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JumpStart efforts continue with small grants, search for bigger project
Date published: 1/26/2008
BY EMILY BATTLE
Back in June 2006, members of Fredericksburg's Economic Development Authority went out of their way to say their JumpStart plan--a blueprint for redevelopment in the city--would not sit on a shelf and collect dust. Roughly a year and a half later, JumpStart has become part of the vocabulary around City Hall. It's been cited as a justification for keeping the courts downtown and building a riverfront park, and it's the basis of design guidelines city planners wrote for the Princess Anne Street corridor. A series of mini-grants has helped a half-dozen small projects around the city--from an archaeological dig at a downtown construction site to a heated awning for a wine bar--get off the ground. Now, EDA members are hoping to make some progress on some of JumpStart's loftier goals. Ideally, they'd like to get a developer to take on a project consistent with the goals the report outlines for the Princess Anne corridor. Princess Anne is one of about a dozen corridors for which JumpStart recommends redevelopment options. The report also suggests how the city might help those projects along with incentives and zoning considerations. When the EDA unveiled its JumpStart report a year and a half ago, developers who attended the meeting called it the antithesis to suburban sprawl, and praised the fact that it was a rare government document telling developers what they could do, not what they were prohibited from doing. EDA Vice Chairman Tom Crimmins, who headed the committee that created JumpStart, said he'd like to see more progress toward the goals outlined in the report, but he's been encouraged to see projects that fit its principles take root on their own. One example he pointed to was the University of Mary Washington's recent purchase of the Park & Shop shopping center. JumpStart recommends converting the "large, strip mall shopping centers" along Jefferson Davis Highway into "mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly activity centers." UMW officials announced last month that they plan to convert the center to student housing, retail and office space. "That's very exciting," Crimmins said. To try to market other opportunities to developers, Economic Development Director Kevin Gullette recently suggested that the EDA start buying options on properties a developer would need to assemble to build one of the projects outlined in the JumpStart plan.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 1/26/2008
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