Development, revitalization take time, but it’s time to start
Published 9:30 am Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Downtown redevelopment/revitalization has been a hot topic in Elizabethton since I’ve been doing planning in Elizabethton — nine years. I have talked extensively about the different aspects or steps we need to take, but not a lot about the big picture plan. How do we even get to the point of talking about creating housing for downtown, or recruiting new businesses when we don’t even have buildings ready to be renovated? Let’s look at that today.
One of the first steps we need to take is to develop a unified vision for downtown. Ideally this would be in the form of a plan, but simply writing some goals or characteristics down about the image we all have in our heads is enough to get started. As a part of this step, we must ensure that the City Council, Planning Commission, Business Owners, Property Owners, and our citizens all (or mostly) agree on what that image looks like so that we can move forward.
After we’ve developed the “picture” for downtown, we need to organize. Structure and groups of the different stakeholders need to be created or encouraged. There is a lot of work that will need to be done in the aesthetics, economy, and property development in downtown and it is something that no one interest group can do solo.
Somewhat simultaneous with the previous action, all parties must work to save and improve the quality of our downtown buildings. It is hard to recruit a new business or start-up business to purchase or lease a building that has a leaky roof, old carpets, outdated electrical. After all, downtown building owners are realistically competing against clean, newer, plain-vanilla-shell spaces on the west side of the city. This can be very expensive and will likely require incentives and assistance for building owners, but the payoff could be great.
The next two steps — pedestrian friendliness and placemaking — are somewhat the same. There is a saying used in the urban planning world that if you want a street to be friendly for pedestrians, design it so a 7-year-old or 70-year-old can comfortably walk across by themselves. Sure, it is not exactly a scientific formula, but we need to evaluate our roads in downtown against this concept. Would you allow your 7-year-old to cross the three lanes of Elk Avenue traffic by themselves in downtown? Placemaking similarly encourages pedestrians and people to congregate and often improve the aesthetics and usability of an area.
Lastly, successfully completing the previous steps will result in higher demand for businesses and ultimately housing. We need to ensure quality housing options are available in and immediately around the downtown area. This could include condos, townhouses, single-family homes, or apartments, but a good mix is optimal. This will help generate additional pedestrian activity in downtown and additional revenues for the businesses there.
The most important thing we need to keep in mind during all of this, is that revitalization won’t happen overnight, but over multiple years or even a decade. Asheville has been working on their downtown since the ’70s, Jonesborough since the ’80s, Greenville, S.C. since the ’70s, Johnson City since the ’90s. Small and sustainable incremental change, I believe, will prove to be best for downtown and best for the city overall. The important part is that we start. Let’s talk about it!
(Jon Hartman is Director of Planning & Economic Development for the City of Elizabethton. He can be contacted at 542-1503 or by email at: jhartman@cityofelizabethton.org)