WINCHESTER — Once upon a time on a street called Loudoun, a group of shop owners saw change on the horizon.
Shopping habits were changing, they realized, and more and more customers were overlooking downtown businesses and flocking to newfangled strip malls and shopping centers to make all their purchases in one location.
If these businesses were to survive, the downtown stores had to do something drastic: Create their own shopping center by shutting down two blocks of one of the Winchester’s most heavily traveled streets.
And that’s how the Loudoun Street Mall was born.
On Saturday morning, some of the business owners and government leaders who envisioned and created Virginia’s first pedestrian mall gathered to celebrate its 50th anniversary in front of Murphy Beverage at 167 N. Loudoun St., which was a Kinney Shoes store when the new Loudoun Street Mall opened to the public on Nov. 21, 1974.
“Fifty years ago, our city leaders made a bold gamble,” Winchester Mayor David Smith said at the onset of Saturday’s celebration that was attended by about 40 people including former mayors Betsy Helm, Gary Chrisman and Liz Minor. “They said, ‘If we build the first pedestrian mall in the commonwealth, it will set our city apart by creating a downtown center unlike any other … (I)f we engage the community and bring community members, stakeholders and business owners into the planning process as partners, we can build something that will serve our city for generations to come.'”
That gamble led to the formation of the Downtown Development Committee, a group of Old Town business owners — Helm, Irvin Shendow, Julius Armel, William Duncan, Lewis Ebert, Larry Goodyear, Ray Jennings, Frank Loy, Jimmy Wilkins, John Lewis and David Juergens — who worked with Rouss City Hall in the early 1970s to conceive a plan for shutting down two blocks of a one-way street, covering it with bricks and adding planters for landscaping.
“I know this may come as a shock but some folks back then were opposed to planned development,” Smith said, referring to the reluctance of some store owners and citizens who believed downtown would suffer if customers couldn’t park in front of the shops.
But it was apparent that the same old same old wasn’t going to cut it. The writing had been on the wall since 1964, when the Montgomery Ward department store on Loudoun Street left downtown to take up residence in Winchester’s first shopping center, Ward Plaza on Valley Avenue.
“We knew something had to be done. It couldn’t just be status quo,” Shendow, who owns Bell’s Fine Clothing at 122 N. Loudoun St., said on Saturday morning.
In 1970, Shendow became chairman of the Downtown Development Committee and set to work determining the best ways for Old Town to succeed.
The committee started its work by referring to a 1964 report called “Downtown Progress” that had been prepared by Jack Davis, who was then general manager of The Winchester Evening Star; John Larson, vice president of marketing for Potomac Edison Power Co.; and local architect C. Thomas Cooper. “Downtown Progress” predicted that a mall could rejuvenate downtown, but the one it envisioned would still allow vehicles to use Loudoun Street and park using pull-off bays.
Shendow said it was Downtown Development Committee member Jennings who first suggested converting the two-block portion of Loudoun Street into a pedestrian mall because the road was only 46 feet wide and would never be able to fully accommodate traffic for the retail stores.
“He stayed on that idea, he harped on that idea until we all came around to his way of thinking,” Shendow said.
The committee took the $8,000 it had on hand and hired a designer, Dave Myer of Ohio, to draw up plans for a walking mall. Shendow said he took those plans to City Council, whose members said there was no money for the project.
“The committee got back together and came up with a plan where there was going to be a special tax district — a primary district and a secondary district,” Shendow said, referring to a special tax that continues to be assessed on Old Town businesses in order to support the development and upkeep of downtown.
Shendow said the next hurdle was convincing Old Town entrepreneurs to pay more in taxes. They were helped in that effort by Hable’s Real Estate, which owned and leased out about 35% of downtown buildings and realized it could start losing tenants to outlying shopping centers.
However, Winchester could not legally impose a special tax without permission from Virginia’s General Assembly, so state Sen. William Truban came to the city’s aid and introduced enabling legislation.
“It passed and it gave Winchester the authority to do the taxation,” Shendow said. “That’s how we came up with the ability to fund the mall.”
The conversion of Loudoun Street began shortly after 1974’s Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival and wrapped up about six months later.
“Did we know at the time that we sent out to do this it was going to work to this degree? I cannot say that we did,” Shendow said. “But we knew we had to do something and I’m so glad we had the people here to step up and make it happen.”
The first few years of the Loudoun Street Mall were a tremendous success, but trouble arose in 1982 with the opening of the Apple Blossom Mall, Winchester’s first indoor shopping mall. The state-of-the-art Apple Blossom Mall became too enticing for many of downtown’s biggest retailers to resist, so the Loudoun Street Mall lost three major department stores: Leggett (now Belk), Sears and JC Penney.
Meanwhile, the George Washington Hotel on East Piccadilly Street, one block away from the Loudoun Street Mall, had transformed into an assisted-living facility for the region’s less fortunate. From 1978 until the facility’s closure in 1993, many of its residents spent their days hanging out on the walking mall, and many customers stopped shopping there because they no longer liked the atmosphere.
Heading into the 2000s, the Old Town pedestrian mall was a shadow of its former self. Many storefronts were empty, and many others were only open for limited hours. For the most part, the Loudoun Street Mall became a ghost town on nights and weekends.
Its rebirth came in 2013 when Winchester used the opportunity of replacing underground utility lines on Loudoun Street to resurface the mall and add amenities to make it a hub for community activities. From then to now, the Loudoun Street Mall has remained a top destination for people who live in or visit the city.
“Whenever I recruit new employees, or whenever I want to show off the town to businesses that might want to locate here, this is the first place we take them,” City Manager Dan Hoffman said of the Loudoun Street Mall. “For all of you who have invested so much time and energy and treasure into making this what it is today, I assure you it is in good hands. We will continue to focus on the prosperity of the walking mall, and we will continue to welcome people from all over the world who discover Winchester here on the mall.”
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