“other opportunities” for GRTC transfer station
David Napier, President of the Shockoe Bottom Neighborhood Association, elaborates on SBNA’s opposition to the proposed GRTC transfer station in an op/ed for Richmond BizSense.
The Shockoe Bottom Neighborhood Association recommended several very important and practical changes to GRTC’s plan regarding Main St. Station as a bus transfer station… There are other opportunities for a bus transfer center in Shockoe Bottom. There opportunities to improve on GRTC’s Main St. Station plan.
Does Napier not see the irony in opining about protecting the Bottom’s street grid from GRTC while at the same time wanting to destroy four of the street blocks with the Shockoe Towne Center he supports?
Well that is no where the same Stuart. 100 million ballpark complexes are more important that public transportation.
Destroy?????
We need to keep those ugly surface parking lots at all cost. What will we do without ugly surface parking lots?
Joe don’t believe that our only options are surface parking lots or a $100 million taxpayer-funded minor league baseball stadium. That’s how they get you every time.
Vertical thinking. Poor standards. AWOL planning, or very narrow ideology/opinion from Planning. I just got back from the Echo Harbour public discuss @ plannning commission. The same thing with Echo as for Shockoe or GRTC. Where is the insistence on a synthesis of these existing and proposed assets? Each idea, Shockoe or Echo are 1st tier thinking, driven mostly by short-view financial metrics that have only one constituency: investors and their search for as immediate a ROI as possible. No, I’m not naive, return matters. But the challenge we keep missing is that our elected or hired stewards of community and its long-term prospects and quality abdicate their responsibility to have “the money” work harder; to insist that it work harder rather than roll over at every turn. Planning: Insist on a symbiotic relationship between GRTC and Shockoe Center, for traffic and quality of experience reasons at least. Council: Insist that Shockoe Center not continue as a vertical and terminal destination; encourage a real horizontal opportunity by incenting a proper venue for Slave and Social (not just Civil) Rights Heritage, include a reinvigorated Farmers Market. Do this and your draw for ball becomes a family-viable extended visit by car, bus or rail. After hearing Echo Harbor comments, I have no doubts that the planning department has deliberate views about how to take a master plan *guiding* document and use it to throw their their weight around in micro-managerial ways. In other words, planning can be a force when they want to be, even when it’s taking a citizen vetted document and bending it to the will of individuals in the planning department. In the case of Shockoe, they have abdicated their role to the Economic Development department’s preference and guidance. And so the project is dangerously close to another example of civic opportunity missed due to the whiff of desperation and myopia that hunting tax revenues, money at any cost, often results in here. Highwoods owes loyalty to its investors. That doesn’t make them responsible to Richmond, only to their balance sheet and their REIT. The responsible here, those who should step in the gap, are those who are quietest: Planners and council members and mayors.
The Mayor is just waiting for the independent Study to come back and when it does confirm that the Center is worth dealing with he will do his best to make the public pay for it in taxes. This is as old as most of the cities in the commonwealth. Hampton has the Power plant and Norfolk Waterside and the Norfolk Convention center. If the Study says Shockoe Bottom is the place it will happen
Protection of Shockoe thoroughfares is essential; why impede attraction of businesses by swarming the streets not only with traffic for ballgames [ones that usually run later than small businesses are even open] but also bus traffic? Top that off with finding more non-existent parking solutions and you have a costly project that isn’t guaranteed to raise equitable revenues for the City; in fact, the City might find it difficult to recoup the expenses. Mayo Island worked as a home for baseball in the earlier half of the 20th Century but times have changed. We’re trying to save the vestiges of a source of City pride that spawned Ed Tate, Tommie Aaron and Chipper Jones, among others.
Saving baseball in Richmond should have started with preventing the demolition of the major source of parking by the current stadium on Boulevard for the accomodation of a Sports Backers soccer field.
Rob they pretty much bought the presentation hook line and sinker you could check it out on their webpage http://www.shockoecenter.com and they can tell of all the parking that is around but forget the fact there are people like myself who park there during the time they plan to have games.
Mayo Island would do if they were not using it for parking all the time but where would you park if they built it there? The existing parking space would cover about half of the expected amount for the stadium size they are trying to build.
[...] out against the most recent proposal for a transfer station at Main Street Station, including the Shockoe Bottom Neighborhood Association, Historic Shockoe Partnership, and Slave Trail Commission. Today’s article highlights a new [...]
[...] The new MegaBuses offer a glimmer of hope as well, increasing routes and perhaps doing what government could not by supplying a transfer station in Shockoe Bottom. [...]