The desire to keep a “small-town feel” has been a common thread in discussions about the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. The difficult thing is explaining where this feeling comes from. But just because it is difficult, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to quantify it or do our best to preserve it. Anything unique about a place should be captured and protected because that is what attracts people and can be a key element of the local economy.
Suffolk’s “small-town feel” comes from the interconnectedness of the City-Center and Agricultural areas. The proximity of rural areas to downtown is something unique and we should embrace how close one is to the other. Suffolk is special! Where else in Hampton Roads can you get a handcrafted latte from a locally-owned shop and then within minutes be at a horse farm or fishing spot?
However, it seems the trend everywhere is to surround downtown with development, making it harder for people living there to access nature, open spaces, as well as essential necessities like hospitals and grocery stores. Suffolk’s City-Center isn’t “urban” in a typical sense, so following the typical patterns of high-density growth all around it doesn’t seem to be working.
Do you think that anyone in Suffolk would say that it has gotten easier for people in the downtown area to access necessities listed above? Have the growth trends in recent years resulted in an economic boom for downtown and other struggling retail centers?
Despite the increased congestion in and around downtown, it is still an integral part of commercial and social activity for residents from less-populated boroughs. You often run into people you know at a local restaurant or the feed store. Will more high-density rooftops and new shopping centers sprawling into rural areas with inadequate roads actually make going downtown more convenient and desirable?
The City has a chance with the 2045 Comprehensive Plan to create a vision for how we grow by embracing the character of the rural and downtown proximity and not making it harder for people to move into, out of, and around the City-Center.
Please sign our petition to urge City Council to vote ‘NO’ to the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan.
The reason we made the move to Southwestern Suffolk from the Beach is to get away from traffic congestion. We love area we live in because it is still rural. Why do we have to downtown Suffolk to be full of unnecessary car washes, apartments and new homes. Our roads can’t handle the traffic. Our hospital is overwhelmed. We don’t pay our police officers enough for them to stay. Yet, our taxes keep going up and up.
Seems that they’ve forgotten that they work for us — not the other way around!