I hear people say that they want to live ‘Downtown’ but that doesn’t really tell me what I need to know.
‘Downtown’ in Richmond-speak can mean ‘The City’ (so it includes the Fan and Museum District which are not technically neighborhoods of ‘Downtown’) or it can mean ‘Central Business District‘ (which is just one part of ‘Downtown’) or it can mean ‘Downtown as described by the Downtown Master Plan‘ which includes many areas not typically considered to be in ‘Downtown.’
Confused?
Four our sake, we are going to talk about the official ‘Downtown’ definition as described in the DTMP. In roughly the period from 2007-2009, the city went through an exercise that they called the ‘Downtown Master Plan’ (shown here broken down by section). In effect, the City went ahead and tried to get ahead of the development trends and re-zone properties that were obviously headed for ‘adaptive re-use based renovations’ where the use was bound to change. In doing so, they expedited the process of re-zoning and moved away from the SUP slugfest and tried to create only the need for a POD, which moves along much more quickly. It helped for sure.
Covered under this master re-zoning were the following areas of the City:
Parts of Church Hill
Parts of Manchester
Rocketts Landing (which is in both Henrico and City of Richmond)
Monroe Ward
Oregon Hill (the only neighborhood in the plan west of Belvidere)
