Style Weekly has outdone itself with its special 25th anniversary issue — now on the stands — and I’m not just saying that because Back Page editor Rozanne Epps chose one of my previous contributions as a worthy repeat … honest.
Not content with merely regurgitating old copy from their clip morgue, the writers and editors of Style also apply some lessons learned and sound some cautionary notes in between the nostalgia. Some of these points will be familiar to readers of Save Richmond.
Scott Bass takes a look at 4 Big Ideas Richmond Is Still Debating. One of which is:
Reviving downtown.
Turns out we had it all wrong. Toss a few multimillion-dollar projects onto Broad Street and listen for a giant flushing sound: A festival marketplace to revive a dying retail corridor? Torn down. A grand new convention center? It hosts weekend volleyball games and fails to attract enough out-of-town conventioneers. A new canal walk? Still sparse most weekends. A performing arts center complex? It leads to the demolition of the Thalhimers department store building, which is filled in with dirt.
Ever since Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimers left Broad Street in the early 1990s, we’ve pushed one big scheme after another to no avail. For some reason, we kept thinking people who left the city for the suburbs could be lured back. Turns out we were wrong, really wrong. Meanwhile, what is working nets little recognition.
The First Fridays art walk on East Broad brings thousands to the center city every month (and it wasn’t concocted by city planners). The condo boom has led to a mini-resurgence of people actually living downtown, in turn attracting a restaurant surge. The National Folk Festival does something similar. And privately run performance venues are just warming up. For the most part, Richmond still shuts down after dark and on weekends. But that will change, if the city nurtures the increasing residential atmosphere.
Bass, Amy Biegelsen and Chris Dovi (he’s been on a roll lately, eh?) look at the “6 Pressing Issues that Richmond Needs to Confront.” Among them:
Civic boosters who are all bark and no bite
Civic boosters are actually the city’s business leaders, and they’ve been setting the city’s agenda for far too long. Mayor Doug Wilder promised to weed them out when he first took office, attacking their signature project, the performing arts center, and dissolving Richmond Renaissance. But he’s since let them back in with unfettered access.
Not that they don’t have the best intentions — they truly want to see the city succeed. But what we have now is a bunch of massive egos who have filled the vacuum of leadership in the city — yes, even post-Wilder — and for some inexplicable reason they leave their biggest assets behind, i.e., unrelenting business acumen, when they start tinkering with the public kitty.
The costs: More than $170 million for a new convention center as the national convention market tanked; $100 million-plus for a new performing arts center without an independent economic study; millions in fees to the Miller & Rhoads hotel developer without a contract. Our boosters should shoulder at least some of the blame for the city’s enormous debt load — it’s tied up in their projects — and it’s high time for us to broaden the public discourse.
And this week’s Back Page contributor John Moeser concludes with a hopeful essay, “Trusting Ourselves” that touches upon this same subject:
Politically, the greatest change occurred when the city replaced its council-manager system of government with a strong-mayor system. Richmond celebrated its new leadership. Richmonders eagerly anticipated that the new mayor, elected by 80 percent of the voters, would launch bold initiatives to address Richmond’s, and the region’s, most intractable problems. They assumed the new leader would rally the community, forge consensus and work with City Council, the School Board and the business community.
Unfortunately, what may have been the most promising opportunity in modern Richmond history may now be lost and replaced by a time of disillusionment. Unprecedented conflict and gratuitous power plays have crushed expectations.
Amidst these changes are realities that remained fixed and unchangeable — the most unfortunate of which is the concentration of poverty. Another constant is the independent city and autonomous county. There remains the inclination to equate revitalization with brick and mortar, and progress with projects. We still defer to outside experts, not trusting the intelligence and creativity of our citizens.
But there are constants that give nobility to this place. Richmonders are good and decent people. They care for each other. They respond to human need. They serve, they build, they teach, they heal.
Richmond remains a beautiful city. Its magnificent river stills flows one generation to another. It still inspires awe and reverence. Its wondrous parks beckon people of all ages. Its magnificent old sanctuaries, cobblestone streets, blood-stained battlefields, and its many stories of tragedy, heroism and freedom all define a city unlike any other. Its melding of difference, its celebration of art and its manifold dimensions of human creativity, its reverence for tradition yet its restlessness and desire to break free, all of these make Richmond a special place with more human talent per capita than any other place in the world.
We need not look to what others have done. It’s time for us to see what we can do.
Hear, Hear!!