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Staff photo by Mark L. Thompson Rachel Flynn plays her cello in her downtown apartment. She feels that it makes her a more rounded person. She works to guide preservation and development in Lynchburg. |
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By Mike Gangloff The News & Advance In a tumultuous first year on the job, Lynchburg planning director Rachel Flynn picked a fight with one of the city’s largest employers and tried to block the biggest shopping center proposed for the city in years. Her crusades against demolition and urban sprawl won adulation from preservationists while sometimes infuriating business groups. Looking back, Flynn said she was surprised at the depth of feeling she encountered. “It’s a very emotional issue for people — land, property rights,” Flynn said. “... I knew it was important but I didn’t realize how much so.” The public response wasn’t what friends predicted she’d find in Lynchburg. They had portrayed Lynchburg as a sleepy, even dreary place when Flynn, an architect who returned to school to study public administration, announced she was taking the city job. The move meant leaving Harvard University, where Flynn was assistant director of the Mayor’s Institute for City Design. But Flynn said she was impressed by the Lynchburg officials she met during her interview process, and also by the city’s architecture. The city’s size was small enough that one person could make a difference in helping save that architecture, she said. And the challenge of redeveloping downtown and the riverfront appealed to her. To hear some Lynchburg preservationists tell it, Flynn’s arrival marked a new era. “It’s like she was sent from a higher being to save the city ... She’s too good to be true,” said Heidi James, then the executive director of the Lynchburg Historical Foundation, during last summer’s struggle to keep GE Financial Assurance from knocking down two blocks of old buildings. Those buildings, located on Commerce and Jefferson streets behind GE’s First Colony headquarters, were at the center of Flynn’s first — and so far largest — battle. GE planned to replace the turn-of-the-century structures, which the company used for storage, with parking lots. Flynn spoke out against the decision until city administration ordered her not to make any more public statements on the subject. Some officials worried that furor over GE’s downtown plans might cause the company to halt expansion plans elsewhere in the city. |
Rachel Flynn.
Who influenced you?
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But eventually,
after a campaign by the historical foundation and others, GE
announced it would leave the buildings standing and sell them
to private investors or the city. Observers gave Flynn much of
the credit for warding off demolition. “By in essence putting her position on the line, almost, she was able to get the attention of GE when others of us couldn’t,” said city Councilman Jim Whitaker, Lynchburg’s mayor when the Commerce Street dispute began. Flynn called saving the buildings an important victory that underscored the value of preservation and revitalization. “If we hadn’t (saved the structures), it would have sent a message that see, this really doesn’t work,” she said. Flynn was less successful in stopping the Centre at Lynchburg, a 65-acre shopping complex planned for land off Graves Mill Road. In sometimes-barbed exchanges of letters and comments at public meetings, Flynn and the developer traded shots over the Centre’s landscaping and the facade design of the buildings. Attorney Raynor Snead, who represented McLean-based developer Petire, Dierman & Kughn, called Flynn’s planning department “unnecessarily adversarial” and fumed, “It is totally illogical to assume ... that the developer may want anything other than an attractive, first-class development.” Flynn replied, “Based on photographs of built projects ... PDK builds adequate strip shopping centers with ample parking, minimal landscaping and simple facades.” Later, she justified her attempt to win more concessions from the developer, saying, “If these people want to participate in the community, you have to demand certain standards.” In December, City Council gave the developer permission to build. In retrospect, Flynn blames herself for not trying harder to clarify some of the issues involved, such as the Centre’s location in the city’s scenic corridor. For example, the developer proposed shifting landscaping from parking lot islands to the site’s perimeter, keeping the required amount of land covered, but creating large, uninterrupted stretches of pavement. At a meeting just weeks after their vote, councilmen expressed surprise at Flynn’s description of the Centre’s parking area as “seven acres without a tree.” “How did we let that go by?” Councilman Stewart Hobbs asked. “This was a classic sprawl case,” Flynn reflected later. Noting that residents and nearby businesses had expressed concerns about the traffic the Centre would bring. Flynn said she still thinks other locations in the city would be better suited to large retail projects. “It’s not as though we’re saying we’re anti-development. We were saying there’s a place we want development,” Flynn said. Neighborhood organizers say they’re glad Flynn is raising these issues. “Rachel has shown how good city planning can give our city vitality, civic pride and human scale — an attractive environment in which to live, work and play,” said James Carrington of the Diamond Hill Historical Society. One of six children of a university administrator and Washington, D.C., lawyer and political activist, Flynn has a legacy of social involvement to draw on. Her mother was a professor of social work and an associate dean at Catholic University, and also maintained a private practice as a psychotherapist. Honored as professor of the year by Pope John Paul II in 1980, Flynn’s mother sent her daughter to meet the pope, declining a personal appearance as a statement against his restrictions on women’s roles in the church. Flynn’s mother was also a violinist who sparked in her daughter a life-long interest in music. “Music and art are very important,” said Flynn, an avid cello and guitar player, “I think it’s very important to be whole people.” Flynn’s father, an attorney who at various times worked for unions, political campaigns and as a lobbyist, was Hubert Humphrey’s legislative assistant during Humphrey’s career as a Minnesota senator. Flynn said her father’s most memorable political involvement was with Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign. He quit working for Humphrey when the candidate would not renounce U.S. involvement in Vietnam, then returned when Humphrey came out against the war. Humphrey’s loss to Richard Nixon, Flynn said, brought a realization that not everyone agreed with her parents’ ideals. It was a shock to the 9-year-old. “I remember getting in fights with kids in school. The day after (Humphrey) lost I still wore his button,” Flynn said. In Lynchburg, Flynn said she’s almost certain to hit more opposition as she heads into her next large task: the first revision to the city’s general land-use plan in more than a decade. But now, Flynn said, she tries to think of debate as an integral part of the process. “It’s hard not to personalize it, to remember it’s about issues and not all about me,” she said. “... I think when you close the discussion, that’s when it gets dangerous.” |