ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605040009
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
ABSENCE OF controversy had until recently allowed downtown Roanoke's Railwalk well nigh to fade from memory. After a couple of uncontentious public meetings a couple of years ago, the action shifted to the drawing boards.
But now architects have unveiled a plan for a raised walkway designed to funnel pedestrians from Market Street west, to the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Some details have yet to be worked out - like how to avoid cutting off access to Warehouse Row. But the concept is as sound today as it was in 1994, when money for the first phase of the walkway was included in a bond issue approved overwhelmingly by city voters.
By linking the City Market area with the museum, the walkway will offer visitors something more once they've experienced the market ambience and exhausted the pleasures of its shops and restaurants. This would be nice.
Critics of downtown redevelopment point out, with good reason, that while the market area is hopping day and night, most of the activity remains within that fairly well-defined area. Turn the corner, and a lot of the rest of downtown is Deadsville on a Saturday night. Or day, for that matter.
The raised walkway is laid out to allow people to get on it and off it at several points between Market and Second streets, encouraging strollers to range where few market-goers now tread. Those who stick to the walkway the entire distance to the Transportation Museum might choose to head back to the market by a different route, making a loop down streets that could use the foot traffic. Or, if Henry Street is ever developed, they could loop around the north side, returning on the new pedestrian bridge.
To draw enough people to have a dramatic impact, though, the Railwalk will have to be something that generates excitement, that's noticed and talked about.
In recent years, some cities around the country have been making public works into art works by including artists in the design of projects as utilitarian and mundane as street overpasses and garbage and sanitation facilities.
No joke. Artists and engineers collaborated in Phoenix, for example, to produce a solid-waste management facility with cathedral-like windows and cascading gardens. Not only does it fulfill the usual functions, it draws tourists like, well, flies.
Rather than simply providing areas to display art publicly, this is public art. Incorporating artists' ideas into such normally ugly projects makes them treasures rather than blights, and enhances the interest and quality of life in a community.
If that can be accomplished with the strictly utilitarian, imagine what might be done with the Railwalk, which is supposed to be attractive.
Phase 1 of the project involves building the structure, which seems well-designed. A lot of "the cool stuff," we're told, will come in Phase 2. With city support, the arts community - which has shown an interest in Railwalk - could take it from the pedestrian to the memorable, a defining feature of the city.
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