
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 13, 1990                   TAG: 9004120640
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CECIL EDMONDS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DISCOVERY OF KIRK AVE. WILL BE LOSS

IT IS WITH reasonable sadness that I note the discovery of Kirk Avenue, that tiny street off Jefferson described as being ground zero - or dead center of downtown.

The street and the small merchants on it have been going about their business unnoticed and now they are threatened by planners, who, having completed nothing quite yet on the Market or over on Henry Street, feel Kirk needs restoring.

"Restoring" in the lexicon of downtown planners means (a) build a skyscraper - no other city has one; (b) paint the fronts and unplaster so the brick walls show; and (c) see if you can get a fast-food court going.

So I see Mr. Su putting bean sprouts on a stick and deep-frying them for the thirtysomething-for-nothing people who work downtown in the skyscraper we don't have.

Mike's, the only eating place on Kirk at this moment, serves a good sandwich on something that is a rarity: two pieces of sandwich bread. His walls will be knocked out to form a food court and a shop that sells everything for a dollar, T-shirts and a festival-city button.

And Guilio Corsini, the tailor, will become so popular that he will install five sewing machines, all employed in the manufacture of presoaked jeans with ready-made holes in the knees and rear end. The material that once was the holes can become an authentic Blue Ridge patchwork quilt.

Now come the pastel paints and the awnings and the closing of the street and the celebrations of revival. Thousands will attend the revival and buy a Fitzpatrick print. The city will sell beer, arrest people, of whom 61.2 percent will be some sort of minority, causing the civil-rights people to start a noise that media reverberates; and the homeless, figuring it's a good place for publicity, will wrap David Hayden in a blanket and sit him in the back door of Woolworth's. Planners, noting the sudden surge in blanket sales, will announce that Roanoke is the Magic Blanket of the South.

There will be talk of turning the Mill Mountain Star into a huge electric blanket.

Corsini, now with 12 sewing machines and 50 employees, will be unionized and the city will fine him for the trucks that block the homeless. He will threaten to move his factory to Botetourt on a tax-rebate deal, but the city will promise that if he stays, they will turn the block into an Italian Heritage Music Center with an accordian festival on alternate years.

They also agree to having Fitzpatrick do a limited print of Guilio putting the patches back in the jeans.

Mike's, now a slice-pizza place with authentic Asian overtones, will buy a truck to deliver to the skyscraper employees. Mr. Su and the downtown planners will announce the first Blue Ridge Egg Foo Yong event featuring Anna May Wong and Wayne Newton look-alikes.

I walked the tiny Kirk Avenue block early on the Monday morning after the Sunday paper had announced its discovery. I turned onto Jefferson Street and the sun was coming through the "caverns" of our downtown. At the end of the street, the spires of St. Andrews reached the clean, blue sky, and a portion of the Hotel Roanoke and the railroad office building looked pretty good.

In a few months the spires will be behind the Tower of Babble, and I could be walking in Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, even New York.

Roanoke is a city in search of an image.

Someone else's.

by CNB