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

DATE: FRIDAY, August 4, 1995                   TAG: 9508040024
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CITY MARKET SELLS ITSELF WELL, GAINS NATIONAL RECOGNITION

To us, it's the City Market. But to a New York architect and other design experts, it is one of America's Great Public Places.

The market area attracted the attention of judges in a nationwide search for the most important places of U.S. public life. They considered 200 locations and listed only 63, including Roanoke's market area, on a roster dotted with major tourist attractions.

Architect Gianni Longo, a principal at Urban Initiatives, a New York urban design and architecture organization that divides its time between drawing buildings and doing civic projects, oversaw the survey. The Lyndhurst Foundation, an educational, cultural and environmental organization in Chattanooga, Tenn., launched the project and paid its $250,000 cost.

The purpose is to inspire developers, government officials and others to value public places, defined by the foundation as streets, blocks or places "where we share life with strangers and learn from that experience not only the confidence and tolerance that are necessary for civil society, but also the sense mutuality and shared responsibility that define a community."

Officials of Downtown Roanoke Inc., which noted the listing in the July-August issue of its newsletter, said the honor is good publicity.

Matt Kennell, Downtown Roanoke's executive director, said: "It reinforces what those of us, at least in this organization, have known for some time, and that is that our downtown is special.

"To be recognized by a prestigious outside organization and held up in the same light as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and San Francisco and these other places that are so well recognized, it really brings the point home. We do have a lot to be proud of."

Though she was not a judge, Helene Dreiling, a principal at Dreiling Partnership Architects in Roanoke and president of the Blue Ridge chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said the market area is special because pedestrians, drivers and outdoor vendors share a plaza ringed by diverse businesses and buildings of various time periods.

Roanoke's market was nominated by Tom Lowe, a Roanoke native now an architect for the Miami planning firm of Duanes, Plater-Zyberk.

The Roanoke market appears in good company on the unranked list of winners: New York City's Central Park, Camden Yard in Baltimore, the French Quarter in New Orleans, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Pike Place Market in Seattle, Venice Beach in Southern California and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Other Virginia spots are the Blue Ridge Parkway, Appalachian Trail, Diggstown in Norfolk and The Lawn at the University of Virginia.