Old BMS success requires compromise
Blacksburg residents last week got their first glimpse of what could be the future of the old Blacksburg Middle School site. Town council members expressed some legitimate concerns about the proposal, dubbed Midtown, but the plans should serve as a launching point for discussions that could finally lead to action.
(Update Nov. 4, 2012, 11:15a: Renderings added to post.)
November 4, 2012 - 7:56 AM
This is a start and it would be good if BURG kept its nose out of the process. But there are some problems with the plan as presented. It looks like there will be a “wall” along Clay Street with those multi-story buildings, not much of a transition from the neighborhood to the north into this new area. There is no good through street, such as an extension of Palmer Drive, to provide an alternative to Main St. (of course, Blacksburg isn’t about good traffic flow, with ridiculous speed limits and ill-timed traffic lights to impede movement). The green space is nice, but not one square foot of it should be handed over to town — other than the streets (if dedicated), all that land needs to be on the tax rolls. The town doesn’t need another useless park (like Wong Park or the undevelopable Brown Farm Park). Let a homeowners’ association take on ownership (like in Hethwood) so there is revenue to the town and county.
A reasonable editorial position, and a reasonable position altogether with the exception of one passage –
“After the First & Main debacle, Blacksburg is understandably cautious about high-profile development. It does not want to be burned again, and the current situation is not helped by the fact that some of the players in this project had a hand in First & Main.”
Blacksburg town council contributed mightily to the the “debacle” by changing the rules in the middle of the first game, and in a sense, burned itself, it did not get burned.
If town council had been more reasonable on First and Main, as this editorial position suggests, and less idealistic, as this editorial now suggests, it wouldn’t have a development there that will never be finished – and it will never move much beyond where it is, not unless people with some really deep pockets just want to empty them.
Much like the ‘interchange park’ near the hospital that has never come to fruition, that the town solicited input from interested parties about 7 or 8 years ago, the site that used to house BHS, then BMS, will be lucky to be developed by 2020.
Do you know what would be awesome for this area? If we are talking about Modea moving in, more than just affordable housing, how about encouraging use of a daycare. We are so short of quality daycare in the area and with young folks working at Modea, what better way to encourage them to live and work in the same space!
Thanks for the renderings — it shows that whomever put them together needs to get a clue. It isn’t “Virginia Tech University” and it never will be. The Vistor’s Center is in the wrong place, it moved to a new building over a year ago, on Prices Fork Rd. adjacent to the Inn at Virginia Tech. Now I wonder how many other inaccuracies are in these slides (and how long it will take the BURG folks to fabricate another “bait and switch” lie about this project).