The downtown of Roanoke City, as it stands now, is a failure.
I know most people who read that and live in Roanoke will get defensive or argument the point with me, but hear me out.
There are 3 major reasons Roanoke City's Downtown is currently failing:
- The natural cycle of urban decline and gentrification
- The Center in the Square group
- Poor urban planning
Currently Roanoke's downtown is seemingly stuck in the middle process of gentrification with steam slowly leaking out the windows of the $1000+/month lofts that hallmark the gentrification process in Roanoke. But why has it slowed down a little, again depending on how you qualify gentrification. Here I am qualifying it as an increase in land value as well as services offered to residents an business.
It if failing because downtown's gentrification is in large part artificial. It is NOT part of the natural urban decline and renewal, instead it is forced by some to create a place they wish they could live. The thinking here is of the “Build it and they will come” variety. Sadly, however, in large part they have not come.
Don't get me wrong, you have your young 20somethings with good jobs and disposable income and rich older people, again with disposable income. A side note, you find the two extremes in Roanoke, quite young and quite older, more than you find them mid-range population-meaning, people only move to Roanoke to get new jobs or die. Back to the point, overall you do not have masses of people moving downtown or even utilizing downtown compared with Roanoke's overall population.
And who are the big bads doing this? There are several but the major agent of this false gentrification is a group that calls itself Center in the Square. This group controls the arts and science aspects of downtown Roanoke which includes among other things a science museum, history museum, Winston O Link museum, and Mill Mountain Theatre.
This group is a large economic driver downtown, when compared to anything else down there. Yet they artificially prop up unsuccessful businesses like Mill Mountain Theatre, giving it a budget of $2.7 million dollars. Which on the face looks good but factor in debt and operating costs and for a whole year....its nothing.
My point is that this organization and its component parts are not on their own terrible economically viable businesses, they heavily rely on donations and service fees. People just don't go to them, you'll get a few hundred thousand visitors over a year and I'm sure you get close to that in residents coming. But if they don't buy, if they don't come back over and over again, if they don't see a reason to go to the other museums, then you're screwed. And that is where Center in the Square is finding itself, screwed.
If an area's major economic driver cannot financially sustain itself FULLY then isn't its economic contributions just a house of cards?
Finally the planning of downtown Roanoke City leaves much to be desired. Half of that is Roanoke's original downtown plan put down long before large buildings and 100,000 residents. It's the type of plan you find in many old cities, somewhat nonsensical in terms of traffic flow and in a weird grid.
That being said the City itself has not done much to encourage the correct type of change. But this isn't so much a city problem as it is an industrial and social problem. The City can influence it by zoning, financial incentives, and services it offers. What it really relies on are business people who want to make a better downtown, which ultimately brings more money than one or two buildings made for rich residents or just for corporations. Roanoke has never really had that great visionary either in the political/governmental or corporate world. All it has ever had is short sighted people who want ONLY what is best for their interest.
The single biggest problem the downtown faces is the fact that in large part it is simply and singularly a place of business. Sure there are some residences but when compared with the overall population, its nothing. And what is there is either extremely expensive or a piece of crap. The downtown needs to diversify, needs more than just government buildings, crappy ass “bars”, and corporate centers. It needs a grocery store, apartments actually physically in the downtown area (not the outskirts) that are decent and go for between $500-650.
To really bring about a living, prosperous downtown Roanoke City needs a downtown that is more than a place to work or go on the weekends. Downtown needs to be a place where people live, shop, and work-all of those things. Instead of being apart from Roanoke as it has been for the passed 15 years or so that I have lived here. People in Roanoke think of downtown as something different, not like the rest, sterile in a weird “let's go there only on weekends” kind of a way. No, it has to become a true part of Roanoke in order to fully become the downtown Roanoke deserves.
© 2006 A.T.L.