Reporter Andrew Harris: Welcome back to 92.3 The Tide your home for hometown news. My name is Andrew Harris.
Reporter Steve Roberts: And I’m WYDaily Reporter Steve Roberts.
Andrew Harris: And we have a special guest in the studio today and that is Williamsburg Mayor Paul Freiling. Mayor welcome.
Mayor Paul Freiling: Good morning Andrew. Good morning Steve. Thanks for having me here today.
Harris: Thanks for joining us. We have a lot to get to this morning but I want to start off with a letter that you penned over the weekend. We all know the event that took place in Charlottesville when the “Unite the Right” rally turned violent. You actually sent a letter mayor to the mayor of Charlottesville basically expressing support and solidarity. What went through your head when you decided to write that letter?
Freiling: Well Andrew, I was sitting at home watching. It wasn’t the events unfolding it was more a replay of what had happened earlier in the day. And I found myself frustrated, somewhat angry, but probably most of all sad that this sort of situation could occur not only in the United States, but in Virginia and in a city so close to Williamsburg that with which we have so much in common. And it struck me that it could just as easily have been happening here.
Freiling: And my heart went out to the people of Charlottesville. It’s just a tough thing to understand how in this day and age we can have such hate still permeating society. And I didn’t know what to do. So I thought well I should at least express myself to the mayor and let him know we were thinking about him and it was really just intended as an e-mail from me to the mayor and then, of course, the more I thought about it I had to copy our city manager.
Freiling: I briefly checked with my council colleagues before sending anything because it was saying it was on behalf of all of us and I didn’t want to go out on a limb without their buy-in so of course. So I just sent that off and then after I did I was contacted by the city manager and he asked if the city could post it which they did.
Harris: I want to read a quick quote from your letter. You said and as you just said you understand that it might not be an isolated incident it could have happened here. And you said it’s symptomatic of an insidious infection and healing the one wound will not cure the disease. What can we do here in Williamsburg and what can you do as mayor to help heal that disease?
Freiling: Well, I think the first thing we need to do is look at what are we doing in this community to ensure that everybody is treated equally. What are we doing to give people equal opportunity and what are we doing to encourage open and honest conversation among groups who have different perspectives and different backgrounds so that they can understand each other. And I think a lot of the frustration that’s felt in the country today has to do with people feeling helpless. People not having another way to turn.
Freiling: So, if we can find ways to give people positive directions to turn their energy, give them ways to be productive forces instead of falling victim to negative thinking or hate speech. And that’s where we have to start and apply them home. None of us has all the answers and there are no easy answers. If there were, better progress would have been made over the years, but this is a really tough issue. We need to face it head on.
Harris: Do you want to give us a quick overview about what’s going on in Midtown and why city officials are so excited about that development?
Freiling: The Williamsburg shopping center has been as many consider an underutilized property for more than a decade now. It has suffered from the organization of the ownership and then the bankruptcy of the group that owned it and then was up for sale. And during that time period in order to make it more appealing to a prospective buyer, the owners were moving the tenants out as they could when their leases came up so that they would have a less encumbered more flexible piece of property with which a buyer could work.
Freiling: The city has had it all high on its list of objectives for economic development for quite some time. But we don’t control the property and we don’t have the resources to buy it. Our concern has always been finding a buyer that will redevelop that property and put it closer to its highest and best use which it hasn’t been for quite some time.
Freiling: We are also hopeful that the buyer would change the suburban shopping center model with a sea of parking surrounding a core shopping area into a more urban style shopping experience more clusters of buildings more than one story and with residential fully integrated into the shopping center as opposed to like New Town and High Street where we have mixed use. But you tend to have the residential in one area and the commercial in another.
Harris: Why is that so appealing to a city like Williamsburg which has kind of a small town feel to that at this point and has for a long time?
Freiling: Well it’s appealing on a number of levels. One we’re looking to create an environment and a housing stock that will appeal to young professionals. We have so many students graduate each year from the College of William and Mary with tremendous capabilities and they immediately leave this town or city and go elsewhere.
Freiling: If we could keep just a small portion of that talent and that energy here in the community it would help re-energize the entire city. It also then makes us more attractive to prospective businesses that are looking to relocate in Williamsburg. And we’re talking about businesses that can be doing business all over the country or all over the world. We create a place that is diverse as we want our community to be in all ages all income levels all backgrounds all living working and enjoying life together.
Roberts: This is WYDaily Reporter Steve Roberts. I’m here with my colleague Andrew Harris and Mayor Paul Freiling. On August 10th the city council passed a tax increase on eating out lodging and admission tickets to places like Colonial Williamsburg and the Movie Tavern. Before the vote you had recused yourself. Just wondering if you might be able to touch on that at all?
Freiling: Over the past several years we’ve seen a convergence of the revenue and the expense lines and even though we still run a surplus every year that becomes limiting because as those lines get closer there’s less of a surplus and that surplus is one of the primary funding sources for our capital improvement program.
Freiling: So when those two lines meet that means we will not be able to put money into the capital improvement program to do things like build a police station, build a fire station, buy new emergency response vehicles, redo sidewalks, underground power lines, any kind of infrastructure need that the city has. We won’t be able to fund so we need to keep that distance between the revenue and the expense lines on the positive side so that we can continue to fund that reinvestment in the community.
Roberts: It also goes towards things like landscaping on Capitol Landing Road right in the Northeast Triangle?
Freiling: Absolutely. Two projects the city is looking at. We just discussed our last meeting are the reconfiguration of the Monticello Avenue-Richmond Road-Lafayette Street intersection. That one has been moved up because of the redevelopment plans of the Williamsburg Shopping Center. But the other is a real investment in streetscape and Capitol Landing Road to complement what we’ve done there in designating it a culinary arts district.
Freiling: And on top of that, the city has purchased a number of parcels on that capital landing road corridor that we now have the ability to combine into one larger parcel and then make that available to the private sector for purchase and then redevelopment. And by doing all those things at the same time we want to create a critical mass of activity and energy that will come together simultaneously so that we’re not repeatedly tearing up streets.
Freiling: One of the most frustrating things I think people see is when a street’s just been paved and then a development project comes along six months later and that newly paved street gets torn up to put in the infrastructure for that new development if we can coordinate the timing of all these things we save ourselves a lot of money and we expedite the entire process of re-energizing that Capitol Landing Road corridor.
Roberts: Some of the changes we might be seeing soon: bike lanes, having the road go down to just two lanes total, more crosswalks. Things like that?
Freiling: Yes. Additional enhancements on the sidewalks, potentially wider sidewalks which would then allow the opportunity if a restaurant was to locate on that court or that they could have on-street dining as we see in some of the downtown areas and that’s the type of activity that creates a new energy in a neighborhood and helps people feel as though there’s a certain vitality when all the activity takes place indoors. People don’t see it. But when you can see it happening out on the street it makes it in many ways a more visually appealing experience.
Harris: Well Mayor Freiling, unfortunately, we’re all out of time, but I want to thank you for coming into our studio this morning and sharing your thoughts about what’s going on around town and even around the whole Commonwealth. Certainly, thank you for that. And we hope to have you back soon.
Freiling: Thank you Andrew and Steve. It’s my pleasure and I appreciate the opportunity.
