From riches to rags: Richmond’s need to revitalize Broad Street

Patrick Clark
Columnist

The heart of Richmond is beating slower than it has in its past. Its veins have become weary and drained, struggling to support the lifeblood of a city as it moves beneath its skyscrapers.

Broad Street, once a neon and halogen Broadway below the Mason-Dixon line, is now a decrepit and boarded-up stretch of abandoned storefronts. Gutters littered with trash and beat-up paper boxes dot the street. It is a sad shell of its former self, though the city government could not care less about the destitution right outside their windows.

Even though the state Capitol, city hall, the federal courts and other prominent buildings are found in the area, Broad Street still suffers. One cannot deny the reason though, the same reason many historic cities have suffered since the latter part of the 20th century.

The exodus to the suburbs by families and the chain stores that followed them to Willow Lawn and the West End has killed the downtown department stores and independent businesses that once flourished between Jackson Ward and Shockoe Bottom. The higher-ups in Richmond have traded their once-illustrious Broad Street for the cheap and lifeless facades of strip malls and big-box stores.

The mess that is found at the Richmond-Henrico border is an endless sprawl of hot asphalt and post-modernism and another expression of the wastefulness and architectural ineptness that dominated the second half of the previous century.

Mass transit is limited to a few bus stations, and the streets are jammed with cars. The cultural venues are limited to cinemas showing Hollywood movies and the Barksdale Theatre, which claims to be “Central VA’s Leading Professional Theatre,” sadly found sandwiched in an outdoor shopping mall between a video game shop and a military recruiting station.

There was also a time in which people actually lived in the now empty towers that loom over Broad. Today it isn’t surprising that one wouldn’t live anywhere near the crime that is attracted to the few struggling pawnshops and convenience stores.

Still the city does nothing to revitalize the area and attract residents. Thus it falls into disrepair and draws squatters and drug pushers to its alleys and vacant structures.

The options to revitalize the historic and once prominent downtown are great, however.

This has been seen before in the case of The National and the Carpenter Center, two once-prominent entertainment venues in the early 20th century that were saved from the wrecking ball by the efforts of private companies and foundations. The city gave these groups incentives to restore the historic structures, and today their marquees boast big-name acts and draw droves.

The city must again give reasons for investors and developers to make changes in downtown Richmond, offering tax breaks or other real economic incentives to take up the project of refurbishing the blocks of abandoned storefronts.

There has been talk of an artistic district in this very area of Broad Street, encouraging galleries and businesses that cater to artists and aficionados to take up residence. Even expanding public transit is an option. However, when a city has become so much in need of economic growth, the answer is not to simply mail checks to everybody in a particular income bracket at the expense of taxpayers, it is to offer real incentives to possible businesses and residents.

Broad Street will continue to suffer as long as the businesses become scarcer and the residents keep away, so the solution would simply be to attract them to the area.

Until the city government takes proactive measures to completely revitalize the downtown area, Richmonders will be stuck in urban paralysis.

This stagnant state of mind has been in the River City for decades and will not be changed unless an actual effort is made on the part of community leaders and elected officials.