By By MIKE VOSS
Contributing Editor
The completion of a reinvestment and revitalization strategy for Washington’s downtown/waterfront area and its endorsement by the City Council drew plenty of attention in 2009.
That attention helped make the plan the No. 8 story on the Washington Daily News’s list of Top 10 local stories for 2009.
Formal work on developing the strategy began in 2008 after the City Council charged the Citizens for Revitalization with developing a strategy. In October, the council adopted the strategy. but lots happened between those times.
Some people opposed using city money to hire a consultant to develop the plan. saying they feared it would be just another plan sitting on a shelf at City Hall. Others criticized Citizens for Revitalization for not allowing people with differing views to fully share those views and explain them.
The strategy, developed by LandDesign after input was collected at several public input sessions, calls for creating a downtown harbor district that includes activity centers and districts along with a diversity of uses while maintaining the public’s access to the Pamlico River.
The plan calls for “investments” to improve the quality of life in Washington, with those investments being made by the public sector, the private sector and public-private partnerships.
Prominent components of the proposed strategy include a waterfront hotel, pavilions for public or private functions, small parks and green spaces and buildings for economic-development uses such as restaurants, a museum, a ship’s store and similar retail uses. It also calls for a “festival park” just west of the N.C. Estuarium, a public pier and a gateway to the downtown-waterfront area where Main Street, Stewart Parkway and Gladden Street intersect.
The strategy addresses these key points:
• Finding ways to link Main Street to the Pamlico River.
• Public and private parking areas for expanded commercial activity.
• Create an opportunity for up to $90 million in new “tax-paying” construction and adaptive reuse of existing buildings.
• A premier space such as a performance venue for public use and assembly.
• Promote downtown as the city’s central business district.
• Develop a vehicle/pedestrian traffic circulation plan that connects people with various locations within the downtown/waterfront area.
• Establish a vision and reinvestment strategy that brands Washington’s downtown as a “central business district on the river.”
After adopting the strategy, the council charged Citizens for Revitalization committee with shepherding the strategy toward implementation. Councilman Doug Mercer recommended the existing committee, which has about 22 members, remain in place until next summer, when its membership would be reduced.
Mercer praised the strategy as the product of two polarized groups that came together for the common good of the city. He said the two groups “melded into a very workable organization.”
Archie Jennings, then a councilman but now the mayor, said the committee, when it comes to the strategy, should “act as (its) champion and maintain the momentum” it has picked up during the development process that resulted in the plan.