Image and Identity
Newport News must make a concerted effort to improve its visual image. It needs to enhance its older residential neighborhoods through reinvestment and beautify its entrances, major thoroughfares, and its public places. The City has poor visual quality in parts of Downtown, Jefferson Avenue south of J. Clyde Morris Boulevard, the older commercial corridors along arterial streets, and parts of the southeast community. While newer shopping areas are centered at major street intersections, older commercial areas are strung along the City's arterial streets. These older centers fail to compete with the more modern and attractive shopping centers and are declining and blighted. In many instances, they are viewed as unsafe. Additionally, the City has too many used car dealerships. Many used car dealerships are concentrated in areas along the major corridors with little if any aesthetic controls. Several are non-conforming uses and unsightly. Although used car sales are a part of the automobile economy, the City appears to have an overabundance of this commercial activity compared to its neighbors. Careful consideration is needed when determining the acceptability of additional used car sales in the City.
Commercial Corridors
Strip commercial development is found along older stretches of Warwick Boulevard, Jefferson Avenue, and J.Clyde Morris Boulevard. In these areas commercial development occurs on small lots that are backed by residential development. The lots are too small and shallow to encourage activity centers. The City adopted a Warwick Boulevard Corridor Study that addressed the Warwick commercial corridor from Oyster Point Road north to Fort Eustis Boulevard. The Study suggests many strategies for improving the commercial corridor including commercial nodes; these strategies should be implemented.
The City's streets and public spaces constitute the public realm. They continue to need more attention by improving visual quality with landscaping, controlling business signs, and placing overhead utility lines underground. These goals were realized with the Warwick Boulevard widening project between J. Clyde Morris Boulevard and Nettles Drive. It can also be achieved on new streets and with road widening or streetscape projects, such as the Hilton Village Enhancement, Warwick Boulevard landscaping in North Denbigh, Jefferson Avenue Widening and the Main Street and Rivermont Commercial Corridor Enhancement Project.
Gateways
The entrances into the City should be made attractive and designed and developed as gateways. The gateways include I-664 at the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel, I-64, James River Bridge/Warwick Boulevard, Jefferson Avenue, I-64 and Fort Eustis Boulevard, and Warwick Boulevardat the James City County line, and at the Airport. The Asheton development in Lee Hall will provide an attractive entrance to Newport News. The City needs a gateway program that would recommend design standards to enhance entrances into our community and convey a positive image of the City. A “wayfinding” program should be adopted and implemented to help identify our gateways, reduce sign clutter, synchronize existing signs, decrease vehicle trips, promote activity centers, and aesthetically improve the City’s image.
Codes Compliance
Older parts of our City need attention. Blighted conditions should be eliminated by demolishing substandard and dilapidated structures, by acquiring and combining small lots into larger lots for new single family homes (especially in the Southeast Community), through concentrated code enforcement, community clean-up efforts, the repair and maintenance of deteriorated City streets, sidewalk improvements, storm drainage, curbs and gutters and by providing more parks and open space. Special attention should be given to the maintenance and upkeep of the City’s rights-of way that include streets, sidewalks, intersections, easements, etc. The rights-of-way represent the public realm and are a reflection of our City’s commitment to a clean and aesthetically pleasing environment and an excellent quality of life. As our City continues to age, these efforts will be needed city-wide and not just in our blighted areas. Therefore, an even application of City Codes should be applied to all areas of the City to prevent our newly redeveloped areas and our older neighborhoods from deteriorating. To achieve this standard, Codes Compliance works to promote a safe and healthy community helping to make Newport News a desirable place to live. However, Code enforcement staff cannot do it alone. The Department will require more coordination and partnership with property and business owners to be successful.