[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 112 (Wednesday, July 25, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5369-S5370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO ED WALKER

 Mr. WARNER. The town of Big Lick was first established in 1852 
and eventually became the city of Roanoke in 1884. Since its early days 
as a railroad hub, Roanoke has been an economic and cultural focal 
point for the western part of Virginia. Today, the New York Times 
recognized Ed Walker for his efforts in revitalizing Roanoke. For more 
than 10 years, Ed has worked to improve Roanoke by investing in 
historic structures and renovating them for residence, dining, and 
entertainment. Ed's work led to the creation of cultural programs, 
founded an innovative music center for young adults, and revitalized a 
once derelict downtown street.
  Ed's investment in the community paid off. The hundredfold increase 
in downtown residents supported the opening of dozens of new businesses 
and increased demand for cultural attractions. By bringing residents 
and businesses closer together, Ed's projects have helped spur the 
Roanoke economy and brought new energy to the city.
  Thanks to Ed's work, Roanoke serves as a model to similar communities 
across the Commonwealth. Roanoke was recognized recently as one of 
``America's Most Livable Communities'' by the nonprofit Partners for 
Livable Communities. Ed created the CityWorks (X)po to bring together 
entrepreneurs, advocates, and developers from across the country to 
share ideas about renewing and improving cities such as Roanoke.
  I would like to congratulate Ed Walker on his achievements and thank 
him for making the city of Roanoke a better place to work and live. I 
would ask unanimous consent that today's New York Times article be 
printed in the Congressional Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, July 25, 2012]

         Virginia Developer Is on a Mission To Revive His Town

                           (By Melena Ryzik)

       Roanoke, Va.--The Kirk Avenue Music Hall, a four-year-old 
     club named for its downtown block here, offers an unexpected 
     perk to its performers: an apartment. For a night or so, 
     before or after gracing the stage, artists stay at no charge 
     in a loft a block away, signing the guest book with notes of 
     gratitude.
       ``We don't have money, we don't have fame, so hospitality 
     is really critical,'' said Ed Walker, the club's landlord and 
     a founder.
       It is hard to miss Mr. Walker's brand of hospitality on 
     Kirk Avenue. He owns nine of its storefronts, turning what 
     was a forlorn block not long ago into a social destination. 
     The music hall doubles as a microcinema and event space. 
     There is Lucky, a restaurant run by a touring rock band that 
     decided to stay put, and Freckles, a cafe and vintage shop 
     with monthly craft nights, whose owner called Mr. Walker the 
     town's Jimmy Stewart, a favorite son and guiding light.
       It is hard to miss Mr. Walker in many corners of Roanoke, a 
     valley town of 97,000 about four hours from Washington. 
     Ringed by the Blue Ridge Mountains and for generations a 
     successful rail hub, it now has a median income of about 
     $35,000 and is trying to reinvent itself for a different 
     economy: a medical school opened in 2010, and a bike shop is 
     planning to move into the massive old transportation museum.
       And Mr. Walker, 44, a former outsider-art dealer and a 
     third-generation lawyer from a prominent local family, has 
     emerged as a commercial developer with an unusual civic 
     conscience. In less than a decade, he has bought more than a 
     dozen disused historic buildings, renovated them and enticed 
     people to live in them.
       Thanks to Mr. Walker and other developers who followed 
     suit, Roanoke's downtown has a livelier pulse, with nearly 
     1,200 residents this year, where once there were fewer than 
     10. Mr. Walker has made his spaces welcoming, handpicking 
     chefs for restaurants and furnishing a pocket park with his 
     children's swing sets. Coming attractions include a rock 
     climbing gym.
       With his wife, Katherine, and two young sons, he lives 
     downtown himself and evangelizes about it to any visitor. 
     Last fall he started what will be an annual conference in 
     Roanoke, CityWorks (X)po, billed as exploring ``big ideas for 
     small cities.''
       ``People think this is too good to be true,'' said Chris 
     Morrill, the city manager. ``You have this developer who 
     knows the finances, knows the law, knows how to do these 
     historic renovations and is really committed to the 
     community. It's real.''
       Mr. Morrill added: ``When folks from other communities come 
     in here and I show them some of the stuff that's Ed's doing, 
     they're like, How can we clone this guy and bring him back to 
     our community?' ``
       Mr. Walker's conference is intended to share his blueprint 
     for urban redevelopment, a field known as placemaking; he 
     will study it at Harvard's Graduate School of Design this 
     year, with a prestigious Loeb fellowship. But many towns 
     already have their own version of Ed Walker, said Bruce Katz, 
     a vice president at the Brookings Institution and founding 
     director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, which 
     focuses on cities. ``This is happening across the country,'' 
     Mr. Katz said.
       ``What you're seeing is a group of vanguard developers and 
     vanguard businesspeople who basically spot a trend and then 
     double down or triple down with their own resources'' to buy 
     property cheap, collaborating with like-minded leaders ``on 
     the placemaking agenda,'' he said.
       Examples abound: Mr. Katz pointed to changes in Buffalo and 
     Detroit and plans by Tony Hsieh, the Zappos tycoon, to remake 
     Las Vegas. ``It has been one or two people in particular 
     cities taking the risk,'' he said.
       ``There's a profit motive for sure, but these are people 
     committed to place,'' Mr. Katz added. ``This is no longer an 
     idea or an aspiration. It's an out-and-out trend.''
       In Roanoke, it started in 2002, when Mr. Walker began 
     redeveloping Kirk Avenue. His first major residential 
     renovation opened downtown in 2006, with million-dollar 
     condominiums.
       Old-guard Roanokers were quickly convinced that downtown 
     was livable when Mr. Walker sold one of the first to Warner 
     Dalhouse, a retired bank chairman, and his wife, Barbara, who 
     use it as a Southern pied-a-terre. At 4,800 square feet, it 
     is larger than their lake house nearby. ``We wanted it to 
     look like a New York loft, and it does,'' Mr. Dalhouse said.
       Mr. Walker's company converted an old cotton mill and a 
     department store into apartments, some at the low end of 
     market rates and some at the top. The next units will be in a 
     former ice house on the Roanoke River, where the city's first 
     waterfront restaurant will open.
       Last year, after a $20 million renovation, the company 
     reopened the Patrick Henry,

[[Page S5370]]

     once one of Roanoke's grandest hotels; its disrepair had 
     taken a toll on civic pride. Now it once again has an elegant 
     lobby, complete with a bar. Some of its 132 apartments are 
     leased by a nearby nursing school for its students.
       The building also houses the Music Place, an FM radio 
     station that Mr. Walker bought last year just before it was 
     forced to change formats. With its mix of indie, country and 
     folk--and thrice-weekly interviews with community leaders--it 
     fit with his notion to give Roanoke the feel of, as he 
     grinningly puts it, a funky college town.
       The radio station is just breaking even. The conference 
     lost money, but Mr. Walker will hold it again--it ``succeeded 
     on a human level,'' he said. Otherwise, he is adamant that 
     his projects must serve the bottom line.
       He is keen to talk financing--Virginia has generous tax 
     credits for historic renovation, so he helped get a landmark 
     designation for the Wasena neighborhood, where his river 
     project is--in hopes that it will teach others to follow in 
     his footsteps as social entrepreneurs. ``Roanoke is a really 
     good small-city laboratory,'' he said.
       Mayor David Bowers praised Mr. Walker but said the city 
     still had economic, educational and tourism challenges. 
     ``We're not the destination that we should be,'' he said.
       Even downtown, all is not rosy. Studio Roanoke, a nonprofit 
     black box theater, closed this month because of a lack of 
     money. (``It's not even bare bones,'' Melora Kordos, its 
     artistic director, told The Roanoke Times. ``We're just a 
     couple of femurs.'') And there are other signs of struggle, 
     especially in areas that ring the city center, like southeast 
     Roanoke.
       Jason Garnett, a former projectionist and theater manager 
     who programs Shadowbox, the movie night at Kirk Avenue Music 
     Hall, makes ends meet with a job as an audio-visual 
     coordinator at a local college.
       ``I can't afford to live downtown,'' said Mr. Garnett, a 
     36-year-old father of two. Still, he and his friends are 
     committed to staying, starting even more community-run art 
     spaces. ``We're trying to make Roanoke cool,'' he said.
       There are indications that it is working. Since 2009, 25 
     restaurants have opened across 10 blocks downtown, many 
     serving farm-to-table fare, bolstered by a long-running 
     farmer's market. A glossy monthly devoted to the art scene, 
     Via Noke Magazine, began publishing in June. There is an 
     adult kickball league. It adds up to the kind of do-it-
     yourself creative change that Mr. Walker, a sometime 
     skateboarder whose ethos is more Joe Strummer than Jane 
     Jacobs, advocates.
       For Mr. Morrill, the city manager, the developments have 
     already had an impact on the town's psyche. ``Roanoke has 
     this inferiority complex,'' he said. ``People would say, `We 
     could've been Charlotte if we'd had a bigger airport, or 
     Greensboro or Asheville.' And Ed helped them realize, Roanoke 
     is a pretty good place.''
       He added: ``People aren't talking about what we're not 
     anymore. Now they're talking about what we are. And that's a 
     huge shift.''

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