What should be done to revitalize downtown? Ward B Candidates Respond

By Jimmy LaRoue

Published: May 1, 2008

What should be done to revitalize downtown?
Responses from Waynesboro’s Ward B City Council candidates

Bruce Allen: I think we’re working in that direction with the renovations to the museum downtown, the work with the Wayne Theatre Alliance, helping to renovate the old theater. When I grew up in Waynesboro, downtown was the center of Waynesboro. Times have changed and the community - they shop at malls; they don’t shop at small downtown stores as much. Anybody that opens up a shop downtown, I’m all for trying to have some kind of incentives if there’s anything available. I know a lot of people, when they remodel, there’s grant money to help with renovations downtown. So there’s some incentives. I don’t know what the solution is to generate business back downtown. I’m all for it, but I don’t know what the answers are for that.

Greg Bruno: The primary thing that needs to be done to revitalize downtown is to publicize a plan, make a plan for what a group like WDDI wants to see downtown and make it available online so that businesses that are considering our community might be able to fulfill, or fill, one of those slots that they’re wanting. If they want a bakery in one location, or somewhere in one part of a block, then maybe there’s somebody who wants to put a bakery in. But if they see a plan there that says the city wants this kind of a business in this location, it’s much more likely that somebody might be able to fulfill that desire. So Waynesboro Downtown Development and the City Council need to work together to develop a vision for downtown, and document it and make it available online. We’re already working to attract businesses to the community in addition to the efforts that we’re already making to bring businesses downtown. Having a plan in place will allow those businesses to know where they’re wanted. Also, projects like the Wayne Theatre project, I believe the City Council needs to throw its own weight behind a larger private fundraising effort so that taxpayer dollars don’t have to be used for that. I believe that we have already given enough money to the Wayne Theatre in these difficult economic times that it no longer justifies a priority as high as some of our other city needs, but the private effort needs to have the weight of the City Council behind it.

Chris Graham: I think the first thing that the city can do to really get the ball rolling towards the revitalization of downtown is simply state that it’s willing to be a partner in the downtown revitalization. And I’m not sure that the city’s really been an active and willing participant to this point. I think the city’s sent out some mixed signals over the years. The first time downtown revitalization enters the Waynesboro lexicon is 1962. We’ve been doing this for 46 years. We’ve done a lot of studies. We’ve talked about a lot of plans, and we’ve been short on the follow through. The downtown development group, WDDI, formed in the late 1990s, right around 2000, has made a lot of steps, a lot of progress, towards getting things in place for us to be able to revitalize our downtown. But simple things like the completion of the downtown streetscape project, this has been on the agenda since 1999 and 2000 when the city first applied for the funding. We’ve completed the first phase of that, but the second phase is not even in the system yet in terms of finishing that up. The infrastructure is an important part of this. And that’s really the city’s main responsibility, I think. Obviously, the private sector can’t take care of infrastructure needs. I don’t envision the city needing to provide the bulk of money for the Wayne Theatre project, or the baseball stadium that’s being talked about as part of the revitalization effort, the Riverfront Commons. But what the city needs to do is be willing to work on those infrastructure needs. The City Council, in particular, can use the bully pulpit that Teddy Roosevelt always talked about to encourage the private sector to get involved, because that’s really where it’s going to go.