A feast only if city moves

Manna descends, carrying with it the same hazards as the sweet-tasting stuff of biblical lore. The food is to be gathered in haste and consumed, or else come worms and a stench, and nothing good to eat. Inaction forms the faint shadow of risk that falls within the beams of hope emanating from the South River Complex, where it appears the seeds of a revival have been sown.

Beverley Shoemaker, heiress to a 40-acre slice of Waynesboro’s industrial history left by her father, James L. Bowman, plans to transform the complex from the former home of a fabric plant to The Mill at South River, featuring an education and research facility, artisan studios and galleries, restaurants, retail space and more. The cost is estimated at $40 million to $48 million, making it one of the largest brownfield projects in state history.

That Shoemaker is the project’s force is especially encouraging. This represents her largest venture yet, but she has been an active developer in and near her native Stephens City, following skillfully in the shadow of her father, an entrepreneurial legend in the town off Interstate 81, north of Front Royal. A library in Stephens City is named for Bowman. So too are scholarships at local schools.

Bowman’s reputation contrasts with the one recently associated with Waynesboro. A place where things once got done in bustling factories owned by Compton Shenandoah, DuPont and General Electric, the city has devolved as those facilities have idled or slowed production. Modern Waynesboro has become a city of grand plans left like manna to rot. Riverfront Commons, touted by Waynesboro Downtown Development Inc., springs to mind. Other ideas similarly have tantalized but evaporated like morning dew.

Will has been thought rightly to be the elixir’s absent component. But Shoemaker provides something else desperately needed, the money to make it happen expediently and in the fashion of her pleasing. What she requires from the city to push The Mill from blueprint to reality is not vision, for she has that in ready supply, but a cooperative spirit to help accelerate the pace.

The project, which would take place in the floodplain, has cleared an initial hurdle in acquiring FEMA approval. The city must follow in backing a rezoning request, a move from industrial to multi-use that should be perfunctory. Another task for the city could entail infrastructure improvements, primarily to ease traffic flow. Shoemaker is prepared to spend. The city should be prepared to make whatever accommodations are necessary.

And officials should be eyeing opportunities to extend growth from the complex south of West Main Street along the river to the city’s eastern gateway and into downtown. A state fish hatchery complemented by interactive exhibits would mesh nicely with a research center at The Mill, provided the latter focused on river ecology, as some have speculated. So, too, would a center devoted to the Blue Ridge Mountains, linking with the Wildlife Center of Virginia, and perhaps featuring conference facilities. That would pack local hotels and perhaps create the need for more.

We long have called in this space for the revitalization of the city’s downtown core. The Mill at South River will not guarantee that this happens, but it should provide precisely the kind of catalyst renewal requires. What the city must not do is presume that its work is done or will be once The Mill is complete. That project provides manna in the form of possibilities. To feast, the city must see these and seize them.