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JumpStart displays vision for city future

JumpStart concepts get good reception from public.

Date published: 5/5/2006

By EMILY BATTLE

About 70 people came to the Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center last night to learn about one group's vision for future development in the city.

The Economic Development Authority's JumpStart Committee showed the data and pictures that it has created for how future office, retail and residential needs should be met along the city's major commercial corridors.

The presenters used computerized images to show Sophia Street transformed from a corridor lined with parking lots to a more vibrant area where retail and residential development overlook a green park along the river.

Sophia Street is one of 12 areas JumpStart has focused on over the past year.

In some places, the changes are drastic, and show certain areas completely transformed. One image showed The Free Lance-Star building replaced with a mixed retail and office complex with shops and restaurants along Washington Avenue.

But JumpStart Committee Chairman Tom Crimmins said the plan isn't meant to prescribe specific developments for individual properties. In fact, he said JumpStart didn't even take property ownership into account when it created its drawings.

"These are concepts," Crimmins said. "They are not specific developments that are going to be done at this place."

The folks at last night's meeting didn't seem to have a hard time grasping that. Crimmins and consultants Jim Prost and Ed Hamm didn't get a lot of questions about what the drawings showed on specific properties.

Questions instead focused on broader issues, like how the plans would affect regional transportation, and whether the concept could be expanded regionally.

Developers at last night's meeting said one valuable result of JumpStart could be introducing the mixed-use development concept to Fredericksburg.

The committee will make recommendations on how the city's Comprehensive Plan and zoning ordinance should change to accommodate mixed-use development, which combines residential, office and retail in one area.

It's intended to allow people to live where they work and shop.

Right now, city zoning tends to separate residential from commercial uses, so a developer would have to do a lot of work just to get the zoning needed to build a mixed-use development.

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Date published: 5/5/2006