The City of Roanoke’s Rich Heritage of Planning
Posted on June 11, 2008
When it comes to city planning, Roanoke was an early adopter. In 1907, the Women’s Civic Betterment Club hired one of the first graduates of Harvard’s new School of Landscape Architecture to craft a city plan.
John Nolen went on to develop the first comprehensive plans for San Diego, Charlotte and Asheville. The plan he developed for Roanoke, entitled Renovating Roanoke, defined the neighborhoods that give Roanoke its distinct character today.
In 1928, John Nolen came back to Roanoke to meet with the newly established planning commission. He brought 20 years of experience to the job and developed a more tactical version of his original plan. If you look at photos and maps of Roanoke during the early part of the century, you see an idyllic American city nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The public spaces included dancing pavilions, sports parks, amusement parks and other attractions strung together in a fashion that was easily walkable.
Building on a century of historic planning efforts, the City’s Planning Division oversaw the development of a long-range plan called Vision 2001-2020. This plan was not contracted out to a large planning firm. Instead, it was developed by groups of stakeholders and resulted in a series of actionable items to achieve their vision by 2020. Each year, the City has published a progress report at the end of the year. In 2007, the City reported that 52% of the items in the plan are complete and 87% of the items are in progress. The list of items is quite impressive.
Vision 2001-2020 also includes several amendments adopted within the last several years that include a Strategic Housing Plan, Public Art Plan, Library Plan, Parks and Recreation Plan, Mill Mountain Park Plan, Urban Forestry Plan and Youth Plan. All of these plans are easily accessible online from the City’s website.
One vital component of the master plan is the downtown/market district plan. These plans are under the stewardship of Downtown Roanoke Incorporated (DRI). DRI was founded in 1960 to champion the development and preservation of the downtown area. Of course, this was during a time when many downtowns in America were experiencing abandon and decay. For the next 40 years, DRI worked to revitalize Roanoke’s downtown.
With the turn of the century, DRI hired two equally renowned firms to develop plans for the downtown and market districts. Urban Design Associates (UDA) developed Outlook Roanoke in 2001. Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) developed the City Market District Plan in 2005. Both of these firms are world-renowned pioneers of a planning theory called new urbanism. DZP developed Seaside, Florida as one of the first true examples of the concept. UDA followed with Celebration, Florida.
These planners provided a perfect complement to the original theories of John Nolen. In fact, many new urbanists refer to Nolen as an influence. When you look at the plans for the market area and downtown, you see a modern take on a bygone lifestyle. This is exactly the charm of Roanoke that visitors notice. If the plans are completed, the market district will become the hallmark of the city connected by greenways to distinct neighborhoods that ultimately connect to the larger greenways that surround us.
The caliber of talent that laid the plans for our city is enviable. The plans themselves are recognized for their unique quality. The organizations that are tasked with carrying the plans out are making great strides. So, what happens when someone comes up with the idea to put a hotel on Mill Mountain or an amphitheater by the river or a trolley down the middle of Jefferson Street? It would seem that the first filter would be whether or not the idea fits with the plans we have already.
In the case of Rockledge, a group of young professionals worked on the plan over the course of two years, presented it to the City Council, which referred it to the City Manager, which referred it to the City Attorney and City Planner. The City then issued a request for proposals to develop the site. Meanwhile, the Mill Mountain Advisory Council conferred with the Fishburn Family, who donated the mountain, and advised the City that the proposal should not move forward. And, all the while, the issue was debated in the local newspapers.
It seems that this long process could have been averted by referring to the original, approved plans that Roanoke is so fortunate to have. In the 1907 plan, John Nolen comments on Mill Mountain, “It is imperative that the people possess this mountain… There is an opportunity to make it a public park that will rival in beauty, charm and value Mt. Royal in Montreal, known as one of the best works of Fredrick Law Olmsted.” Junius Fishburn took that advice nearly 50 years later when he granted the property to the City with that very intent.
The City Planning Division has a comprehensive plan on file for Mill Mountain that was approved in 2006. Included in that plan is a history of development efforts on the mountain. Ironically, the Mill Mountain Advisory Committee was called the Mill Mountain Development Committee during the 1970s. Unlike today’s environmentally concerned committee, the group was actually proposing a development very similar to the proposal on the table today. That proposal actually included the removal of the star in order to make room for more development.
The plan that proposed such massive development was presented in 1965 after the mountain had experienced 50 years of decline. We forget that the mountain once featured an incline running up its side, a roller coaster, a dance pavilion, a lookout tower and a nice little reservoir called Crystal Spring. In the 1920s, a this park closed and a private investor bought the mountain to turn it into residential homes. With the depression looming, the effort failed, as did the incline. Fishburn picked up the property from Washington & Lee University, after they secured it from the failed developer. He then granted the property to the City.
While the pendulum has swung from conservation to development and back on the issue of Mill Mountain, the original vision for the mountain is still possible. If we look to John Nolen’s vision in 1907, the same vision that Junius Fishburn was following when we granted the land, we have a guiding principle. That is the value of planning. To exclude any good idea after a plan is adopted would be too confining. However, to expect new ideas to be accepted when they contradict the guiding principles of a plan is also unrealistic. This holds true whether you are talking about Mill Mountain, the amphitheater or an art museum.
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