Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

I don’t remember the year, but I remember the map. It might have been something from the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission, it might have been something that the three local community planners had come up with on their own, whatever. The important thing was what it had us looking like. Basically the urban metropolis of the future would begin somewhere around the top of Afton Mountain and continue out to the west toward Churchville along U.S. 250, cresting to the north in Verona along U.S. 11 and diving south to the farthest reaches of Stuarts Draft on U.S. 340.

I’m guessing that we were supposed to be scared by the prospects, because that was my reaction when I saw it there in front of me on the big board at the public meeting that I was attending that night. You wouldn’t know us from Northern Virginia if this ever comes to pass, I told myself more than once as I stared at the map.

It doesn’t have to be, of course, that it ever will come to pass the way the planners envisioned.

“We’ll certainly have more people,” said Nancy Sorrells, who represents the Riverheads District on the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, the first guinea pig for my experiment that had me asking a variety of local-leader types a simple question with no real right answer, What does Greater Augusta look like in 2025?

“Hopefully we’ll have retained many of the things that make life in this area so special. Which is very friendly communities that are livable communities, that are walkable, that you don’t have to get into a car to drive across the county to go to the doctor’s office or to the grocery store, that you still know your neighbors, and that you still have open spaces, and that we’ve retained the beauty of what’s here. We’ve got that vision. It’s down there. It’s in our comprehensive plan,” Sorrells said.

My view on that is clouded with cynicism, I know, but being a cynic has gotten me this far. Anyway, I don’t have the faith in comprehensive plans that Sorrells does. I want to, I really do, but to me there’s a reality that comprehensive plans can be adapted every five years, and since there are elections every four years, it doesn’t take much to see that a change in mindset at the polls can lead to a change in approach down at the community-development office.

And I’m saying this, and I’m someone who broke with Sorrells two years ago on the controversial megasite issue that could have ended with the county landing a new Toyota plant that surely would have changed life in Greater Augusta as we know it. I agreed then with the likes of Tracy Pyles that the Toyota plant would have been a good thing for the area, and I agree with Pyles now that the Toyota effect, if we can call it that, could end up pushing development in a big way in the future.

“Now we’re in a situation where we will be far less persnickety in who comes. Because people are seeing the value of having a manufacturing base,” said Pyles, who represents the Pastures District on the board of supervisors. Unifi, which closed its Staunton operations this spring, doesn’t just hurt affect the 146 people who lost their jobs as a result of the move, Pyles pointed out. “It hurts the Hajocas who were selling them piping. It hurts the electric contractors who were helping them. It hurts the water and sewer fees that Staunton was receiving. It is a ripple effect that goes throughout the economy. And it’s not going to be long before the building-supply houses are closing because we don’t have the construction industry that we once had. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, until we start shoring up our manufacturing, we will be very receptive,” Pyles said.

Too receptive, I worry. Which brings me back to the reason that I’m writing this story in the first place. I’m asking the question, What does Greater Augusta look like in 2025, and all I can think about is that planning map from several years ago that has us looking like Loudoun County. Dave Metz, a longtime member of the Staunton City Council, thinks I’m wishing for something not to happen that has already happened. “The county is truly, in my opinion, a suburban county already. It’s preposterous to think that Augusta County thinks of itself as a sleepy little county,” Metz said to me as we had lunch in Downtown Staunton one nice spring day in May.

Metz is the former owner of Taylor Rental, and his business had him out in the county several days a month. “And I’d be driving somewhere that I hadn’t been for a year or two, and I’d say to myself, Where are all of these houses coming from?” Metz said.

“The county is going to have to take a really hard-nosed look at their comprehensive plan, and where they say agriculture, they have to mean agriculture, and we’re not even going to think about rezoning for housing or industrial. Instead of just this willy-nilly, Well, maybe this would be alright if it was industrial. You have to look at the big picture sometimes and say, We want to force development in this area, because then we can provide the services for it,” Metz said.

Which brings us to the issue of how the cities will look in 2025. Metz sees Staunton dealing with more of the growth pressures that have defined the last 10 years in the Queen City. “The real question that comes up to us is, Can we provide, in a competitive nature, can we provide the quality of life that people are looking for?” Metz said. “Can we provide the arts? It’s so critical that we are able to attract people, because when people get to be my own age, my primary concern is not my tax rate, it’s, What can I do in my spare time to enjoy retirement? And virtually every community outside the major areas is going to be competing against each other in terms of, How do you attract the baby boomers when they retire? And not just in terms of the initial, but in chapter four, when they’re in a nursing home, and they need skilled care?
“What I see as the major question is, How do we compete against other places to provide that quality of life? And we have to recognize that the arts and theater and health care and schools are important,” Metz said.

I would argue that Staunton has developed a good reputation in those areas relative to the situation in my hometown, Waynesboro, which has an economy apparently based on manufacturing that is just about done as far as any kind of appreciable manufacturing base is concerned, which has a school system that is struggling to keep pace with its regional peers and has been asked consistently in recent years to try to do more with less, which has a downtown that has been left for dead for 20 years even as residents and entrepreneurs have made efforts to breathe life into it at different stages in time.

I’m going to be positive now. Because for far too long, Waynesboro has looked at itself and been overwhelmed by its problems. One day we will wake up and realize that problems viewed another way are actually opportunities to do something right. Lorie Smith, are you with me? What do see in Waynesboro in 2025?

“A vibrant city. One that is absolutely nurtured from the East End to the West End of town. One that is comprehensive in nature in terms of development. Taking advantage of our river, taking advantage of the Blue Ridge Parkway. And also making sure that we’re nurturing the commercial and industrial sector of our community. I just see a well-rounded community that’s well-supported, has a healthy tax base and a bright future,” said Smith, a member of Waynesboro City Council and former chair of the Waynesboro School Board.

It’s going to take some work to get there, of course. Just as it is going to take some work in Staunton for city leaders there to balance meeting the needs of its aging population with the needs of the young families who want good schools and cultural and economic opportunities for themselves and their children. And it is going to take some work in Augusta County to balance the pressures that county leaders are facing relative to residential and industrial development with the pressure to maintain whatever rural feel the county has left.

We can do it, if we want to. Or we can be that urban metropolis of the future. The choice is ours.

Filed under: 1-July 2008 Issue