By Todd Jackson

Archives Reprint

   todd.jackson@roanoke.com

   981-3253

    Roanokers will get a chance Tuesday to review plans for the redevelopment of the First Street bridge as a downtown memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

    A committee spearheading the project will hold an open house at the Dumas Center for Artistic and Cultural Development, near the northern end of the bridge, from 3 to 6 p.m. It will use the meeting to get public feedback on the proposed memorial, including comment on renderings and ideas being considered.

    The city has been grappling with a proper location for such a memorial for more than four years, and, at this point, it appears that most people directly involved with the project are generally comfortable with the selection of the bridge. The city council approved the bridge concept in February 2003, after several years of community divisiveness that sank other proposed memorials, including renaming Orange Avenue as well as part of Elmwood Park.

    The King memorial is part of a major bridge replacement project - estimated to cost more than $2 million - that the city has been planning for some time. The 113-year-old iron bridge has structural problems, according to city engineers, and it will be replaced with steel trusses that are supposed to resemble the old structure.

    Jeff Artis, a longtime activist in the black community, is a member of the bridge memorial committee. Artis, also a member of Roanoke's chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said last week that he and the SCLC are comfortable with the project's status at this point. But he said there are still some who believe the bridge isn't a substantial enough memorial to represent the stature of King, an advocate of civil rights, nonviolent protest and social justice who was assassinated in 1968 and is remembered by a state and federal holiday in January.

    Of the bridge, which has always been a conduit between the city's oldest black neighborhoods and the Henry Street district into downtown, Artis said: "If the city does what it says it's going to do, I think people will be happy with the final product. But that's a big if. We'll see."

    It was the Roanoke SCLC that first pushed the concept of finding a memorial in the Henry Street area as the community continued to argue over a proper memorial for King. The civil rights leader helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after the groundbreaking 1955-56 bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.

    There's still some discontent over the process among members of an original city council-authorized King memorial committee that studied the issue for more than a year. It recommended in September 2001 that all or part of Elmwood Park be used. But the council later rejected the committee's recommen- dation.

    Some of the original committee members continue to serve on the current bridge group and are backing the current memorial project.

    However, a few others backed away from participating, mainly because of the bad taste left in their mouths after the council declined to support the Elmwood recom- mendation.

    One of those, Gilbert Butler, is still listed as a member of the current group, but he said last week that he's chosen not to attend meetings of the bridge committee, mainly out of frustration with the city's handling of the entire memorial debate.

    For more information on

   Tuesday's meeting, call 853-2333.

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