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City gets a 'JumpStart'
JumpStart committee hopes to create action, not study
Date published: 10/23/2005
By EMILY BATTLE REDERICKSBURG'S Economic Development Authority is dusting off the dozen or so studies the city has commissioned over the past few decades in search of good ideas for the city's future. In the process, the EDA hopes to turn lofty recommendations into concrete concepts for redeveloping the city that are both palatable to the public and economically realistic. The eight-member JumpStart committee has been working on the task since early this year. The group has targeted 12 areas of the city--including the rundown stretch of Princess Anne Street that leads into the city from the U.S. 1 Bypass, along with Lafayette Boulevard and the city's riverfront--where it wants to create graphic representations of what redevelopment should look like. JumpStart intends to get the public to critique these ideas, and, by next spring, hopes to have a finished product that it can start talking to developers and property owners about implementing. At times, the group seems to bend over backward to get people to believe that it's not just another study committee. "This is not a study. The last word we even want to say in this room is 'study,'" JumpStart Chairman Rick Pullen said at the group's first meeting with its citizen steering committee last week. After the presentation, one city resident asked what makes JumpStart different from past efforts at envisioning Fredericksburg's future. After all, it does have a lot of the characteristics of past studies--enthusiasm at the outset, paid consultants, citizen committees. Pullen answered by pointing out that JumpStart is combining its research phase with action. The research part is being done by two consultants JumpStart hired for $170,000, with a $17,000 contingency for more detailed analysis of projects that arise as the committee's work proceeds. Those funds, along with $19,500 the group has spent so far in seed money for two downtown redevelopment projects, come from the annual fees the EDA collects on the low-interest bonds it allows businesses to access. "I don't know of any EDA that's done this, but it's certainly within our purview," Pullen said. State law allows economic development authorities to make loans or grants of their revenues to any business, association or other entity to promote economic development.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 10/23/2005
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