In the spring of 2008 a landowner, a realtor/developer and engineering firm came before town council requesting special permission to build 11 town houses on very steep land, adjacent to one of the three designated historic districts. The Planning Commission recommended rejection of the request, the Town Council approved it anyway (Stipes and Carter opposed).
Fully 24 months later, very little has changed. An old asbestos ridden house is gone and erosion control fencing is up. An assignment given to the Planning Commission to "prepare a report on historic district overlays" is still a work in progress.
According to a recent newspaper article (this cannot be construed as reporting), just under 200 surveys where sent out. Supposedly, any responses will represent "public sentiment" of a community of approximately 20,000 people as regards historic preservation in Christiansburg.
The point of establishing historic districts is preservation of cultural and physical history in a community. As the town house project demonstrated, encroachment within these districts has trended in a negative direction for too long. Numerous fires over the decades have obliterated many other structures in the commercial districts, and (per several council members) most of the residential property owners within these districts have abandoned the town as their place of residence. At some point, a blanket rezoning from residential to business occurred in what many refer to as the "Old Town" community which houses two beautiful and active bed and breakfast inns.
An inventory of historic structures is needed, yet not obtained over the past 24 months, showing location, condition, ownership and use. Not only are structures that are old enough to be considered historic not identified within existing districts, neither are contributing structures that may fall just outside these boundaries or within an overlay that could connect the three small separate districts.
Resources available through the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the Virginia Downtown Development Association and Virginia Housing and Community Development could provide many residents with tools to retrofit older homes and stabilize property values, for dual income households earning as much as $48,000 a year. This could also be considered a "green" initiative as older structures are restored, recycled and reused -- creating jobs and enhancing some neighborhoods. Instead, undefined "additional regulations" and expenses are given as warnings.
It meant the Planning Commission needn't recreate the wheel, yet they also discarded an opportunity to work with students and faculty at Virginia Tech who had expertise and additional resources to offer. The newspaper article didn't bother to report on the history of this assignment or that a similar effort failed 20 years ago due to the same ineptitude and attitude. The three established historic districts came about through citizen action, not in partnership with Christiansburg leaders.
Take a drive through Christiansburg -- try to locate historic sites or markers. They are typically segregated and hidden, often neglected. Search for our history on the internet, accessing GPS mapping. We think you'll agree that celebrating the county seat's and town's history and heritage is not, and has never been, a priority of Christiansburg leaders. If you can remember where the movie theater used to be, that seems good enough.
(This issue is far separated from Blacksburg, which was considering moving from having an advisory group to mandated control in one, not both, of its designated districts. This issue is closely linked to economic development.)