ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 17, 1997 TAG: 9701170084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
GUARDIANS OF the star-lit peak will gather Saturday to contemplate its future.
City Councilman Jim Trout has come to think that Mill Mountain ought to be left pretty much alone.
"Is it really worth disturbing the mountain to put another restaurant?" he asked this week. "Why have in the valley greenways and have your monument mountain cluttered up? That contradicts itself."
Ralph Smith, Trout's colleague on the Mill Mountain Development Committee, thinks a restaurant might be OK. "If it's not too large and it doesn't get out of hand not a night spot," he cautioned, "a restaurant.''
"I think the mountain is kind of sitting there waiting for us to come up with that combination [of uses] that won't damage it too much in the eyes of naturalists but make the mountain of more benefit to the city than it has been," said Smith, a businessman who is chairman of the city's Republican committee. "I think we need to use the mountain a little bit more."
Smith, Trout and the committee's seven other members will gather Saturday at Smith's big stone mansion on Prospect Road on the mountain. They will hold a "visioning retreat" from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to think through what would be best for the mountain.
Anyone is welcome to listen in on the sessions, committee chairman Carl Kopitzke said, but he warned that most of the talking will be among committee members.
Kopitzke said the 30-year-old committee is misnamed. Its job is not to develop the mountain, he said, but to advise Roanoke's mayor and City Council on matters concerning the 535-acre city park.
It's been in the news recently because Mill Mountain Zoo wants to expand with new facilities for breeding red wolves, with other holding pens and with an office trailer. City Council approved the 1.5-acre expansion last week, and work may begin next year.
The city's new capital improvement budget also includes a possible $90,000 feasibility study for "alternative transportation" from downtown to Mill Mountain. A tram constructed of cables and gondola cars to carry people up and down the mountain has been talked about for years.
Trout has amassed old newspaper clippings and studies of the mountain that stretch back 30years. In 1967, the city's planning department proposed a museum, tramway, restaurant, theater, motel and gift shop for the mountain.
But other consultants in 1990 warned that these kinds of developments would "pose threats to the overall scenic quality of the mountain." Their survey showed that most Roanokers wanted the mountain preserved essentially as it is.
Trout once saw more merit to commercial developments on the mountain than he now does. Thirty years ago, he said, nobody knew that downtown and the suburbs would someday have scores of restaurants, or that downtown's Center in the Square and Transportation Museum would hold so many museums.
"By fate or delay or the gift of time, we have freed the mountain up from some of these recommendations or suggestions," he said. "The economic growth has changed the need for all this to be on Mill Mountain."
Now that Roanoke is developing a greenway from Mill Mountain to downtown, Trout thinks it would be hypocritical to overdevelop the mountain. "I don't think people will accept your sincerity for greenways and walkways if you load the mountain up. Mill Mountain is an asset in its natural form."
For information about Saturday's session, call city parks planner Lynnis Vernon, 981-1166.
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