What Will Grace Street Look like in 5, 10, 20 years?
Use the comment section to tell us your story. What do you think East Grace Street will look like 5, 10 or 20 years from now. This is your chance to dream big! If you wish, please leave your name and or tell us a little bit about yourself too.
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In the next 5-10 years I think E. Grace will begin to really take off as commerical district. With major visitor destinations (the Capitol and the Carpenter Center right on Grace and the Convention Center one block away), major employers directly on E. Grace and within easy walking, major downtown hotels directly on or a couple of blocks away, and an increasing number of downtown residents moving into the area (John Marshall Hotel, Miller and Rhodes, 1st National Bank, etc.) I think there is a strong customer base to support a vibrant retail, dining and entertaiment district along E. Grace.There will be a concentration of outdoor dining along the wide sidewalks of East Grace near the Carpenter Center. Developers will have developed the empty parking lots along E. Grace for mixed use developments with first floor commercial and upper story housing. Retailers selling an eclectic mix of goods will set-up shop along E. Grace because it will look and feel like Carytown, but with more affordable rents. Outdoor buskers will provide entertainment along E. Grace. And E. Grace will be connected to the rest of the City via bike lanes, will have plenty of bike parking, benches for people to relax on and well maintained street trees.
I see Grace Street as a magnet for national chains. With the backup support of major entertainment venues like CenterStage, Carpenter Center, and the National, along with the Coliseum and Convention Center not far away, everyone will flee Short Pump and Stony Point in the suburbs and go to the life of the party in downtown on Grace Street. National chains will vacate their storefronts at these malls and set up shop at the spaces created at the bottom, with apartments and office space above, making for an excellent mixed-use district, and infrastructure and well planning will create a lively scene with benches and tree-lined streets, creating resting places and shady areas, and light-rail or BRT will also branch off of Broad and stretch to cover Grace (or detour from Broad and onto Grace for a few blocks), and transportation will improvise to include new bike lanes, and hopefully all of this vision will take place before the 2015 Road World Championships are held in lovely RVA.