Annual Message from Leslie Hager-Smith, Mayor of the Town of Blacksburg
Post Date:02/18/2025 8:17 AM
Annual Message: Leslie Hager-Smith, Mayor of the Town of Blacksburg
February 11, 2025
2025 in Blacksburg dawns with a rich mix of possibilities glinting on our horizon. We have one of the strongest economies in the state. GDP growth, according to the latest figures available, is at 3.7% for our area. We are also showing statewide strength for job growth, labor force and taxable sales.
Virginia Tech, ever the region’s economic driver, has an endowment that now stands at $1.9B dollars; new facilities on multiple campuses; and, applications that have tripled to 58,000 in ten years. Enrollment is beyond the 30,000 milestone which has fueled the university’s drive to grow since 2014.
In town, we have a new Business Solutions Manager, whose goal will be to cultivate community by assisting small businesses. We are also set to begin construction of a retail incubator, along with continued improvements to the downtown streetscape.
There is good news about housing in Blacksburg. Using a multi-pronged approach, Town Council has adopted half a dozen remedies to expand housing options for all. This year we should begin to see construction of new homes at Stroubles Ridge; Habitat townhouses on Airport Road; and apartments on South Main St., each project with an affordable component. 73 market rate townhomes have been approved off Patrick Henry Drive. We’ve also joined neighboring localities by investing in a Housing Trust Fund and a regional land trust to address “missing middle” housing.
On the administrative side, the Town is working to speed up its paperwork pipeline.
With expert guidance from local builders, we’ve committed to greater efficiencies for approving street design, construction sequencing, infrastructure timing, subdivision design and administration. We’ve initiated a whole-cloth rewrite of our Zoning Ordinance to modernize Town code. Most significantly, we approved small-lot neighborhoods to reduce the cost of residential development. Approximately 300 acres of land within Town limits will qualify for this zoning. It reduces parking requirements, and allows a variety of housing types, sometimes with alleys, inspired by Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND).
The Town has more than doubled its parkland since 2020, amounting now to over 1,000 acres. Recreational opportunities are expanding with the notable help of intrepid citizen volunteers and nonprofit partners. This has allowed the Town to hire a Parks and Natural Lands Coordinator to actively oversee our parkland, work that includes trail maintenance, creek restoration and the removal of invasive species. Town trails connect with a network of paved and natural surface trails exceeding 60 miles regionally.
Importantly, Town Council has also committed $10M to active recreation facilities in the next five years. This will allow us to replace lighting and bring our fields up to a modern standard.
On a more somber note, the university has added 5,000 students in the last 10 years, an increase of 22%. It stresses the Town’s street grid, public works, transit system, and police services. More students means more tax base, but not enough to cover the increase in services they require. So long as the trend continues, Blacksburg will bear the brunt of the university’s ambitions. Surrounding localities prosper; my peers in elective office do not share our sense of loss or obligation. Their response isn’t un-neighborly: It is human nature.
Change is never easy, especially for longtime residents who loved and lived in this town before 2014. They cite longer commute times, loss of natural habitat, a diminished sense of place, and damage to the social fabric. Some question whether our community should be accommodating this growth in the first place. A proposal for student housing at 801 N Main St. illustrates the tension.
The project is for 750 beds in an 8-story building, with retail on the first floor and a parking garage underneath. It “significantly improves the tax base at that location, places students closer to campus—reducing the need for car traffic—and adds density to downtown in a way that generally makes sense. It’s also mixed-use, which we need more of,” as one resident observes. It’s also precisely where our Comprehensive Plan calls for student housing.
Critics scorn the architecture, the height, the people who might live there, and the out-of-town developers who are proposing it. To them, the prospect feels personal. But the people we don’t hear enough from are those who understand that Blacksburg is a climate refuge, making population growth a certainty, even without VT.
A popular book has dubbed this “the age of grievance.” It calls to mind a sage quip from lifelong townie Michael Abraham: “Blacksburg isn’t what it used to be – it never was.”
We don’t get to choose who is choosing us. What we can do is to make strategic choices about where we can accommodate growth, while preserving the things we value most about Blacksburg. Putting more people next to schools, shopping and work is a good start. This proposal achieves a walking score of 88 and a bike score of 90. Making development fit our Town, not the other way around, is primary. To wit, the proposal includes a $1.1M investment in the Town’s affordable housing fund.
Topography would put this building lower than Gilbert Place and lower still than the Moss Arts Center, helping to preserve the view shed we all treasure. Commuter inflow to Blacksburg stands at 16,000 daily trips, and this project could reduce that number by hundreds. Like it or not, two thirds of Blacksburg’s population is students, and that figure is only increasing. Town Council has not approved a major student housing project since 2019, but this one may be the sensible exception.
We live on top of the world – both literally and figuratively. Wherever we fall on the issues, nothing is more important to our residents than quality of life. This is our common ground, and I have every confidence that we will unite in preserving it with creativity and civility.