Now Developing: How 11 Richmond Public Spaces Are Being Re-Imagined for Better or for Worse

The bicycle races in September brought a rash of new sidewalks, repaved roadways and fresh directional signs, not to mention highlighting the opening of the Virginia Capital Trail and the work on the Floyd Avenue bikeway.

But it’s still dizzyingly high season for a variety of proposed capital projects. Some are necessities, others niceties. Some are large and some quite small.

It appears that a robust live oak tree is likely to be saved at the Maggie Walker monument site downtown, where Broad and Adams streets meet Brook Road.

City Hall is fast-tracking the area for development and a statue memorializing the civic leader, while a bevy of preservationists and nearby residents are petitioning to save a particularly historic stretch of the downtown grid system that the statue’s conceptual architectural design indicates would be closed.

A posse of prominent Richmonders recently unveiled an ambitious plan of a transformation of the immediate environs of The Diamond, introducing tightly configured commercial and residential buildings while dramatically upgrading the ballpark.

Across town in Byrd Park, other civic leaders and nearby residents have settled on a highly visible spot on which to relocate the city’s memorial to fallen policemen, a statue that sits in forlorn Nina Abady Park near the Coliseum.

And as Richmond, Henrico County and state officials barrel ahead with plans for the Pulse — a proposed rapid-transit bus system linking Rocketts Landing with Willow Lawn — residents, property owners and business people with interests along the route are pushing back.

These are just a few of the projects challenging city officials as Mayor Dwight Jones enters his last year in office and seeks to burnish his legacy. Some projects promise to become contentious from the standpoints of priorities, budget and aesthetics, with Jones’ would-be successors beginning to jockey for his job.

With the new year approaching, it’s a good time to consider the pros and cons of some public projects on the drawing boards that will pepper conversations at holiday parties and family gatherings and are sure to make headlines in 2016.

The Police Memorial

It’s too bad that the Richmond Policeman Memorial is being removed from Nina Abady Park. The downtown park was named for a visionary woman who championed the memorial and helped raise funds for it.

The bronze statue was one of a number of civic amenities and programs that Abady spearheaded in her tireless efforts to reinvigorate downtown activity in the 1980s — among them the establishment of Friday Cheers and the conversion of the former Loews Theatre into the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts. She was a huge fan of the Richmond Police Department and the cop on the beat, and masterfully corralled them as visible participants in her events.

It’s ironic that the park named for this woman who worked so hard to animate downtown is considered in deplorable enough condition to warrant the memorial’s move. It also signifies a pathetic loss of institutional memory.

Hundreds of thousands of people pass by and through Nina Abady Park en route to the Coliseum annually. Why shouldn’t this outdoor space be a place of beauty and civic pride? If we fixed the park, there would be no groundswell to relocate the statue.

The Maggie Walker Statue

It’s time we established a major monument honoring Maggie L. Walker (1864-1934), a Richmond African-American woman who became a remarkable leader in religion, education, journalism, retail, insurance and finance. She also was the first American woman bank president.

But it shouldn’t be placed at the intersection of Broad and Adams streets and Brook Road.

Now that a 40-year-old oak tree has been given a reprieve, let’s move the Walker monument to Jackson Ward’s highly visible Abner Clay Park, within view of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church and the soon-to-open Virginia Black History Museum. This would preserve the triangular green space partially defined by the adjacent stretch of Brook Road, which is at least 235 years old.

The main link between Richmond and points north in the 18th and 19th centuries now slices Adams Street at a 45-degree angle — rare for the city street grid. This was how travelers once entered and exited the city. These often unrecognized urban fragments are as important as specific buildings and monuments to creating a sense of place. They’re welcomingly quirky, and this slice of Brook Road is a reminder of the street pattern laid out when Thomas Jefferson lived in Richmond as governor.

The Main Street Train Station Shed

The 1901 Main Street Station train shed is a familiar sight for those motoring between Maine and Miami. It’s being cleaned and rebuilt for no announced purpose. Apparently its glass walls will allow it to be a beacon in the night. When completed, there should be a way of moving, at least on foot or by bicycle, under the shed and into Shockoe Bottom.

Some people are suggesting that the former train platform become the permanent GRTC transfer plaza. This would be unfortunate. Like the proposal to put a ballpark in Shockoe Bottom, the area is too fragile historically to accommodate a continuous onslaught of buses. And it would further clog the intersection of 14th and Broad streets, already a highly congested area.

Kanawha Plaza

This summer, in an act of urban vandalism, Kanawha Plaza was demolished. There was no pressing reason, unless it was to rid the park of encamped homeless residents before the international bicycle race or tidy the area before tenants moved into the adjacent, glitzy new Gateway Plaza building.

But supposedly an unnamed corporate entity was contributing to the project and there was danger of losing that funding if the city didn’t act fast. Well, the park was demolished and the still-unidentified corporate Medici has reneged.

So the city lost one of its most handsome, midcentury modern public spaces, and the design and an empty lot awaits, well, something.

All that is evil however, does not come to harm us. This eerily blank slate provides an opportunity to coordinate any forthcoming design with an ambitious plan, the Bridgepark, which was unveiled this year to reconfigure the nearby Manchester Bridge.

BridgePark

Independent parties introduced an intriguing plan to physically reconsider the Manchester Bridge, the concrete behemoth that connects Ninth Street and Commerce Road, and transform it into a “bridge park,” a variation of Manhattan’s wildly popular High Line, which snakes through New York’s lower West Side.

Under the guidance of Peter Culley, an architect with international connections, the BridgePark Foundation has broadened its scope from its initial plan to build a pedestrian link between Brown’s Island and Manchester using existing historic bridge supports.

The new plan calls for removing a few traffic lanes from the Manchester Bridge, which should be painless because recent lane closures for repairs didn’t seem to create any backups. It would reconfigure the bridge to include enhanced pedestrian and bikeways. The bridge could link with a redesigned Kanawha Plaza, solving one of the ongoing issues of that isolated public space. Further, the BridgePark would have ramps that swing out to connect with Brown’s Island and riverfront spots in Manchester. As part of the plan, concession areas, restrooms, backstage and storage areas would offer additional amenities on Brown’s Island.

Importantly, the project better connects downtown with Manchester, an area gaining population and cultural pull. It’s a spectacular concept, but one that will require considerable redesign and cost.

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The T. Tyler Potterfield Bridge

While the Bridgepark plan gains traction, there’s a pedestrian and bicycle bridge on the city planning boards that was supposed to have been completed by now.

The T. Tyler Potterfield Bridge is designed to rest relatively low to the river and built atop the stone piers of an old trestle. It will extend the existing April 1865 monument, which juts out over the river at the western end of Brown’s Island.

The budgeted project was being managed by Potterfield, a senior planner for the city, Oregon Hill resident and ardent cyclist. But when he died in 2014, it was decided wisely to name the crossing in his honor. The $9.5 million project is slated for completion next fall.

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The GRTC Pulse

Is the Pulse, a faster moving bus system that will connect Rocketts Landing with Willow Lawn by traveling along Main, Broad and 14th streets, as good as it could be?

No, of course not. But finally, transportation planners are offering a fresh approach to public transit here.

The whining and opposition to the $54 million project from some quarters, especially from civic associations, is grating and shortsighted: “Too many lost parking spaces,” “Too many lost customers,” “Too much disruption during construction,” and so on.

But the region’s vehicular traffic is only going to increase, and it’s past time we began dealing with alternatives.

Rather than complaining or sticking our heads in the sand, the question should be: Why isn’t the Pulse more ambitious? Apparently planners have given little thought to how the 14 stops will connect with existing GRTC lines.

But let’s quit squabbling and get on the bus. Surely the city that introduced one of the first electric streetcar systems to the world in 1888 can reacquaint itself with public transit.

One major challenge will be how the system navigates the tight and busy intersection of East Broad and 14th streets near the interstate highway ramps, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical Center and government buildings. It’s already overly congested.

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The GRTC Transfer Plaza

In light of the international bicycle event and with anticipated construction next year on Broad Street for the Pulse, GRTC buses were rerouted to a desolate stretch of North Ninth and East Leigh streets, the Temporary Transfer Plaza. It’s good that temporary is in the name but it’s unsatisfactory because of the linear way in which buses are parked. There’s a three-block walk in some cases to transfer lines.

But the location is excellent. It’s within a few blocks of the Capitol, City Hall and other major city, state and city and federal office buildings. The Virginia Bio-Tech Park, the VCU Medical Center, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, courts buildings, the Altria research complex and VCU dormitories are a stroll away. Then there are such cultural attractions as the Library of Virginia, the Valentine museum, the Museum and White House of the Confederacy, the John Marshall House and the Coliseum.

But a transfer plaza isn’t just bus parking. It takes planning for additional amenities. Why not redevelop the current surface parking lot at Marshall, Leigh, Eighth and Ninth streets — the site of the old John Marshall High School football field — and turn it into an interior plaza? It could occupy the first level of and larger multi-use structure with parking deck and offices above.

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The 17th Street Farmers’ Market

Historic Shockoe Bottom, where Richmond began, is no place for a baseball stadium or a bus transfer station. What has given the evocative area, once Richmond’s Jewish neighborhood, continuity since the 18th century is the existence of the 17th Street Farmers’ Market. Most of the market’s overhead sheds have been removed and the space awaits redevelopment. One recent design concept shows the blocks along 17th Street being developed as a broad pedestrian mall. But now that the ballpark apparently is off the table, there’s no urgency to do anything about the market. It will probably languish for a while, its fate tied to whatever happens within the nearby train shed.

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The General Assembly Building

Having acquired all the buildings facing Capitol Square, the Commonwealth of Virginia is creating a Vatican-like, protective setting for Capitol Square.

Some recent improvements are excellent. The Capitol entrance off Bank Street now connects the building directly to the financial district. Legislators no longer park their cars on the Capitol Square lawn and brick sidewalks.

But the plan to demolish the General Assembly Building in the block bounded by Ninth, Capitol, Broad and Tenth streets represents hubris on the part of Virginia’s part-time legislature.

The existing office building essentially is composed of three gorgeous landmarks, which through the years have been melded into one complex. It would be a challenging restoration, but if the old Hotel Richmond can be restored, why not the General Assembly Building?

Beaux arts and midcentury modern buildings of this quality cannot be replicated, even by so distinguished a firm as Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York, which is the designer of the project. Why not build the General Assembly building on the lot across the street and make it a mixed-use building with parking? Only parking is planned for that block now. It could be a much taller building. Land will only continue to get scarcer in this area.

Richmond has few more architecturally sophisticated ensembles than the General Assembly building.

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The Boulevard and Ballpark

Eventually all discussions about local development swing back to North Boulevard and the fate of The Diamond. Way too much civic energy and goodwill have been wasted on arguments over the fate of baseball and a children’s hospital at that location.

Let’s continue to play ball there. It’s a part of our sports patrimony here, so why mess with it? There’s a lot to like in the ambitious plan by Glave & Holmes Architects, which the Save the Diamond group publicly unveiled Dec. 3.

It maintains and improves the ballpark itself. It ties in with the existing and adjacent Sports Backers Stadium to create the critical mass for a sports-entertainment area. And it calls for inserting mixed-use structures out to the surrounding sidewalks of the Boulevard and Robin Hood and Hermitage roads. By doing so it links with the urban density of nearby Scott’s Addition.

The mayor has called for developmental plans for this coveted site. And although financing is yet to be determined, this plan is a contender.

It’s time to play ball. S

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