ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 18, 1996 TAG: 9607180059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
CONSULTANTS WERE looking for ideas on the future of downtown in five areas.
Consultants focused on five areas when they brought their downtown planning project to downtown Roanoke workers on their lunch hour Wednesday.
Downtown Roanoke Inc. gave away Cokes and ice cream to people stopping by its balloon-decked tents set up near the Friendship Fountain at the Roanoke City Market. An earlier effort at a public meeting in June was held inside a vacant store and attracted little notice.
R. Matthew Kennell, executive director of the organization, said the Outlook project is still in its conceptual stage. More ideas will be solicited in September, with the final report due about Christmastime.
Consultants, he said, have decided to concentrate their efforts on five areas:
The rail district extending along both sides of the railroad tracks through downtown. This might include a new visitors center in the abandoned passenger station near Hotel Roanoke.
The district between Jefferson Street and Second Street S.W., including Church and Kirk avenues. The study will seek ways to extend activity from the market to this area.
The Campbell Avenue corridor extending from the Jefferson Center at Fifth Street S.W. to Williamson Road S.E. Again, the focus will concentrate on extension of the success of the market.
The Williamson Road initiative, which has two prongs. One concept is to turn Williamson Road into the front door of downtown instead of continuing as a bypass for the City Market. The second part of the study will seek ways to tie the Roanoke Civic Center into downtown. Kennell said the civic center is only four blocks from the market, yet seems to stand alone.
The final initiative is called the Roanoke story, or how downtown should define and present itself to residents and visitors.
Rob Robinson, who is coordinating the study for the consultant, Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh, said creating a visitors center at the old passenger station is an example of using existing resources as an attraction rather than trying to invent something completely new.
He noted that the old passenger station is located near such attractions as the market and Hotel Roanoke and recalls Roanoke's rail legacy.
But he said Roanoke's downtown streets, because of their one-way pattern, are hostile for visitors who don't know their way. Miss the turn off Williamson Road at Salem Avenue, he said, and drivers are suddenly at Church Avenue before they can turn toward the market.
Tinkering with one-way streets, he said, might make downtown a friendlier place.
Another idea is to extend Norfolk Avenue to the Transportation Museum, which is not easily accessible to visitors. Robinson said the planners want to tie the historic Gainsboro section more closely to downtown through Norfolk and Shenandoah avenues.
One visitor to the exhibit was Peter Clapsaddle, an architect with offices and several projects on the market. He said it's too early in the planning process to judge the plan, but "the key is implementation" of the ideas.
"The market is great; I love it," Clapsaddle said, but its vibrancy must extend to the west side of Jefferson Street for downtown to come alive.
The former Heironimus building is in that direction, he said, only a block from Friendship Fountain and the renovations at the Trompeter Building at Market Street and Church Avenue.
The now-vacant Heironimus building could become "an incredible asset," Clapsaddle said, but only if it's developed into something that will attract a wide range of people at all hours. He said that attraction might be something like the former Sportsman, a sports bar that once sat across Church Avenue from Heironimus. That establishment had a restaurant on the ground floor and pool tables upstairs. Today the lot is used for parking.
Another visitor, Lucy Ellett, who represented the Greenways Steering Committee and Valley Beautiful, said she would like to see emphasis on connecting the greenways concept to downtown and on "urban forestry."
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Urban Design Associatesby CNBconsultants Rob Robinson (left) and David Lewis discuss the sketches
for Outlook under the tent downtown Wednesday. color.