In The Shadow Of The University - Fifeville Community Design: A Public, Private, and University Collaboration	.
Maurice Cox, William M. Harris, AICP, and Kenneth Schwartz, AIA	Author Info

Abstract

Introduction

Many universities have long recognized and sought to participate in efforts to address the problems of the inner city. Often universities have been active contributors to the problems - gentrification, displacement, housing stock loss, and racial or class exclusion. In responding to the crisis of the inner city, universities have employed research, teaching, and community outreach service techniques. Those efforts have been presented by universities through various means - sponsored research, special centers and institutes, and individual intervention or advocacy by committed faculty mentors and often students.

Charlottesville, Virginia, is a southern city of 42,000; twenty percent of the population is African American. The University of Virginia is the major employer in the area, largest public or private institution, and has a slowly expanding student enrollment (currently 19,000). The several inner city neighborhoods share many national characteristics of these areas - majority African American, higher relative unemployment, lower quality housing conditions, higher rates of poverty, and below average education attainment levels. Fifeville, located in south central Charlottesville is one such neighborhood. Residents of the area cite illegal drug activity, property crimes, inadequate public service and safety, and decreases in property values as significant concerns. More recently, the neighborhood has expressed fear of the expansion of the university's physical facilities and students- seeking- rental housing elements. Related concerns by local landowners in the Fifeville neighborhood have been articulated.

Four years ago Fifeville was a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) target neighborhood in the city. Federal funds from CDBG were used by the city to make infrastructure improvements and support modest social programming. The organizational structure formed by residents during the CDBG process revived and called for protection against gentrification, disinvestment, and institutional encroachment. Out of these concerns grew a cooperative effort by the residents (Fifeville Neighborhood Association), the City of Charlottesville, and landowners who may become developers. The team has designated itself, the Transition Zone Working Group.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report the plan of action and initial findings of the cooperative team; focusing upon the unusual role of university faculty in working to provide technical assistance and project leadership in a community revitalization planning effort. The process employed in bringing together the participants, nature of the roles committed by the three participating entities, and anticipated end products are offered in the paper.

Methodology

This approach accepts the goals set forth by the Working Group, i.e., the zone would be targeted for mixed use, that it should have a public process, that it should attempt to develop possible uses and construct the ordinance around those uses rather than the other way around, that all uses should be economically feasible for the owners and potential developers, and that uses should be designed to create linkages to the Amtrak Train Station and West Main Street, as well as to the surrounding Fifeville neighborhood. With that in mind, the following process might work:

1. The Group would initially engage stakeholders, particularly the City, neighborhood association, and owners to participate in several events. These included a half-day walk-about with cameras to photograph the site from different angles, and to document the architecture and urban condition of the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood. These photographs were in turn organized for public display in the Fifeville Community Design Center on West Main Street.
2. A survey instrument was developed which was used by the neighborhood association to gather information about the appropriate and preferred uses for the site. The survey served additionally to educate neighbors about current options for the site and to explore their views about new possibilities.
3. Ongoing historical, social, political, and economic research about the Fifeville neighborhood was presented at several sessions to familiarize participants of the rich and sometimes contested history of that area of Charlottesville.
4. Various design options were developed through a collaborative process in which stakeholders were given the opportunity and guidance to visualize possibilities for the future.

Further development of this process could take several possible forms. Additional exploration of the site, its history, uses, and economics could be explored through the School of Architecture team in collaboration with the Fifeville Neighborhood Association and property owners. Alternatively, one or more developers may come forward with interest in taking the ideas that have developed forward into a possible development plan. In both cases, design and planning considerations with full input from the public would be essential as a new land use and zoning proposal emerges in conformance with the community's aspirations.

Findings

1. Process "facilitation" by the faculty participants in the School of Architecture,
2. Collaboration between the stakeholders in the neighborhood,
3. Support and use of the university-sponsored Urban Design Center located in the neighborhood, and
4. Recommendations for land use and economic development initiatives for the neighborhood.

Upon request by the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, area property owners, and city officials, three faculty members1 from the School of Architecture, University of Virginia, agreed to "facilitate" the planning process with the above identified goals. The process serves to build consensus among participants, identify the needs and available resources, and ensure democratic decision making toward formulating strategies for meeting the neighborhood's (and other stakeholders) needs by employing urban design methods, checks and balances in data analysis and reporting, and thorough documentation of activities. The role of university faculty is not elitist. The community has capable leadership and the property owners are highly respected.2

The cooperative efforts by stakeholders, the city, and university faculty have brought together strange bedfellows. The neighborhood residents had often criticized city efforts to provide adequate public services, especially policing of drug activity. The property owners had not trusted the residents to support certain development interests and feared the city would be too eager to regulate and limit the uses (for development) of the land. None of the participants had a clear picture of what might be expected from the university; faculty member individual roles did not necessarily coincide with institutional policy. However, Planning Commission Chairman Harris reassured the group that no setup for failure was in any party's interest. Councilman Cox assured the group that city council would await findings by the group before making land use changes. Neighborhood leaders articulated a demand for respect, fairness, and presentation. The property owners continued to meet and sought additional technical support from an urban design consultant (who was an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning). While the tension and stress, perhaps even distrust, of past years were acknowledged, the group has functioned with mutual respect and agreed that many goals (and interests) were common.

Professors Cox, Harris, and Schwartz had been advocates for an Urban Design Center for some time. In fact under the guidance of Harris, a proposal had been drafted to establish a center that would be located in the community, respond to citizen requests for technical urban design support, and come under the audience of the Dean of the School of Architecture. The continuing efforts of the working group will involve the Urban Design Center in the following:

1. Study and report the most compatible uses of the vacant and developable land in the neighborhood.
2. Recommend public policy that would guide compatible development in the area.
3. Facilitate discussion groups, educate the public, and produce models of potential development schemes.

This position was presented during the public hearing process of the Charlottesville 1995 comprehensive plan review and laid the foundation for what would become the most significant community-led urban design initiative to be undertaken by a Charlottesville City neighborhood, the Fifeville Neighborhood Transition Zone Design Project. The process of civic awakening and the neighborhood empowerment which emerged in many ways began with two potentially devastating recommendations brought forth by the city's own Department of Planning and Community Department to the Planning Commission during their comprehensive up-date plan review:

1. The construction of an expressway to parallel the railroad tracks and main arterial street of Charlottesville connecting to the University Hospital.
2. A change from multi-family R-3 designation to commercial B-1 designation of tens of acres of developable land south of the railroad tracks and in the Fifeville neighborhood.

Through the leadership of a hand full of members of the Ridge Street Neighborhood Association, their neighbors in Fifeville were alerted to this crisis and the plan to integrate the construction of an expressway into this undeveloped land was defeated and removed indefinitely as a priority road in the city's comprehensive plan. The recommendations for commercial designation in the land use plan for the same undeveloped land, however, was approved. Except for the strong opposition during the review process by the city's two African American planning commissioners (Harris and Key), the change to the land use plan was approved and went virtually unnoticed by the general public for nearly one year.

After laying dormant for a year, in 1996 the issue exploded onto the newspaper headlines as spot rezoning requests began to filter in from individual property owners coming forth to demand commercial designation of their residential property. The incident which most vividly describes the consequence of this small but significant land use change was the proposal by a young businessman to develop what had previously been a neighborhood vest pocket park into a private parking lot to relieve parking pressure on Main Street. Quickly following his request were numerous other property owners requesting: the development of a painting supply warehouse next to a historic home, a commercial laboratory space on an acre parcel across a residential street and most alarming of all, a rezoning request for a nine-acre parcel of land which soon after inspired developers to propose a 10,000 seat sports arena against the backyards of single family homes.

What became painfully obvious to many at this point was that the only thing that had afforded the community some degree of protection for all these years against intrusive commercial speculation, the R-3 zoning designation, had been removed. There was no longer a buffer or "zone of transition" from the commercial designation of the city's main street to the single family residential scale the adjacent neighborhoods. This lack of an appropriate mixed use transition into adjacent residential neighborhoods was best articulated by architecture professor and city councilor Maurice Cox in numerous public debates calling for the creation of new mixed use transition zone. The term transition zone quickly became a part of the community's public consciousness and a favorite quote in the local press to describe the issue. Residents then began to publicly demand an appropriate 'transition zone' that might respect the property owners' right to develop while also protecting their neighborhoods.

Conclusion

Foot Notes

2.Community representative Herman Key is vice chair of the Charlottesville Planning Commission and long-time participant on the CDBG Task Force. The property owners have held the land for a number of years and have been business owners in the area for a period of years.

School of Architecture
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia