Sunday, November 08, 2009
Time to gather mountain views
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- Independent voice is silenced in merger
- TOP takes a hard knock
- Lagging on college access
- Alzheimer's drains minds and finances
From the RoundTable blog
Come February, it will be three years since Valley Forward first pitched a proposal for an inn and restaurant with a grand view atop Mill Mountain.
The loosely organized group of young professionals didn't want to build the complex or operate it, didn't want to make a dime off of it. Members just wanted to be able to go there -- a cool place, distinctive to Roanoke, that might entice more of their peers to make the Roanoke Valley their home.
I do not mean to reignite the ensuing controversy between proponents, who argued their vision was for an eco-friendly development amid an already built environment, and green opponents who wanted nothing more built at all. The idea, even the quickly scaled-back version minus the inn, is moribund and may well be dead. But -- this is classic Roanoke -- nobody really knows.
And if it is dead, it will be reborn -- not specifically, perhaps, but in broad concept.
This is not meant as a warning to drive the last nail in its coffin, but a suggestion that, while the city is studying conservation easements for the park's mountainsides, it take the opportunity to settle on a coherent vision for its top -- neon star, children's zoo and all.
There might never be a better time to engage the park's owners, the residents of Roanoke, who so recently were reminded how much they care about the mountain's fate, but are no longer locked in pitched battle over a specific plan.
To the young or recently arrived, Valley Forward's proposal for a restaurant represented fresh, perhaps radical, thinking. In reality, though, it fit right into a tradition stretching back to the late 1800s, when Roanoke was a new city, to use Mill Mountain as an economic engine.
Only the question of how has changed over time, and it remains unresolved.
The city's excellent Mill Mountain Park Management Plan -- adopted in February 2006, just a year before Valley Forward proposed adding a restaurant -- gives a brief, but enlightening, history of the mountain as it passed from individual to corporate ownership, then, as a gift, into the public's hands.
Most of the time, its owners saw its best use as generating profits through development. "As the Rockledge Inn, the Mill Mountain Incline, and the Old Toll Road suggest," the park plan notes, "developers tended to associate bigger profits with bigger, higher impact building projects."
None -- not even the inn, which floundered before eventually burning down -- became enough of a money-maker to keep it going.
Still, in the 1940s, when businessman Junius Fishburn bought much of the mountain and gave it to the city for a park, legal restrictions on development reflected the thinking of the time.
Do they allow a restaurant? I'd say so, considering that a master plan city council adopted in the mid-1960s called for a 1,000-car parking lot halfway up the mountain, with a tramway going the distance to the top; a ski slope; and a building complex to include a visitors center, vista restaurant, 60-room lodge and 250-seat theater, in addition to trails, picnic areas and natural landscaping.
Council appointed a development committee to oversee the project. "According to newspaper accounts, however, the committee never met, and no further action was taken on the $4 million plan." Again, classic Roanoke.
Such generous leeway for development continued to give rise to high-impact proposals over the years, though, and will in the future unless the city puts explicit limits on the mountaintop's use. That, council has been loath to do.
People still have dreams -- of an expanded zoo, say, or a stopover where hikers and mountain bikers can clean up and get a meal. Something small, unobtrusive, eco-friendly.
Historically, a restaurant with a view has been a recurring theme, but Valley Forward's proposal was updated to align with today's sensibilities: development not as a profit-making venture primarily, but a quality-of-life enhancement that makes the valley that much more livable -- and more attractive to young professionals.
The payoff in new businesses and investment comes down the road.
Since the Fishburn restrictions were written, the park master plan notes: "A new understanding of the relationship between profit and development began to emerge, as urban green spaces like Mill Mountain became valued for their undeveloped state. Environmental conservation and compatible, low-impact development was seen as enhancing the park's value rather than diminishing it."
It's a good plan. Now, Roanokers need to come to a meeting of the minds about what "low-impact development" means.
Strother is on the editorial board of The Roanoke Times.
