THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 51 lines
As a taxpaying Norfolk resident and an architest who participated in the recent MacArthur Center charette, I take offense at the implication in James E. Gehman's ``Design can't be imposed on center's developers'' (letter, Aug. 4). Naive, arrogant and egocentric are not words I would use to describe the more than 30 Norfolk citizens so concerned about how $100 million of their tax dollars are to be spent that they gave up a Saturday to graphically express their ideas.
Citizens, city officials, city employees, Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority and the developer were invited to attend the charette. Only citizens showed up.
Lack of input from the city, NRHA and the developer was a severe hindrance and doomed the outcome to much less reality than otherwise expected. We understood as much but anyway.
A waste of time? Maybe. But by playing the roles of developer (by adhering to the few mandates that we were aware of), shopper, investor and taxpayer, we attained more insight into this issue.
Designing an urban shopping center that adheres to the city's design guidelines isn't easy, but experience based upon what we have seen in other downtowns and what we were able to come up with that Saturday makes us believe it possible. I fear this possibility isn't being fully explored, for the sake of convenience for the city and in deference to developer instincts.
The design guidelines prepared for Norfolk and the NRHA by Jonathan Barnett and UDA Architects, dated July 19, 1994, strongly recommend against developing a suburban-type mall downtown. A suburban-type mall appears to be what we are getting.
City design guidelines were developed to assure that MacArthur Center is woven into the downtown urban fabric becomes an asset.
Why, then, is the MacArthur Memorial no longer a focal point for the mall? Why has the concept of strong connections to downtown activities been supplanted by one of introversion? How does this plan intend to address the issues of transparency, environmental sensitivity and mixed uses? What is being planned to make this development positively unique (other than it will have Nordstrom) and how does it intend to sustain that quality?
And how competitive will MacArthur Center be if (when?) Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, Lord and Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue anchor a new galleria in Virginia Beach?
Gehman states that the present layout ``reflects the design criteria developed by the retailers that will have to live with the financial consequences of design decisions.'' Norfolk citizens are going to have to live with the consequences of those decisions, also. If the venture fails, who will be left holding the bag?
ELEMUEL A. WATTS
Norfolk, Aug. 6, 1996 by CNB