Sunday, June 20, 2010
Keep the mountain's delicate balance
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
For me, the choice keeps coming back to Mark Twain's advice: "Buy land; they're not making it anymore." Only in this case, the decision is whether to preserve the land we have.
How much of the land, rather. That will be the issue when Roanoke City Council chooses between two boundaries for a conservation easement to keep development off the slopes of Mill Mountain Park.
The mountain's summit, of course, will by needs be excluded from the easement because of the existing zoo, wildflower garden, giant neon Mill Mountain Star, paved walkways, observation decks, picnic shelter, parking lots ... you get the picture. I'm sure I've missed something. Oh yeah, the Discovery Center.
The question at hand, then, is where to draw the line between protected slopes and developed summit?
Council is in agreement about most of the boundary, but not one section: the piece that will affect a tract that, as recently as two years ago, the young professionals of Valley Forward pushed hard as the ideal site for a restaurant with a panoramic view of the Roanoke Valley.
Should the easement stop where the steep, heavily forested mountainside gives way to the summit clearing, leaving the site unprotected? Or should the line be pushed just above this gently sloping, sparsely forested tract -- preserving developable land that is as yet undeveloped?
Roanokers will be able to weigh in one last time (presumably) at a public hearing Monday before council votes.
I dearly hope it will be for the more restrictive easement.
I say this as someone initially taken with the restaurant idea, which to this point is nothing more than a concept that did not get off the ground. While council will not be voting on whether to allow a restaurant, it will be voting on whether future councils will be able even to consider such a choice.
They should not.
Current council members might be hesitant to reach into the future, but that's what conservation easements are all about.
Hubris? Hardly.
Council is prepared to put some 550 acres of the park's steep slopes under a protective easement. While no one can see the future, worry about what might be forfeited if the protection extends to this one, small, additional piece surely exaggerates its possibilities.
Ah, but it's a critical piece, one might argue, prime land for development: a relatively gentle slope with a fantastic prospect, just like the northwest overlook beside it -- if only someone would cut down the trees growing up the mountainside and blocking the scene below.
All the more reason to protect it. The more desirable the land, the greater the need for an easement -- if fending off development would be the greater public good.
In this case, I've come to think it is. The bottom line for me has always been whether the restaurant would enhance the park for the people it is meant to serve. Not whether it would lower the valley's median age. Not whether it would spark economic development.
No restaurant, no matter how cool, is going to draw self-exiled young professionals back home, the motive for Valley Forward's crusade. No restaurant isolated in a public park atop a mountain is going to spawn spin-off businesses -- unless the city envisions giving over the park to commercial development, which it does not.
Still, attracting new investment depends on the total package any community has to offer. I can see where a signature restaurant with a breathtaking view would be a plus. Having such a restaurant on Mill Mountain, though, would have to be weighed against losses -- including, I fear, the park's personality.
It's a place for family play and outdoor recreation, well used but seldom overcrowded, as grand as nature but unsuitable for grandiose schemes, really; its capacity for high-traffic trade is sharply limited by parking.
And a restaurant or any major development perched on the rim of the summit would be seen on the mountain from below, marring the view of a landmark that for many Roanokers means home.
Mill Mountain preservationists cannot claim it as an untouched natural sanctuary, but -- remarkably -- for all its manmade accommodations, none is visible at a distance. Except, of course, the iconic star. That, love it or hate it, has been a fixture in the night sky for so many generations it has come to look natural.
One of those is enough.
Strother is on the editorial board of The Roanoke Times.
