Save Richmond

Sometimes those pesky bloggers actually have their finger on the pulse of something:

“When Dr. Richard Florida spoke in January [2003] about creating a environment in the city where new ideas can ‘plug in easily,’ he wasn’t talking about a place that allowed public/private partnerships to largely determine public policy. We ask that the council institute some form of legislative accountability for past downtown failures before considering any other large taxpayer-funded public/private ventures such as a Downtown Performing Arts Complex.

The proliferation of largely unaccountable taxpayer-funded consortiums, such as Richmond Renaissance, the Broad Street Community Development Authority and (now) the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, ensures that real city planning power in Richmond will continue to remain in the hands of a select few. Yes, Broad Street is a mess. But how galling that the current vision of a future downtown consists of little more than parking garages and huge artificial projects, situated in limbo.

As we contemplate the demolition of 6th Street Marketplace, let’s remember that many of the same people who promoted that doomed project to great taxpayer expense are now promoting this new vision of downtown Richmond as a tourist destination and arts corridor.

We ask for more pubic accountability of public/private partnerships such as Richmond Renaissance and the Broad Street CDA. We ask the city to begin to hold public/private partnerships accountable for the tax money they request from all Richmonders. If these consortiums consistently fail to live up to their own estimates for projected growth from large taxpayer-funded projects they spearhead, these entities should not continue to receive budgetary funds or de-facto governing power from the city of Richmond. — Save Richmond’s “Open Letter to Richmond City Council,”May 2003

Three years later:

City’s Renaissance Done
by Scott Bass

As usual, Mayor L. Douglas Wilder stole the show. But at The Jefferson Hotel last week, a watershed event came and went with little fanfare.

Richmond Renaissance will remain as a legal entity after its merger with citycelebrations, the River District Alliance and Richmond Riverfront Corp. becomes official July 1. At Wilder’s urging, the newly merged group will draw fewer city funds and operate with a combined full-time staff of 10, instead of the previous 15. Membership of the new board will continue to “reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of the City of Richmond’s community,” the new bylaws dictate, as it has in the past.

More importantly, perhaps, the merger marks a dramatic change in how the city’s business elite influence city government, namely in the arena of economic development. All of the major downtown projects of the past 25 years — starting with 6th Street Marketplace — were hatched by Renaissance members.

The list includes the Greater Richmond Convention Center, the Canal Walk, and the now-infamous Performing Arts Center project, which drew the mayor’s ire shortly after he took office last year. At last week’s meeting, the mayor introduced details for his “City of the Future” plan. He trumpeted his “change is here” message, which went over coolly considering he spent most of last year castigating Renaissance members.

“It’s a subliminal wafting across the air,” he said. “You need to smell it and breathe it. It’s there.”

No doubt they smelled it. Since inception, the nonprofit has acted as the city’s de- facto economic development office. Their projects, with the backing of Richmond’s most influential business leaders, were often rubber-stamped by City Hall before Wilder came along. (To date, however, none has produced its intended result.)

At the end of last week’s meeting, John W. Bates III, a Renaissance member and partner at McGuireWoods, told the group that its new downtown advocacy committee, “will help support economic development projects instead of engaging economic development projects” as its predecessors did.

He also mentioned the new board members, which include a list of up-and-comers such as Tim Davey, the Timmons architect who helped lead the push for a ballpark in Shockoe Bottom, and Sheila Hill-Christian, the new Virginia Lottery executive director who most recently served as director of the city’s housing authority.

But they won’t be hatching up new schemes to save the city. — Style Weekly, June 21, 2006