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.
Hunter Greenlaw, a partner with G.L.M.G. General Contractors, and Chris Waller of Garrett Development Corp. are currently working on plans to redevelop 42 acres at Lafayette Boulevard's intersection with the Blue and Gray Parkway as a mixed-use complex with a high-end grocery.
The land is industrial now, but JumpStart sees it as a future mixed-use area, and plans to ask that that be incorporated into the city's Comprehensive Plan.
Waller said things like that can really help a developer along.
"It kind of paves the way for what we want to do," he said. "If we had to worry about those changes on our own, it would be very difficult."
Tom Wack, who owns Thomas J. Wack contracting firm, said he likes the committee's work.
"This is the antidote to the dreaded sprawl," he said.
Wack said the higher densities that come with mixed-use developments are often needed to provide the shoppers who bring in the revenues to support the higher costs of redeveloping land that already has buildings on it, as opposed to finding a cheaper, undeveloped site farther from a city center.
To reach EMILY BATTLE:
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com