Sunday, March 30, 2008
Editorial: Lessons from the Center
Roanoke officials seem controversy-shy these days, but Mayor Harris was adept at steering a City Market quarrel into a productive dialogue.
From the RoundTable blog
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Downtown Roanoke's Center in the Square is due for a sprucing up. The rough outline of a plan it made public Thursday looks a lot different than Roanokers might have expected last spring when word leaked that the landmark Weiner Stand and some market stalls might be uprooted.
A firestorm of criticism ensued, and Center officials incorporated the feedback into the renovation plan they are ready to introduce. The city's public officials ought to be able to take a lesson from that model -- since they were critical in developing it.
Mayor Nelson Harris, in particular, stepped up to calm the controversy when market vendors, the hot dog stand's owner and City Market aficionados roared their displeasure over hints that a Center renovation would intrude on other established market attractions.
Harris organized meetings so that downtown stakeholders who had been kept in the dark could talk with officials of the nonprofit arts organization about plans that could impact everyone doing business on the city-owned Market Square.
That would include the public, and though Harris insisted on closed meetings for private stakeholders, he agreed to public meetings as well to give the whole community a chance to weigh in on the future of a popular public asset. The city even paid to bring in an outside mediator.
Fortunately, all of this occurred before a renovation plan was so far along that it would have been a fait accompli when Center unveiled it, something to be accepted or rejected but subject to change only at the margins.
The result is a less ambitious plan. But it protects some things that, while of negligible interest to Center's mission, are of intense interest to people who frequent the market. The benefit to all should be apparent.
The city played a critical role in facilitating a useful public dialogue, once a news leak forced Center's quiet planning into the public square.
Surely the city would have benefited from the same kind of openness before deciding on an amphitheater site. And it might be enlightened by a public discussion of amphitheater proposals it since has received but hasn't shared.
Year after year of controversy over the now demolished Victory Stadium may have soured city council on bringing the public into its decision-making process. Council became the target of derision for the interminable debate.
But controversy is not bad. Indecisiveness is. Public officials ought to be able to weather the former, avoid the latter, yet listen to competing views so they can do their best to make choices in the public interest. And know many likely will disagree.
