Developers move forward with Gypsy Hill Place
The first step was convincing people that the old Robert E. Lee High School was a building worth saving. The men at the head of the development group leading the effort to transform the 80-year-old school campus into the new home for the Staunton Senior Center and ShenanArts didn’t have to do all that much convincing.
“The mayor and the City Council and the economic-development department really reached out to us and helped us understand what this project could become and what the school could be,” said J.P Williamson, a partner in the Charlottesville-based Octagon Partners, which is working with the city and Hampton Roads Ventures on the $20.4 million Gypsy Hill Place project, at a groundbreaking ceremony at the site held Friday morning.
Staunton just simply seems to get it – that you can’t sit back and hope things happen, that you have to make them happen. Former mayor John Avoli talked to the River City 2020 task force that I serve about that a couple of months ago. The far-right mindset that keeps things from moving forward on transportation solutions at the state level and health-care solutions at the federal level was holding Staunton back big-time in the 1980s and into the early 1990s.
Avoli and another long-time City Council member, Rita Wilson, led the paradigm shift on the politics that awakened the Queen City from its doldrums and has created a downtown that is the envy of small-town America.
And here’s the funny thing – even with the Stonewall Jackson Hotel and the Blackfriars Playhouse and the R.R. Smith Center and the award-winning parking garage and the thriving Wharf the city is still on the lookout for entities like Octagon Partners and Hampton Roads Ventures and projects like Gypsy Hill Place.
“Behind you we see a building that’s approximately 80 years old that proudly served the citizens of this city for many years. Then it became old. Then it became decrepit. Now, that happens all over America. There are buildings that were built brand-new, and they served communities for years, and then they become old and decrepit,” said Robert K. Jenkins, the president of Hampton Roads Ventures, which is providing the bulk of the money being used to get the project started in the form of $12 million in New Market Tax Credits.
“Most cities, most city officials, most mayors, don’t share the vision of the people here. They bring up a bulldozer and a great big ball, and down they go,” Jenkins said. But Staunton, Jenkins said, is a different place. “I think it is important to see what is being done here as a model that could be done in many, many other cities,” Jenkins said.
“The city of Staunton is telling America, We can save our buildings, we can breathe life into our buildings, and they can serve again,” Jenkins said.
Observers of the political goings-on in Waynesboro in recent years might remember the name Hampton Roads Ventures. The Wayne Theatre Alliance had been working with HRV in 2005 on a deal that would have led to the infusion of millions of dollars of New Market Tax Credits into the redevelopment of the historic downtown theatre before a divided Waynesboro City Council nixed the deal.
The question in Staunton isn’t whether or not to do something that is clearly worthwhile. Well, OK, outside of my conservative friend Dickie Bell, who said on the way to getting the Republican Party nomination to run for the 20th House District seat this week that the politics in Staunton has “shifted from conservatism to something that is alarming,” implying if not outright saying that the get-things-done attitude that prevails in the progressive majority on City Council, on which Bell has served for 13 years, is, well, “alarming.”
Bell, the 1 in a fair share of 6-1 votes on City Council over the years, notwithstanding, Staunton leaders by and large are the ones responsible for going out and finding people like Octagon and Hampton Roads than having to be convinced of ideas such as that the old Robert E. Lee High was worth saving.
“This is a long process,” Williamson said. “I know it seems to have taken a long time since we purchased the school, but with so many moving pieces and so many different parts to a successful development, it really has moved extremely quickly compared to things that we see in other markets,” Williamson said.
- Story by Chris Graham
I am amazed at how a few miles can make such a difference in perceptions of the future and political will. Groups of Waynesboro citizens struggle to raise the funds and develop activities to create the momentum to recreate downtown Waynesboro while some of their elected officals reject any investment in the downtown from completing the streetscape project that was funded by the State and fixing the wall of shame to providing minimal funding for WDDI and the Heritage Museum while at the same time espousing that private investment will take care of all the economic problems but leave the director of economic development position open for more than a year.
Staunton’s leadership seems to believe that continuing investments in the city’s quality of life will attract those who create the new economy. Waynesboro’s leader declares that the private investors who he belives will flock here to take advantage of the city’s exceptionally low tax rates will restore its industrial base. What a difference in problem solving. What a difference in the vision of the economic future.
The difference in miles is also the difference in proximity to Crozet. Waynesboro’s West End is becoming the shopping mecca of Western Albemarle. When tax dollars are flowing in easily, you don’t have to focus as strongly on the areas Staunton is focusing on.
Those easy-flowing tax dollars are a short-term panacea and Waynesboro’s long-term doom. At some point in the near future, the big boxes that are now setting up shop to reach customers in Waynesboro and Crozet are going to redraw their lines at the realization that it’s Crozet driving things in Waynesboro.
If we go our present course, Waynesboro becomes a ghost town full of empty big boxes in 10 years.
We have a big advantage over Staunton in that respect. Staunton had to fix the plane mid-air. We have a few years head start to get things figured out. We can’t afford to piss this opportunity away.
Crozet’s always going to be there, and so will the shoppers. Albemarle County will not allow the variety and quality of stores we now have on the West End to land anywhere near Crozet. If they would, those stores would not be here. The decisions have already been made, the course has been set.
As long as UVa is there, people are coming to Charlottesville. Albemarle doesn’t want to handle them all. Greene, Madison, Fluvanna, Louisa, Nelson and Augusta will get the overflow.
You will be an old man driving on the 29 Western bypass before Waynesboro is a big box ghost town.
Actually, Mike, the decisions have not been made, set, etc. Crozet is in the midst of a 20-year growth pattern that has Albemarle County planners estimating that it will be in the vicinity of 25,000 residents by 2025. It will have basically doubled in size since the West End of Waynesboro began to experience the current buildout.
The Wal-Marts and Lowe’s and Home Depots and Targets will have long since gotten their money’s worth out of their Waynesboro locations by that time. And Albemarle County voters are going to say at some point soon (if they haven’t already) that they want to be able to take care of their day-to-day needs at home as opposed to having to drive over a foggy mountain to do so.
To add a bit of a reality check to this, those big box retailers aren’t here because they love Waynesboro and think our view of the mountains is just too much to pass up. They’re here because they can reach the Waynesboro market (24,000 residents) and Crozet (currently 15,000 or so residents, depending on how you draw the lines). If Crozet grows significantly and Waynesboro retracts, as I suspect could be the case in the next 10 years, given the lack of sustainable-wage jobs in the local economy to keep young families here, and the aging of what you could call the indigenous population, what else is going to keep those retailers here? The money would be on the other side of the mountain; why make your customers drive 12 miles in fog when you can have them drive a mile or two?
And for that matter, Waynesboro is already well on its way to being a big box ghost town. The old Kmart (across from the “new” one, which opened in 1997) has been vacant for 12 years now. There’s an old Food Lion up the street that is going to be empty for quite a while. Leggett’s downtown – empty. Grand Home Furnishings downtown – empty.
Mike is mirroring the current thinking in Waynesboro among city leaders. I think that thinking is akin to playing a game of chicken with our future. Waynesboro isn’t just a big box ghost town when we lose.
OK, we won’t be a big box ghost town as long as the interstate is there.
After living and working in Charlottesville for nine years, I really doubt Albemarle will allow growth to really satisfy Crozet. Wasn’t it like pulling teeth to get a Harris Teeter out there?
Albemarle lives in fear of becoming northern Virginia. 29 North is already close to it, and they want to avoid Crozet being cluttered at all costs. It would take a serious economic downturn to change that way of thinking.
If the economy improves, there will still be a great need for Waynesboro stores. If the economy stays stagnant, stores won’t build in Crozet and the Albemarle won’t be able to offer tax breaks to entice them in.
Remember, Fishersville is growing because of my blog. The combined Waynesboro/Fishersville market will be at least remain stable.
You seriously underestimate the ability of retailers/developers to satisfy demand, and the changing nature of political winds. Crozet/Albemarle is growing, retailers/developers will find a way to accommodate that growth, and voters/taxpayers in Crozet/Albemarle will realize (if they don’t realize it already) that spending sales-tax (read: “public school”) dollars in Waynesboro doesn’t help improve their lives when they get back home for the night.
In Albemarle, you’re either from there and happy with current land use or passing through. They don’t mind if you go over the mountain to live and shop.
Lowe’s and Wal-Mart have staked out spots on the east and west sides of Albemarle (exit 94 in Waynesboro and exit 136 in Zions Crossroads.) They can get the Albemarle shoppers without the grief of being in Albemarle.
Wonderful. And we can assume that they will do this forever and ever amen. Because the Wal-Marts and Lowe’s of the world never abandon big-box store locations for new ones. Never happened once in human history. Particularly in, say, Staunton, where both moved two miles closer to the interstate to be able to better attract shoppers in Waynesboro and Crozet. Then willingly halved sales at those new stores to open new locations in Waynesboro to be closer to those Waynesboro and Crozet shoppers.
Nope, these Waynesboro stores aren’t threatened at all. Not for another couple of years, anyway.
You ought to resettle in Waynesboro and run for City Council here. You’ve got your finger on the pulse of this community, faint as it is (and fainter as it’s getting by the minute).
As much as Wal-Mart and Lowe’s might like to build in Crozet, Albemarle won’t let them. So Waynesboro is safe until we get flying cars. Then who knows where stores will go.
“Albemarle won’t let them.” Nice idea. Political winds change.