Virginia Tech’s Center for the Arts is expected to set a new tempo for Blacksburg, although many other supporting parts are needed for the new venue to revitalize North Main Street.
Ruth Waalkes, executive director of the center, said many people anticipate an increase in local activity as a result of the new venue.
“There is a lot of conversation, and I think expectation, that having the Center for the Arts here, having that presence, will actually be an engine for economic development in the town,” Waalkes said. “If you bring more people into that area, if people have a reason to be there, then there becomes reason to develop properties or pay more attention to that part of Main Street.”
The center, with its expected completion set for 2013, would be located at the intersection of Alumni Mall and Main Street, near Shultz Hall.
It is the centerpiece of the town’s plans to expand the downtown area up North Main Street toward Prices Fork Road. It will be working in tandem with an $11 million plan that would create a safer environment for pedestrians through traffic changes and sidewalk expansion.
The plan would close Old Main Street to through traffic and create a roundabout at the North Main Street and Prices Fork Road intersection.
Waalkes, who began work at Tech in September after leaving the University of Maryland, said the location holds the potential to create excitement in Blacksburg.
“I think one of the best decisions people here made was to put it in that location,” Waalkes said. “We actually are working now on the possibility for parking structures, which would not be on campus but would be on the edge of town.”
She said the performing arts center at Maryland is located near the school’s football stadium and encourages automobile traffic rather than foot traffic.
Ron Rordam, the mayor of Blacksburg, hopes Tech’s center can take people out of cars and into local businesses. He applauded Tech’s agreement to limit on-site parking.
“The worst thing for downtown would have been to have it where you drive to the arts center, down into the parking garage, you go to the elevator, go to the performance and you drive back out,” Rordam said. “All the successful ones, and I was able to go to several of them, it was designed not to be that way, to be part of the fabric of downtown.”
Rordam said multiple arts facilities in Blacksburg’s downtown area would create an environment more conducive to small businesses.
“They’re walking around and then all the little businesses start coming in,” Rordam said. “It’s like a mall. You need anchors. The Lyric and the Armory are the anchors and then hopefully the Performing Arts Center will be the main anchor.”
Waalkes echoed that sentiment, saying the center could draw people into Blacksburg as a whole.
“Part of the design in that is in fact so people will come into Blacksburg, they will park their cars, they will walk through town past restaurants, hopefully into restaurants,” Waalkes said. “Their experience of the Center for the Arts won’t be just in the Center for the Arts, but in the town.”
She also said the multiple arts facilities create opportunities for collaboration.
“With Henderson Hall, Theatre 101, Squires (Student Center) and the Lyric, we have this wonderful cluster of arts facilities in such close proximity,” Waalkes said. “I’m sure we’ll have possibilities to do some more festival-like programming that takes advantage of the quality of the facilities.”
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