[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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