Browsing by Author "West, William"

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    Ed Good Memorial Park Conceptual Master Plan
    Gilboy, Elizabeth; Steika, Kim; Gan, Naixuan; Zhang, Yanting; West, William; Poteet, Tish (Virginia Tech. Community Design Assistance Center, 2010-07)
    Stanley is a small Virginia town of approximately 1,400 people nestled in the Shenandoah Valley in Page County. The Ed Good Memorial Park is located in downtown Stanley. It is the site of the Town of Stanley's annual Homecoming event and is also home to the Town's skate park - "The Hawk". The park is bounded on one side by an active railroad track and is divided by an open drainage swale. A group of local residents has initiated the idea of adding a trail to the park for health and recreation. A memorial area has also recently been added to the park, honoring fallen police and firefighters from the area. Pioneer Bank, a local bank, celebrated its 100th anniversary on December 3rd, 2009. In honor of their service to the community, they have donated the cost of a playground to the park.

    The Community Design Assistance Center was asked to help weave these new uses together and identify possible additional recreational uses for the park through the development of a conceptual master plan. The CDAC team worked with Town staff and community residents to develop a conceptual master plan for the park that looks to optimize the space and increase recreational activities. The CDAC design team considered existing programmatic uses of the site and wove these together with desires for additional facilities. Potential future trail connections to other parks or areas in the Town were also explored. The conceptual master plan addressed the desire for defining the property's edge and enhancing screening from the railroad track; the existing drainage swale to maximize usable space while also seeking to improve stormwater management; and enhanced the current parking lot. Opportunities for additional site plantings were also recommended.

    The CDAC design team began the project in October 2009 with an initial site visit and meeting with Town Manager Terry Pettit and Parks and Recreation Director Chuck Short. During this visit the team discussed project goals with Town staff, toured and photographed the site, visited the Town's other recreational facilities, and identified possible destinations to link via a town-wide trail system.

    The CDAC team returned to Blacksburg to develop a base map, photoboard, and site inventory and analysis. The CDAC team returned to Stanley in early November to field check the site analysis and to tour the Luray Hawksbill Greenway with Terry Pettit.

    The Town of Stanley distributed a short survey to the residents to Stanley, soliciting input regarding recreational needs within the Town. The CDAC design team used feedback from the survey to guide them during the preliminary conceptual design process.

    Two alternative conceptual designs were developed. These concepts, along with supporting sketches, were presented to community members in Stanley on April 1st, 2010. The conceptual alternatives were revised into a single conceptual design concept based on community feedback and guidance from Town staff. The final conceptual master plan was presented to town staff, town council, and community members on May 18, 2010. Following the final presentation, soil samples were taken and a planting plan was developed.

    This short, supporting report was prepared to document the design process and describe the proposed design concepts for the Ed Good Memorial Park Conceptual Master Plan.
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    Identifying Impediments to Completing an Urban Forest Canopy Assessment in Municipalities in the State of Virginia
    West, William (Virginia Tech, 2010-05-12)
    Tree canopy assessments help identify the extent and location of urban forest resources under management. Tree canopy assessments give a picture of what the urban forest resource looks like presently; and can be used to establish and track management goals for a municipality and quantify benefits being provided by the urban forest. Such an assessment can also help guide the most effective distribution of labor and resources. However, many municipalities in Virginia do not have canopy assessments and are unable to realize these benefits. To assess what impediments urban forestry professionals of small municipalities in Virginia are facing, we conducted a focus group meeting of experienced urban foresters via teleconference. Participants were asked about their perceptions and knowledge of tree canopy assessments. Participants had general knowledge of the benefits of an assessment, but generally lacked, or had varying degrees of knowledge of the methodologies for conducting an assessment. Participants expressed concerns on topics such as funding an assessment; communicating the value of an assessment to decision makers and citizens; and the use of volunteers in gathering information for a tree canopy assessment. Specific suggestions generated by the focus group to overcome perceived or real impediments were a website resource for urban forestry professionals co-sponsored by Virginia Tech and the Virginia Department of Forestry and coordinated support for the Tree Stewards Program at the state level to improve success using volunteers for urban forest assessment. In addition, participants agreed that a survey of urban forest decision makers from municipalities across the state would help Virginia Tech and the Virginia Department of Forestry better target outreach programs to meet municipal needs in urban forest canopy assessment.
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    Meadowbrook Center conceptual landscape master plan
    Gilboy, Elizabeth; Steika, Kim; Philen, Melissa; Poteet, Tish; Rexrode, Amanda; West, William (Virginia Tech. Community Design Assistance Center, 2010-07)
    The Meadowbrook Center is a public-private partnership between the Mountain Valley Charitable Foundation (MVCF) and Montgomery County. The facility is owned by the county and leased to MVCF with the exception of the library, which is retained by the County. The 40,000 square foot facility includes Meadowbrook Community Library, Waldron Family YMCA, Meadowbrook Museum, and Carilion Community Center. Also housed within the Community Center are the Shawsville Ruritan Club Square Dance, EastMont Arts Association, EastMont Garden Club, the Boys & Girls Club of the New River Valley office, EastMont Massage Therapy, Meadowbrook Quilters, and a café. There is still room in the facility for more organizations, mostly in the office wing. Housing the additional organizations assists the MVCF with their revenue stream.
    The grounds of the Community Center are used quite a bit with various activities and programming uses such as a farmer’s market, walking area, a playground, festivals, and parking for the various activities.
    The Community Design Assistance Center worked with a stakeholders committee composed of representatives of the various organizations of the Meadowbrook Center to develop a conceptual site master plan to address the various needs, wants, and issues described in this report.
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    Mount Tabor Meadows common space conceptual master plan, Blacksburg, Virginia
    Gilboy, Elizabeth; Steika, Kim; Illmensee, Kaitlyn; Marshall, Ashleigh; West, William (Virginia Tech. Community Design Assistance Center, 2010-08)
    The Community Design Assistance Center (CDAC) worked with the Mount Tabor Meadows (MTM) community to develop a conceptual master plan of their vision for a new and sustainable use for the community’s underutilized common space.
    Mount Tabor Meadows is a neighborhood located in Blacksburg, Virginia developed by Green Valley Builders. All of the homes are EarthCraft certified and Energy Star Rated. In the heart of the development, a community open space – MTM Commons – has been preserved. Currently, the Commons is an open fi eld mowed seasonally for hay, and in part serves as a stormwater basin. After months of consideration, the homeowners developed a list of desired uses for the space, including a playground, community shelter/ gathering space, a spot for community gardens, and an urban forest to increase opportunities for stormwater infiltration and carbon sequestration on site.
    In March of 2010, MTM began working with the CDAC to develop conceptual plans for the common space. In conjunction with the community’s sustainable mission, it was the desire of the home owners association to develop a plan for their new common space that was not only a place for recreation and community development, but also provided a service to the natural systems of the site. All of the listed ideas carry the community members’ aims of sustainability and stewardship into the Commons.
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    Voices of Virginia: An Auditory Primary Source Reader
    Taylor, Jessica; Stewart, Emily (Virginia Tech, 2020-01-21)

    Voices of Virginia pulls together stories from oral history collections from across decades and archives to create an all-audio source companion for Virginia’s high school and college students. The "album" is only two hours long, but contains dozens of short oral histories from eyewitnesses to key moments in American history, from the end of the Civil War to the 1980s. The excerpts are downloadable, accessible by smartphone, and accompanied by a transcript. Audio clips are also available on Soundcloud. You’ll also find a brief introduction to each narrator, historical context adapted from experts at Encyclopedia Virginia, American Yawp, and Public Domain sources, and helpful classroom tools like discussion questions, activities, and lesson plans that fit into both the Virginia high school and college U.S. History curriculum. By following the larger national story with narratives from across the Commonwealth, Voices of Virginia grounds students in how history guides and is guided by everyday people and their experiences. Voices of Virginia is a winner of the 2020 Mason Multi-Media Award from the Oral History Association. Over twenty archives across Virginia and beyond have generously donated segments, and granted permission for their oral histories to be reproduced and publicly shared under a CC BY NC SA 4.0 license, which ensures that the content remains free to use and re-purpose for all listeners. These archives include: - African American Historical Society of Portsmouth - Amherst Glebe Arts Response - Archives of Appalachia (Eastern Tennessee State University) - Cape Charles Rosenwald Initiative - Center for Documentary Studies and the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Duke University) - Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History - Chuck Mauro, private collection (Herndon, VA) - Clarence Dunnaville (American Civil War Museum) - Desegregation of Virginia Education Project (Old Dominion University) - Digital Library of Appalachia (Appalachian College Association) - Eastern Shore of Virginia Barrier Islands Center - Friends of the Rappahannock - George Mason University - Grayson County Historical Society - Greene County Historical Society - Mountain Home Center (Bland County Public Schools) - Old Dominion University Libraries Special Collections and University Archives - Oral History Archives at Columbia (Columbia University) - Roanoke Public Library (Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project) - Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (University of Florida) - Southern Foodways Alliance (University of Mississippi) This material is aligned to the History and Social Science Standards for Virginia Public Schools - March 2015. The collection was curated by Jessica Taylor, Ph.D. with Emily Stewart. Feedback regarding this collection is welcome at https://bit.ly/VoicesOfVirginia This work was made possible in part by a grant from University Libraries at Virginia Tech’s Open Education Initiative. About the editors
    Jessica Taylor is the Director of Public History and an Assistant Professor of Early American and Oral History in the History Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) where she has been a faculty member since 2018. Jessica completed her Ph.D. in History at the University of Florida and her undergraduate and master's studies at the College of William and Mary. Her research and work focuses on the history of social change in Virginia and the American South, from the colonial period to the present day. Dr. Taylor collaborates with preservation and historical groups across the South to collect and share oral histories, teaches Public History and Native History classes, and is the author of multiple journal articles about historical memory in the South. Her manuscript, Certaine Boundes: Borders and Movement in the Native Chesapeake, explores the lives of Indians and non-elites in seventeenth-century Virginia. Beyond writing, she works to provide opportunities for and be a better teacher to every kind of student. She is always looking for hands-on experiences and conversations about activism, history, archaeology, preservation, museums, and liberal arts education.
    Emily Stewart is a student in Virginia Tech's History MA program. She will earn her Master's degree in May, 2020. Emily completed her undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech where she majored in History. Her current research focuses on Virginia educational history in the twentieth century. Her master's thesis focuses on the relationship between standardization and segregation of Virginia public education in the early twentieth century. Throughout her studies at Virginia Tech, Emily has always been interested in oral histories. The Voices of Virginia project presented her with an ideal opportunity to further cultivate her interest in the field of oral and public history.