ROANOKE OFFICIALS TALKING ABOUT NEW PLANS FOR CITY

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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 12, 1993                   TAG: 9303120358
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE OFFICIALS TALKING ABOUT NEW PLANS FOR CITY
Plan now or pay later.
That was the advice of John Marlles as 35 Roanoke officials began a process Thursday to update the city's comprehensive plan.
Marlles, chief of community planning, said the city's economic base and quality of life could be threatened without proper long-range planning.
City Manager Bob Herbert has an ambitious goal for the planning effort that will last nearly a year and involve hundreds of city residents, maybe thousands, in addition to the city staff.
"This meeting begins a process to put in place a plan to direct our future," Herbert said.
"One anticipated outcome is a plan to help Roanoke remain competitive in terms of a world economy."
The process will include a scientific survey, a public forum and more workshops. It will update the 1985 Roanoke Vision plan, the city's mission statement and strategic goals.
"We want to get our citizens' vision of what they want Roanoke to be," Herbert said.
Mayor David Bowers said the planning project will help officials look beyond the city's boundaries and take a global view.
"The challenge is to develop a new paradigm, to look at the Roanoke Valley with new eyes," said Vice Mayor Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr..
Among those participating in the daylong workshop were CityCouncil members and representatives of the Planning Commission, School Board, Redevelopment and Housing Authority and city staff. Ernie Hutton, a consultant planner who has worked for the city on other planning projects in the past, will also help.
"The fact that we have all of these individuals sitting down in the same room working together to plan our future is really significant," Herbert said.
"For this process to succeed, we recognized the need to have policy makers from planning, economic development, housing, schools and government services working together."
Wayne Harris, the city's new school superintendent, attended the session along with Frank Tota, the current superintendent.
Harris urged council members and other officials to focus on the positive aspects of the city as well as the negative. He noted that many of the paradigms and perceptions of the city that were mentioned during the workshop were negative.
The officials spent most of the day reviewing current conditions and trends in the city.
The group members looked at how Roanoke's population is changing, what services will be needed and what steps to take to help the city's schoolchildren to be prepared to compete in the work force of the future. They also discussed the city's long-term economic development strategies.
Among the trends cited were:
Roanoke shares many of the problems of older cities - an aging housing stock, recent job layoffs, high poverty rates and a school system with many disadvantaged children.
The city's per capita and household incomes are lower than surrounding metropolitan suburban communities and lower than the state average.
In comparison to other cities im Virginia, Roanoke's strength is in the diversity of its economy.
The city's economic base of the assessed value of real estate has steadily risen in the past decade.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB