Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 24, 1993 TAG: 9304240030
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
The classroom is Martinsville itself. The subject is the biology of downtown revitalization. That skeleton hanging on the wall is the city's central business district.
Only architects and longtime residents can tell, but those bare bones used to be the frame of a muscular, healthy downtown.
"It's kind of a wonderful American town that's just sort of been bitten away a bit," said Gary Leivers, an architect with the Roanoke firm Hayes Seay Mattern & Mattern, which has developed revitalization plans for Roanoke, Blacksburg and Asheville, N.C.
"It's lost a bit of its Martinsville-ness."
As city officials, local business owners and interested residents embarked this week on a 10-week crash course in breathing life back into downtown, they consoled themselves: Martinsville is no worse than many American towns.
When the suburban shopping malls with plenty of parking popped up, downtown got blindsided. If the big department stores were all in one place on the outskirts, who needed downtown?
The answer: Not many.
By the time Liberty Fair Mall opened four years ago, the gutting of downtown was complete. Leggett, the last big department store to remain in the city, moved to Liberty Fair as an anchor store.
"I can't say Liberty Fair Mall was the kiss of death for downtown," City Manager Earl Reynolds said, "but it certainly created an economic dynamic for the area that was not planned for."
On an "awareness walk" Tuesday, 35 interested business people, officials and residents strolled through the core of the central business district, jotting down their observations.
"How many people do you see, not counting our group?" Eliza Severt asked, reading a question in the tour guide handed out by the architects. Severt, a member of the revitalization steering committee, looked up and down the street. Her answer:
"None. Zero. Zip."
During much of Tuesday's awareness walk, which took place during the lunch hour, those on the walk were the only pedestrians around.
"We've all sort of stood back and wrung our hands for a long time and said, `What can we do? What can we do?' If we don't do it now, time may pass so quickly that we won't get another opportunity," Severt said.
The 35-member group has begun a frank discussion of what's right and what's wrong with the downtown.
The first thing they decided was that "downtown" meant too many bad things to too many people. The new name for the center of Martinsville would be "Uptown." The city plans to develop an "Uptown" logo, and use it on signs to direct people to the city's center.
The second phase - after the name change and campaign kick-off - is the debate: What would bring people back? Some think the city should block off certain streets, making them available only to pedestrians, and develop a trolley loop.
Others suggest tax breaks for new businesses, grants to restore facades on older buildings, subsidized rent for new businesses, a new parking garage on the outskirts with a shuttle loop to the businesses, and so on.
Interested residents will address those suggestions in the action plan that they will develop over the next two months.
Reynolds has proposed raising the city's real estate tax rate from 76 cents to 88 cents per $100, partly to prod the owners of dilapidated downtown buildings to fix them up or sell them. Reynolds compares the tax increase to Roanoke Mayor David Bowers' proposal to do away with tax breaks for farmland owners to prompt development of the agricultural land.
"As long as the people who own the property can pay lower than average taxes," Reynolds said of downtown building owners, "they won't do anything with the property - they'll just sit on it."
Residents are far from unanimous on the suggestions for improvement. Sandy Carter, who owns a men's clothing store downtown, doesn't like the idea of blocking off streets to traffic.
"That cuts out the visibility," Carter said. "Let me tell you something, these windows sell thousands of dollars of merchandise. They drive by all night. If you can't see, you can't buy."
Cathie Carter, a regional marketing director with Taco Bell who grew up in Martinsville, admitted that her company would not locate downtown. Not enough people go there, she said.
And that's one of the Catch-22s of bringing back a downtown: Restaurants and shops won't go there if there aren't enough people; people won't go there if there is nowhere to eat or shop.
"It's not an inviting place," Carter said. "It seems sort of - I hate to use the word `ghostly', but . . . If you're driving down here, does anything invite you to get out of your car? I don't think so."
Others involved in the 10-week course in drawing up a revitalization plan agreed: The downtown needs some welcome mats. The jungle-like ravine strewn with trash on Church Street could be turned into a sunken garden. Benches could be placed around downtown. Muddy areas could be turned into places for downtown workers to sit while they eat bag lunches.
Despite their critiques of downtown Martinsville, the residents working to revive it think their task is within reach. They don't think big malls have a monopoly on attracting people.
And they don't think their friends and neighbors are so rushed, and have become so lazy, that they wouldn't enjoy sauntering along Main Street on a Saturday afternoon.
by CNB