A small piece on the Style Weekly website gives some updates on Echo Harbor:

Theobald and developer Ross presented the project to downtown boosters Venture Richmond on April 9 and have been making the rounds trying to drum up support among civic groups. According to city planning staff, under a standard timeline City Council would introduce the project’s permit April 26. The Planning Commission would hear the proposal May 17 before sending it back to City Council the following week for approval.

Heather sent in some photos of the flooding yesterday morning, taken down at Dock Street around the area for which the Echo Harbor development is proposed.

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The RTD is reporting that Better Housing Coalition’s Lynn McAteer and landscape architect Doug Cole were recommended this week for appointments the Richmond Planning Commission “which reviews development plans and makes recommendations to council on rezonings and special-use permits.” This, of course, is not as dry a topic as it may appear:

The debate will likely boil over in the coming months as Echo Harbour, a proposed high-rise along the city’s eastern riverfront, is expected to be introduced for consideration by the Planning Commission and ultimately the council. [...] One of the candidates interviewed but not picked as a finalist for the commission is Mark S. Lindsey, a partner of Councilman Bruce W. Tyler in the Baskervill architectural firm. Baskervill is the project architect for Echo Harbour.

F.T.Rea gives an overview of and opinion on the proposed Echo Harbor development:

A campaign to convince City Council to give USP Echo Harbour what it wants has been underway. The developers have pointed at the money Richmond should rake in from new tax revenues. They’ve talked about the jobs their project will create. There’s nothing new about that tactic. True or false, all developers sing that same basic tune when they want special favors from governments.

It’s then up to the government, in this case City Council, to decide what is the greater good.

If the City allowed a hog farm to be established where the GRTC bus barns are now that would create jobs, too. No doubt, the promoters of such a ridiculous notion could blue sky the story of how the hog farm would impact the neighborhood.

The Norfolk’s Examiner connects some dots on the Echo Harbor project and campaign contributions:

The decision on the controversial Echo Harbour development on the James River, has also proved rewarding for some past and present members of Richmond’s City Council, as their campaign accounts have benefited from donations. Thousands of dollars, as documented on the campaign watchdog website VPAP.org, have swelled the coffers of select members of the City Council who will be making the final decision on the hotly debated project.

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A meeting tonight that may be of interest:

By far the more interesting meeting tonight will be an event organized by the Greater Jefferson Davis Area Civic Association and the Richmond Crusade for Voters that is being billed as a forum with Echo Harbour Developers.

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In the wake of Council’s approval of the final amendments to the Downtown Master Plan, Richmond BizSense has put together a look at where things stand with Echo Harbor:

That gives the developers a little bit of leeway, but they are still about two stories over the recommendations in the downtown plan. But that isn’t stopping Echo Harbour developers from pushing forward, according to the attorney for the developers, Jim Theobald of Hirschler Fleischer. “I think some of the residents who are opposed to this case, some of them believe this is more than a guideline, but it’s not,” said Theobald. “It is not binding, it is essentially there as a planning tool. The city has the right to consider anything they want.” [...] Theobald said he expects the proposal to go before council in the fall.

Together We Stand, as part of their effort “to help make the Richmond Region the best possible place in the world to live, work and visit”, has a petition online showing support of the effort to preserve the view that named RIchmond. Reminiscent of the battle over Oakwood Heights, word has it that something of a counter-petition is being circulated in support of the proposed Echo Harbor development. All of this may come to a head Monday at the City Council meeting…

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The folks behind the Echo Harbor proposal presented their most recent designs to the Church Hill Association tonight.

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The next Church Hill Association membership meeting will be held Tuesday, May 19, at 7PM at St.John’s. Topics on the agenda include a presentation of a revised design for the Echo Harbor proposal, Historic Richmond Foundation on the publishing of the new Church Hill book, procedures and designs for historic plaques, and more. CHA members, guests and visitors are encouraged to attend.

Style Weekly has the story on how City Council seems to be closing ranks against the city’s planning director Rachel Flynn for for her flat rejection of amendments to the Downtown Master Plan that benefit the Echo Harbor :

Critics of the process say those remaining amendments stem from the undue influence of private landholders and developers kept alive by public officials in a position to benefit from them — such as Planning Commissioner Bob Mills and City Councilman Bruce Tyler, both architects whose firms do business with some of the landholders most upset by the master plan. [...] “The mayor makes the decision with regard to who’s in charge of community development,” Tyler says. “I would respectfully ask him to consider what she has done and respectfully ask her to leave.”

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The Planning Commission yesterday voted in favor of raising the heights allowed for development along the river and also in favor of rezoning the interior of Union Hill to R-63.

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Writing for Style Weekly, Thad Williamson describes the conflict and politics at the core of the Echo Harbor proposal:

Should the public allow high-rise condos in a flood plain that blocks public view of the river, the very view that led William Byrd II to name the city Richmond? The developers, Falls Church-based USP Rocketts LLC, argue in effect that we should simply ignore the downtown plan, and its attractive vision for making the river the centerpiece of a revitalized downtown, in answering that question.

In the developer’s view, what’s important is not how use of that property fits into the overall plan to revitalize downtown, but whether it can be used in a way that maximizes revenue to the property owners. That single-mindedness led USP Rocketts’ lawyer, James Theobald, to tell the Planning Commission on April 20 that the downtown plan failed to respect private property and even amounts to a regulatory taking.

The RTD has info and a rendering on the revised Echo Harbor design:

George Ross, a principal with USP Echo Harbour, said an architectural rendering from Libby Hill shows that Echo Harbour’s average 108-foot-tall eastern building would be about as far from a historically significant bend in the river as a 150-foot-tall residential building approved but not yet developed at Rocketts Landing would be on the bend’s other side.

The rendering, by architectural firm Baskervill, does not show Echo Harbour’s bigger western building, which would average 141 feet in height. The maximum height in previous proposals was 188 feet.

Last night’s public hearing at the City Planning Commission meeting on possible amendments to the Downtown Master Plan got a little heated, according to the RTD:

Director of Community Development Rachel Flynn flatly rejected a suggestion from a planning commissioner that her staff review plan language offered by the developers for the site along the James River east of downtown. [...]

“We’ve been talking with these developers for three years,” she said of USP Rocketts. “We don’t agree.”

The commission will vote on May 4 on the final amendments.