ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
IS ROANOKE MISSING its civic pride? People at separate meetings this week said yes, but they differed on exactly why.
This week, the city began a six-day celebration of its fifth All-America City Award, which culminates Saturday evening in an outdoor extravaganza with a 1,000-piece cake, a block-long country line dance, and a downtown fireworks show.
Perhaps for that reason, deliberations by residents and business people during two conferences Wednesday at the Jefferson Center may seem oddly contradictory.
The morning and afternoon sessions were civic self-esteem workshops. The focus was civic pride, Roanoke's apparent lack of it and how the city can get some.
The Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce is planning a civic-pride advertising campaign, which it expects to unveil in September. But if the conflicting views expressed Wednesday are any indication, there is a lot of work to be done.
"Sometimes, we're not as positive internally about the city in which we live," chamber Chairman Rob Glenn said at the afternoon session, which was sponsored by the chamber. "Although almost all the time, we are positive about Roanoke externally when we're talking to people from outside."
"Roanoke, to other people, to other communities in this nation, is a remarkable place to live. Other communities recognize the greatness of our city," Mayor David Bowers said at the morning workshop for invited community leaders, which he sponsored.
He cited the All-America City award and high rankings from magazines such as Money and Parents as evidence. But, the mayor lamented, there seemed to be little appreciation of those attributes locally.
Is it true that we keep running ourselves down? Both groups believe "yes." But beyond that, there's a big gulf.
In the morning session, community leaders aired complaints about poor conditions at some city parks; underfunded schools and an "educational void" in Roanoke; neglected minorities; and a lack of good-paying jobs.
But in the afternoon workshop, business leaders spent an hour compiling Roanoke's positive attributes. Among other things, they came up with great recreational opportunities; good schools; racial harmony; and almost full employment.
Sue Gotwalt, a marketing consultant working with the chamber, explained the difference in beliefs this way: The majority of those attending the morning session were Roanoke natives who have lived here all of their lives, and many of them came from the lower end of the income spectrum.
In the afternoon session, she noted, most of the people had been raised elsewhere and moved here, or they were raised here, left, and later returned to raise their own families. And in general, they were more affluent than the morning crew.
The morning group members "do not have the means of comparison that the people in the afternoon had," Gotwalt said.
The pride campaign will take place in two parts. The first, which is mostly advertising, will last at least two years and cost about $50,000, provided the chamber and city can get donated or reduced-cost advertising from print and electronic media, Gotwalt said.
But an even bigger task may be bridging the gulf of ideas and socio-economic barriers that the two workshops highlighted.
"One thing that came across - I don't know how we're going to address it - is to pull the Roanoke Valley together as a community and to think in very positive terms about the community as a whole," Gotwalt said. "Part of the pride campaign is, how do we go back to these [dissatisfied] communities and help them find the funding to turn their communities around? They cannot be ignored in the campaign."
John Stroud, president of the regional chamber, said if the community "changes our attitude about ourselves, more things will happen. We don't want to sweep [negative] things under the rug - we've got to deal with them. But we've also got to celebrate our successes."
But whether it will work is still an open question, said Councilman Carroll Swain, who attended the morning session.
"All in all, I thought it was a pretty good conference or summit," Swain said. "But let's get together and work on it. If you're not going to work on it, it's a waste of time."
Staff writer Megan Schnabel contributed to this story.
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