The Future of Church Hill?
The aforementioned RVA TV roundtable on “the future of Church Hill” has been set for the Robinson Theater on Thursday 8/13 from 6-9PM, and will be moderated by Buttermilk and Molasses’ John Sarvay Matthew Freeman. Jon at RVA TV is seeking your questions to pose to the as-yet-not-finalized panel, please suggest questions in the comments…
If you have a question that you’d like to pose, please post it in the comments below.
To seed this, my suggested question for the panel is:
Q) If you had to select one goal for the area over the next 20 years, what would that be?
Well, here are some suggestions:
1. Should Church Hill continue to remain predominantly residential or should more businesses such as corner stores/restaurants be welcomed? (i.e. should we emulate the higher mixture of uses available in the Fan?)
2. How can we improve our neighborhood physically (e.g. infill development, street trees, removal of blighting influences) without adversely displacing residents on lower socioeconomic levels?
3. Parking appears to be a sensitive subject in the neighborhood, how can we overcome this situation and what tools are available to mitigate/solve these concerns?
4. Should the City exercise its eminent domain powers more aggressively in our neighborhood?
5. There has been a lot of discussion over multi-family development (e.g. renters) in our neighborhood? What are the pros and cons to this situation; and, in your opinion, should there be more or less multi-family development in our neighborhood?
6. Church Hill is blessed with a multitude of incredible panoramic views (Libby Hill, Chimborazo Park, Taylors Hill, Jefferson Park, MLK Middle School, etc.). Should these views be protected?
7. Nine Mile Road and 25th St. serve as a major gateway into our neighborhood. How should they be addressed?
8. With the prospect of high-speed rail coming to Richmond, Church Hill appears to be in a very strategic location. How will this potential development affect the neighborhood?
@1, Last week, the Church Hill Master Plan/Re-Zoning public meeting at the EDI (July 27)addressed your items 1, 3, 5, and 7 above.
The great thing about that gathering was that the room was packed with a truly diverse (age, gender,race, educational and economic backgrounds)group of residents.
City planners with Community Development are using the input from that citizen- driven meeting to re-craft zoning for much of Church Hill.
Be on the lookout for another gathering with city planners later this fall, when they present their plan, based on our responses.
The panel is coming together.
Thea Duskin, David and Joy Bailey, and John Murden are confirmed panelists. I’ve got a couple others that I’m trying to convince to step onto the panel – I hope to have them onboard by Tuesday.
Unfortunately John Sarvay got called away from Richmond, and so my hope is that Matthew Freeman will be able to take his place. There’s some scheduling issues that need to be worked around, but I think we can make this work.
I still need more questions or topics that people want to see discussed.
I’ve got one to get the online discussion rolling:
What changes need to occur in the short term (1-5 years), mid term (5-20 years), and long term (20+ years) to make Church Hill into a pulsating neighborhood full of life, business, and community?
Will there be room for an audience?
What was the process for choosing the panelists? Do they live in Church Hill?
Will the panel represent a cross section of Church Hill including the elderly, families raising children, business owners, people living north and south of Broad and of different economic backgrounds?
When this was announced, Jon asked for folks interested in participating to contact him. I know that people (myself included) suggested names of locals whose participation would be valuable. Jon set out with the intent to include “as much diversity on this panel as possible”, and reached out to a fairly wide net of people. It’ll be interesting to see the final run down of who he was able to get for this.
Are they open to anymore suggestions? I have a north of Broad family with school age kids in mind.
Jon’s email is jon@rvamag.com.
#4: I hope to pack the Robinson Theatre with an audience.
#5: The process for the panel went as follows: 1) I was looking for Church Hill residents, 2) I was looking for individuals who are actively involved/invested in the present and future of Church Hill, 3) I was looking for a mix of residents living in the different sub-sections that make up the greater Church Hill area, and I wanted to approach a greater semblance of gender and racial diversity.
Have I succeeded? We’ll find out on Thursday. I won’t be able to confirm the panel until Tuesday evening, so I’m still open to suggestions for the panel (though this is getting late into the game, and we need more questions for the panel than additional panelists).
I’m more interested, however, in your questions about the issues you see everyday in Church Hill. It’s your community, and so besides providing our moderator with an ample base of questions, I hope to enlighten myself about some of the issues residents see with the community.
I can confirm that Matthew Freeman will be moderating the panel, his scheduling conflicts have been resolved.
Side note:
It’s been interesting setting this event up. I’ve learned a lot about the Church Hill area, both good and bad. The biggest issue I see with Church Hill is a conflict between those who are looking forward to the future, and those who want things to stay the same. Change can be scary, but change can also be extremely fruitful (like the changing of the seasons). The biggest change Church Hill needs (In my mind) is a more integrated and socially conscious focus on developing a neighborhood full of local business, great schools, and community events that bring people together – not further the segregated aspect of the neighborhood.
Just watching the discussion on CHPN disintegrate into bickering about “Church Hill Proper”, “Church Hill North/South”, “Church Hill vs. Union Hill”, etc. was enough to show me that there are some serious issues underlying the politics of the area. I hope we can begin to mend these issues on Thursday.
This really isn’t a question, but is something that has struck me as odd for while . . .
Church Hill is predominately lower-class black, but the neighborhood association is predominately middle to upper-class white. So, you get a room full of Audi-driving white folks making decisions that impact a neighborhood full of bus-riding black folks.
I suppose the questions here is, “Is there a better way?”
As an association, the CHA only claims to represent a certain area. There are other civic associations representing and making decisions for other areas, including Union Hill Civic Association, New Visions Civic League, and Unity Civic League.
And that’s good that there are other associations, but the Greater Church Hill area is interdependent upon the smaller neighborhoods that make up the larger community.
It’s good to have organizations that represent the different areas, but these associations need to be communicating and working together if the community as a whole is going to make real progress. There will be a CHA member on the panel, but I’d like to see the entire community show up which is why the event is being held at the Robinson, not St. John’s.
Church Hill Association (CHA) membership is totally voluntary and the neighborhood association is open to all the all the people/citizens of the entire community who wish to join. CHA has does not claim or attempt to represent itself beyond being one of many organizations in Church Hill and the 7th District. In fact, in the past few years CHA has worked very hard to link itself and build bridges between other associations, civil groups and leagues to form a more diversified, representative and inclusive composition of the community. The goal of all these efforts is to improve the schools, reduce crime and better the lives of all the people that are in the entire Church Hill community.
No more Section 8 housing. Easiest way to reduce crime while improving the schools and the lives of all the people in the entire Church Hill community.
There is a problem with the way people use / abuse the park at 33rd and Broad. TRASH.
Trash seems to be the most favored decoration of Chimborazo park. For what ever reason, people think that the vast grasses and side walks should be an advertising MECCA for McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, and WalMart.
Bags littering every edge, nook, and cranny. Though the trash bins located ALL over the park are never full.
The 2nd favorite thing people like to do is smash their glass bottles on the stairs. Which must make such a pleasant sound that they come back day after day to do it again!
I do my part and try to curb the continuous flow of cars in and out of the park during the night hours by contacting the Richmond Police, but they are unable to monitor this park enough to protect it from these HEAVING fiends. I also pick up trash as i come across it but i am getting to the point that it seems to be a job rather than a “taking care of my surroundings”.
Maybe we need some sort of hood on the trash bins that is painted blaze orange with a funnel and neon sign..
#15: I agree, trash in Chimborazo Park has been a problem for several years now. Way back, when the city found the J. Fulmer Bright trust fund money (twenty years ago?), there was a study done of all the parks including Chimbo, before the city spent the money to enhance the parks. Chimbo was found to need less auto traffic so part of the money went into rerouting the streets and blocking off a good part of it with those iron bollards and chains. Unfortunately, people came in eventually and cut the chains, removed them, and now, unless it’s changed since the last time I was there, I think you can pretty much drive all the way through the park.
A call to Rec and Parks with complaints about the trash and ability of cars to drive through might help – at some point, perhaps the city would come and block off the traffic access again. The only time it was clean was when people could not drive through.
Our city could make cash and change habits by enforcing littering fines.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4906300_enforce-fines-littering.html
To the best of my knowledge, you can pretty much drive through all areas of Chimbo Park…at any time of day.
Frankly, I don’t think the park should be a place to wash your car as you’ve got your vehicle’s audio system cranked up to level 65. For those of us who live adjacent to the Park, it’s a nuisance.
The lunch hour “quickies” that take place there are also pretty disturbing as well. Police should be all over that kind of stuff…..
Other than that, it’s a pretty nice place and I’ve encountered little-to-no trouble during my visits there. GOT to cut down on the traffic there though….
#18, that was the point of the city spending money to study the parks back sometime in the 1980′s. The conclusion was that Chimbo would be much more user friendly if drive thru traffic was not allowed. All they need to do is fix the darn bollards and locks. In some cases people went after them with some pretty good tools to cut off locks. I understand that times are tough right now, but I really think if a lot of us called or contacted parks & rec., they might at least plan the repairs into a budget at some point, and we’d once again have a cleaner, user friendly Chimbo Park. Believe me, back in the late 1980′s when the city spent millions on the parks up here (J. Fulmer Bright Trust Fund, money left for the parks and “lost” in the system for fifty years), Chimborazo looked GREAT after it’s renovation. And noone could drive thru.
CRD, could you post an email address for the parks? That would be an easier way to politely report / request these changes.. I know they are hard pressed for money but if it is just locks and a bit of chain they need, i am sure we could pull some quick money from the people that live in this area! I would put in 50 bucks!!!!!!!
Just a quick note: I apologize for turning this into a q/a about the park.. and 2nd, i was going to attend but now have an engagement at 6pm tonight and will not be able to make it. Please post the discussion and notes!!