block alley running parallel to Main and Progress Streets.
Among the several stakeholder interested in fate of the town-owned passage is the New River Valley Bicycling Association, which represents cyclists from Montgomery, Giles, Floyd and the town of Radford and recently presented a statement to the Blacksburg town council delineating the multiple benefits of keeping, even extending, the alley.
“Our main goal is to advocate for the preservation of the ‘bike-ped’ friendly alternative connection currently represented by the alleyway as changes are being discussed to the Downtown North East and Central Downtown Districts,” wrote NRVBA’s Jenn Million in an email. “It would give cyclists and pedestrians a quieter and safer option compared to the motorized vehicle-centric Main and Progress streets.”
Attendees remarked on the groomed appearance of a multi-use alley compared to the current, dumpster-filled string of parking lots that they’ve known for decades and grown up with.
“There’s always a trade-off between something that is “authentic” versus something that’s planned,” Julie Cooper, policy and real estate strategist associate with Development Strategies. “The benefit of something planned is you can really think about it serving purposes or needs. Rather than just trying to make it work. There is some nice public art in the alley, but there’s also some not so nice. What if you could create e spaces to serve multiple needs,” she said. “It will be interesting to see what kind of feed back we get.”
The meetings have been titled Understand, Strategize, Decide and Frameworks.
The fourth meeting, Frameworks, will be a recommendations meeting.
“With less talking more open-house style with stations and boards. They’ll have recommendations based on community feedback and professional expertise,” Hanratty said.
Throughout the process, there has been what Hanratty calls, “healthy disagreement” around complex and archetypal components that define the town.
“There has been debate on how much growth residents want in downtown versus historic preservation and finding a balance between them,” he said. “We don’t want to lose the character of downtown. We don’t want to let time pass us by. “
Ultimately, through the methodical meetings, the town and the consultants are working through a process.
“We’re asking ‘if we allow things to change, what do we want the architecture to look like?’ and then there’s the transportation piece—particularly bike and ped. How do we deal with the alley? It currently serves as a functional alley for businesses with dumpsters and people park there. Should Progress Street become the alley? There’s no right or wrong answer and none of them are easy, we just have to work through them together.” Hanratty said.
Associated with the third meeting is the last online survey, which was posted on the town website May 4 at Blacksburg.gov/downtownstrategy.
The fourth and final meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 18 at the rec center.
