Innovative cities look for opportunities to help private investment flourish. Today, the City of Newport News has reached a development stage in which raw land development opportunities have essentially come to a close, and the “recycling” of land has become necessary. This is certainly true for the northern portion of our Warwick Boulevard Corridor.

The City recognizes that strong business districts impact the overall health of our community. Moreover, they help strengthen the residential neighborhoods immediately surrounding them, providing employment opportunities together with goods and services to commuters, neighborhood residents and destination shoppers. For these reasons, a strategy is needed that will target this vital -- but underutilized – business corridor which has long been one the City’s important community assets.

In the heart of Denbigh, the north Warwick Corridor is an area of the City which many people depend on for everyday shopping and commercial services. It is also home to approximately 1/5 of the City’s population. During many hours of the day, the Corridor is one of the most heavily traveled sections of our City and, indeed, the Peninsula. While this creates an extremely important natural advantage for potential retail and commercial investors, numerous complex factors have contributed to preventing the Corridor from achieving its potential for attracting high-quality investments and commercial diversification.

Like other aging commercial corridors throughout the U.S., the north Warwick Corridor’s land use patterns from the 1960s to the early 1990s were a byproduct of market forces in existence at the time. Development was essentially left unchecked during this period, with little or no coherent land use strategy and/or vision beyond the “strip commercial zoning policy.” Consequently, over the decades the land use patterns along the Corridor unfolded in a haphazard way with little or no connection to the surrounding uses. And although the Corridor’s incoherent development pattern has presented many challenges, this area is still a vital part of the City’s commercial and retail establishment and serves a large segment of our Denbigh population.

After many years of study and planning efforts lacking deliberate coordination and implementation, an “action strategy” is needed, and the time to take action is now. City Council recognizes that encouraging higher quality investments in the Corridor, both public and private, is a strategic priority and Council Members have unanimously made it one of their top eight most important policy objectives. From this policy leadership, staff is focusing energy and resources on the Corridor, and is currently gathering data and evaluating alternatives in an effort to formulate a series of actions to stimulate new investments that otherwise would not likely occur.

With proper support and coordination, this action plan can move the Corridor in the right direction and set the stage for meaningful and impactful private investment, despite some of the Corridor’s inherent challenges. It’s important to keep in mind, for example, that a traditional, singular revitalization strategy like those that focus on a singular, large scale project cannot work in the context of the Warwick Corridor because of its sprawling nature and connectivity to the surrounding community. Hence, support from the community will need to take many forms, including gathering its collective patience as a series of initiatives begin to unfold over the coming years.

The strategy under consideration by staff contemplates the City taking a leadership role in developing and implementing public and private collaborative strategies and investments that 1) support the revitalization of the Corridor, working outward from our existing public investments in ways that complement adjacent neighborhoods and encourages their viability and sustainability; 2) attract private sector investment to grow jobs, busine sses and services, simultaneously expanding the tax base; and 3) beautify and improve the aesthetic appeal of both the public realm and the private sector’s presence along the Corridor.

Rendering of the Stoney Run Community Center

Implementing these action strategies will involve moving forward with acquisition of select properties, through voluntary sales, that are attractive for assembly and consolidation. An important criterion for targeting properties will be proximity to the two major public investments in the area: the Shellabarger Road second access into Fort Eustis and the emerging Stoney Run Community Center and park complex. Embarking on such acquisitions will accelerate the revitalization process by increasing future land use options.

The City’s decades-long Downtown transformation from vibrancy, through a period of decline and blight, has become the focus of a resurgence of redevelopment activity, with Newport News in the near future welcoming the Apprentice School out from behind Shipyard gates and combining with a mix of new commercial development and residential units. The initial property acquisition measures taken in the 1980s and 1990s to stop downward trends through the Downtown Partnership Initiative (DPI) made this possible, fostering success not originally envisioned. Similarly, certain successful elements of the DPI are well suited for deployment within the Warwick Corridor, and will likely lead to unforeseen benefits in the future. These include removal of blighted commercial pockets, assembly of parcels for renewed development opportunities, landscape and streetscape improvements, pedestrian access improvements, enhanced codes enforcement activities, and law enforcement initiatives, among others.

Many of these efforts are underway now, including a recently approved program expansion which assists homeowners and businesses by encouraging more investment in existing properties (Residential and Commercial Rehabilitation Property Tax Abatement programs), a vigorous Community Maintenance initiative, the Ft. Eustis Gateway Grant Program, as well as several other initiatives that were undertaken as a direct result of the Warwick Boulevard Corridor Study approved by City Council in 2004.

As the City moves forward on this important north Warwick Corridor initiative, we will be reaching out to our partners in the community to help establish a comprehensive action strategy. Over time, this strategy will renew the north Warwick Corridor to a more vibrant part of our City where residents and businesses can enjoy a healthy and sustainable environment that fosters success and pride in our City.