Petersburg's Downtown Harbor Initiative

Richmond.com, 04/04/2007

Petersburg, Take Two: A team of urban redevelopment experts take a look at reinventing Richmond’s southern second cousin.

By Kent Jennings Brockwell

Walking toward the Petersburg Regional Art Center after normal business hours, it quickly becomes apparent why concerned citizens and city officials wanted to get an outsider's opinion about their ailing yet slowly progressing city.

Over recent years, there has been a small influx of new businesses in the area but the effort is fleeting. Up and down Sycamore Street, just one of Petersburg's once thriving business areas of yesteryear, many storefronts are vacant, others are occupied yet neglected and only a few look new and healthy. All, however, are surrounded by a million flakes of old paint and splintering weather- and age-beaten building materials.

Inside the art center, however, are images of a vibrant new Petersburg. Collected on the walls alongside the center's normal art displays are dozens of maps and colorful renderings of a modern city that looks a lot like a spiffy, modernized version of Petersburg centered on a thriving waterfront area.

The renderings and a new 84-page, 20-year revitalization plan are compliments of a weekend visit by the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team program, or R/UDAT (pronounced roo-dat.) For four days, a group of volunteer architects, students, urban planners and community development experts from around the country scoured downtown Petersburg while interviewing locals, examining the cityscape and looking for ways to invigorate change and growth within the city.

As part of Petersburg's Downtown Harbor Initiative, the R/UDAT program, which has been run by the American Institute of Architects since 1967, was invited to evaluate the city over a long weekend.

"A lot of the people we talked to had fallen out of love with Petersburg and now they are falling back in love with downtown Petersburg," said R/UDAT team member Charles Zucker, an urban design and community development consultant from Washington, D.C. "The issue quickly became apparent to us that when you look at Petersburg's downtown development there is a hole that needs to be filled and we need to fill that hole up with a vision or a dream and that is what this is about."

On Monday night, the team released its findings and conceptual plan to a group of approximately 300 intrigued citizens. Plans included lots of new construction throughout downtown including more traffic roundabouts, the reuse of historic buildings and the development of an 88-acre river and harbor front park and trail system as a focal point for the entire city.

Drawing a boisterous round of applause from the crowd was the group's suggestion that Petersburg's two main one-way thoroughfares, Washington and Wythe streets, be redesigned as tree lined, two-way boulevards. Improving the city's infrastructure with more green spaces and permeable surfaces for improved storm water management was another suggestion that drew a favorable and audible crowd response.

Other major plans included restoring the semblance of Petersburg's Pocahontas Heritage District as a vibrant residential area filled with single-family homes and redeveloping several of downtown's surface parking lots. Redefining the "Washington Gateway," or the entrance to downtown from the I-95 interchange, with new buildings and landscaping was also touted as a major required change for the city's advancement.

Though team members said a total reinvention of Petersburg's downtown would take up to 20 years to complete, the R/UDAT plan also included a rudimentary implementation matrix that laid all of the suggestions out in phases. While there are multiple variables regarding the overall feasibility of the plan's multiple suggestions, the first phase, if followed, could take up to 36 months to complete and consists of multiple planning teams, funding commissions and numerous legalities.

Other phases, including construction, would follow pending the citizenry's and local government's support. But Petersburg native and co-chair of the Downtown Harbor Initiative, Terry Ammons, said public acceptance of the R/UDAT plan should be a no-brainer. After pointing out that several representatives from both local and statewide governmental bodies were in attendance at the public meeting, including every member of Petersburg's city council, Ammons said it is obvious that local revitalization is a primary concern.

"This is the result of a public planning process," he said. "This is the community's vision for its city. [The elected officials] came and they heard their constituents talking about what they want. This result of months of public meetings and interviews and having the team meet with them truly wasn't created in a vacuum."

Responding to a question regarding the recently announced plan to double the size of nearby Fort Lee within four years, Ammons said the release of the R/UDAT suggestions is simply a matter of perfect timing.

"Obviously timing is an issue and it certainly couldn't be better," Ammons said. "I think it is the first time that I know of where the developers are looking at the city not just as purely speculative. They are looking at the development with some surety and that a certain amount is going to happen. That changes things tremendously here. It changes the feeling about the future of Petersburg."

Ammons said he also feels that the plan could reestablish Petersburg as its own individual city and destination, not just a city south of Richmond you pass through on the way to Florida.

"If you really look at the plan and what it would be if it were developed, [Petersburg] would be one of the most interesting cities of this scale up and down the East Coast," he said. "I think the idea is that Petersburg has its own individual identity and to regain an approach where we work with our strengths here and part of that is telling people what is here and letting them know what is unique about the area.

"It's really important that the project and the planning are important not just for visitors and attracting tourists here but because we have a lot of local citizens that need to reinvest in this city, too. They need to find downtown again. They have been disconnected for a long time and hopefully this type of process starts to bring people back in."

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