Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990 TAG: 9007060499
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Elizabeth Obenshain
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Blacksburg has been forced to confront the issue of its own growth this year by a group of local business leaders who want Virginia Tech to continue driving the town's expansion with its own growth.
Citizens for Regional Progress, however, is not the only citizens' group talking about growth.
At the corner of South Main Street and Airport Road, a neighborhood group last month confronted the town's growth from another perspective. These homeowners were threatened with losing their houses to a new road to handle the town's increasing traffic.
How does the town of Blacksburg - and the New River Valley as a whole - decide how much growth and what type of growth is best?
When do we reach that critical mass of people and economic activity that can support the type of community - the schools, cultural events, restaurants and, yes, even malls - people want?
How do we reach that point without sacrificing the rural beauty that makes this college town unique?
I doubt that even nostalgic locals - like me - who can remember a smaller, quieter Blacksburg would go back to the town of 7,000 - a town where the only movie theater was the Lyric, and Prices Fork Road was so quiet that we drove our cows down its oak-shaded pavement.
Yet there probably are many - like me - who wince when they drive down U.S. 460 and see how the pastures and rolling hills that used to provide a beautiful entranceway to the town have dissolved into the unsightly sprawl of haphazard commercial development.
The business people and developers who formed Citizens for Regional Progress have cause to be nervous. They look at the loss of 1,000 jobs from AT&T and the slowdown in the defense industry that drives so many local ventures, including the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, and wonder how to keep the valley's economy growing. All they have to do is look down the mountain at the Roanoke Valley to see how Virginia's boom has bypassed this region and left Western Virginia's economies nearly stagnant.
Virginia Tech, however, has more immediate problems on its mind - like finding state money to solve the worst space crunch of any university in the state.
Budget cuts being imposed on Tech and the other state colleges and universities this year are a further complication and could hurt both the quality of education and the local economy, administration officials say.
The space shortage hit home for me when I learned last month that the university was using the Lyric Theatre to hold lecture classes. The Lyric was great for 5-cent cherry Cokes and watching "Gone With the Wind" in 1961, but its aging facade hardly has the image that Tech wants to project for its classrooms.
My guess is that university officials, who are worrying about how to provide classrooms and laboratories for their current enrollment, are going to be wary of the new citizens committee's goals unless the group shows it can use its political clout to find more money for Tech's immediate problems. The citizens' committee itself is aware the new round of budget cuts could affect its long-term hopes for the university and are sympathetic to Tech's plight.
Until the university catches up on its space needs for its current 23,000 enrollment, its administration will be reluctant to talk about increasing the university's student population in Blacksburg.
Tech does want to grow in ways that could boost the local economy, such as adding more faculty, enlarging the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center and increasing its research grants, officials say. But at present, it does not anticipate increasing to the 30,000 enrollment that the citizens committee endorses.
The question of growth is one not just for the Citizens for Regional Progress or the Tech administration. It's one for the whole community.
Many local residents have already spoken out on how the community should grow. They've expressed concern about controlling new development so it doesn't steamroll the remaining farmlands and threaten the area's natural resources.
Local elected officials, too, worry about the cost of growth in new schools, and in expanding sewer and water systems - especially when most of the growth is coming from a tax-exempt university rather than a taxpaying corporation.
Ultimately, growth will be controlled by the local council members and supervisors in their zoning and land-use decisions and by local legislators whose votes and voices speaking out on Western Virginia interests will help to decide which universities get the tax dollars to expand.
A tug-of-war between the different viewpoints on growth in this community will make the job tougher for local elected officials. But it also may help to steer this community between extremes as it seeks to preserve quality of life while growing enough to create a thriving economy.
by CNB