There’s this development
in the middle of Short Pump called “West Broad Village.” It used to be the site
of a beautiful meandering farm surrounded by a white fence, with lush green
pastures dotted by cattle. When my kids were toddlers they would always point
at them, squealing with delight, “COWS!!!” Now I mostly point at the ridiculous
traffic pouring out of the place and scream in frustration.
They started building this planned community the very second the old farmer finally agreed to
sell the land, unfortunately just before the mortgage crisis broke and dried up
all the credit. For awhile only ten percent of the place was out of the ground
making it look like the dumbest idea ever. Many of we Short Pumpians were
worried that we would be stuck with this still-birthed mountain of debris and hollowed
out shells for years. There was worry about colonies of rats breeding in the
rubble that would soon branch out into our neatly trimmed communities. There
was dark talk of crack houses sprouting up. All of that overwrought suburban
angst proved wasted after the financial markets recovered and the money started
to flow again. Now it’s nearly completed, and we have a fully functioning, er,
eh, well, actually I’m not sure what we have honestly.
The developers seemed to have wanted to build a
neighborhood that looked 100 years old. Row houses with tiny little front yards
no bigger than a large coffee table would line both sides of the street with
fake gas lamps lighting the way. The rear of these houses featured concrete
alley ways where the upwardly mobile young couples could park their two Tahoe’s
in their big garages. But these alleys don’t have dumpsters or rats so I’m not
sure they even count as alleys. To make the place even older looking some
genius suggested making all the streets out of brick, which looked great until
6 months of traffic caused them to settle all catawampus-like so now you need a
Tahoe to make it through the place.
Mixed in amongst the rows and rows of townhouses are
businesses of all descriptions, just like a real town might have, if by “all
descriptions” you mean “restaurants.” The website says, “West Broad Village is
designed for people who want to live, work, shop and play within the community
they call home.” And this community of chain restaurants, health clubs, wine
lofts and cigar lounges is all crammed into 115 acres along with the 2000 or so
hipsters who live there.
This is called the New Urbanism by it’s proponents. But, it comes with some very Old Urbanism problems, namely…traffic.
The problem seems to be that there are a ton of people who would never dream of
living there but nonetheless are crazy about Tex-Mex. That was Pam and I last
night. We head over to Chuys for dinner and spent literally 10 minutes inside
the parking garage sitting still while an overmatched Asian woman tried to make
up her mind whether or not she wanted to park. It didn’t help that she
was driving an SUV and it also didn’t help that she didn’t know how to drive.
The poor thing had no chance. At one point she even got out of her vehicle to
plead with the ten of us in line behind her to all back up so she could more
easily maneuver her Escalade into the space recently occupied by a Honda Civic.
I was smugly proud of myself for maintaining my composure( thanks to the two
beers I had had earlier at Mona’s Cigar Lounge!), when suddenly Pam reached across
and violently engaged the horn. “Get back in your car and move along woman!”
Pam was hungry and not in a mood to be trifled with. Ten minutes later we found
a spot on the roof, then had a lovely meal of way too much steak burrito and
you’ve got to be kidding “Chuychanga.”
The developers essentially wanted to relocate the
Fan into Short Pump while leaving the crime down on the Boulevard. The problem
is, they forgot to bring the Fan’s charm during the move.
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