The future of West Main

A group of locals who want to see West Main Street become Charlottesville’s new hotspot soon might be looking to other area residents to help them divine how it should be done.

“It’s actually one of Charlottesville’s last chances for an urban neighborhood,” architect Bill Atwood said.

Peter Castiglione, the owner of Maya on West Main Street, said holding a charrette — essentially a community-wide brainstorming workshop — could help West Main eventually become Midtown instead of just a road between two well-known Charlottesville areas.

“Nothing has been done in a long time,” Castiglione said. “But there are a lot of fantastic ideas.”

The city government has talked for years about revitalizing the road that connects two of the city’s largest economic engines — downtown and the University of Virginia.

But the economy, coupled with the fact that downtown Charlottesville has received more attention, has made it difficult to back up the notion of revamping West Main with actual resources. The only improvements being done so far, and partly funded by UVa, are

between Jefferson Park Avenue and Roosevelt Brown Boulevard.

According to the city’s Capital Improvement Program for the current fiscal year, no money has been set aside for work on the West Main streetscape. The funding is slated to start up again in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1.

In that year, and for the following two, the CIP projects that $350,000 will be spent each year for improvements.

Atwood agreed that other areas have taken off once a charrette took place.

He credited the downtown charrette from roughly 20 years ago for spurring many ideas that got rid of empty storefronts and eventually led it to its more prosperous state — increasing signage, putting an emphasis on children’s activities and playing up the concept that the longer visitors stay on the Downtown Mall, the more money they are likely to spend.

Not long afterward, attractions including the Ice Park and Regal Downtown Mall 6 theater set up shop on the brick path, he said.

“It’s a very interesting, powerful tool,” Atwood said.

Hundreds participated in the two-day event, which took place in June 1989. The bound document listed ways to promote downtown and included everything from a list of proposed uses for vacant downtown space, diagrams for pedestrian access and plans for parking and transportation.

“It wasn’t about arguing. It was just ideas,” Atwood said.

Councilor Satyendra Huja, who was working in the city’s planning department at that time, thinks West Main Street could benefit from a similar process, especially because it would bring together those property and business owners who have a vested interest in seeing West Main succeed.

For the downtown area two decades ago, Huja said, “They came away with a vision of what should happen.”

Still, Huja also said he was not sure about whether the city would have the resources to invest more into West Main Street, though it has gradually committed to improvements, he said.

Castiglione said he hopes that a large book of ideas could be put together from the event, and midtowners could present that to city officials.

“I think the most important thing about a charrette is the fact that you get the community involved,” he said.