Such was the impact of Hurricane Gaston, which doused Richmond, Va., with at least 10 inches of rain on Aug. 31, 2004. When it was over, Gaston had produced what some newspapers called a 5,900-year rainfall event and a 2,500-year storm, killed nine people and caused a reported $120 million in damages throughout the mid-Atlantic states.
For many in Richmond, the storm's wrath was epitomized by the devastation of Shockoe Bottom, a historic riverside entertainment quarter. The popular restaurant and nightspot district is the lowest point in the city, and that's where the water went, tearing down buildings and tossing vehicles through the streets.
Today the district is back on its feet, the restaurants are open and perhaps most significantly, the city just completed the first phase of a two-stage effort to rehabilitate the faulty drainage system that failed to stop Gaston's floodwaters.
What Happened?
Chris Beschler, director of Richmond's Public Utilities talks about the "box" and the "arch," along with a malformed drop inlet system. As to the latter, intakes for the catch basin existed, "but they were in the wrong places in the gutter, and they were grossly, grossly undersized."
Add to this the box, a massive piece of underground infrastructure designed to gather local rainwater and feed it into a wastewater treatment area. The box has capacity problems because of the arch, a vast pipe in the shape of an inverted "U" that draws water from the higher parts of the city and dumps it into the box. It's more than the box can handle, and Shockoe Bottom has been routinely soaked even by mild thunderstorms for many years. The system couldn't possibly handle Gaston.
A $20 million drainage improvement effort has given many merchants the courage to return to Shockoe Bottom. The plan includes installation of nearly 100 gutter inlets, properly positioned this time. Engineers also have disconnected the arch from the box, so water from uphill now flows directly into the wastewater treatment plant.
The second phase of the plan calls for repairing a retention basin that hasn't functioned properly in years, Beschler said. The entire project is slated for completion in early 2009.
The first phase of the effort came in about one-third under budget, a fact Beschler attributes to good vendor prices thanks to fortuitous timing, after a project launch in January 2007. "With a construction project of that magnitude, you normally do not start working in the winter," he said, "but we wanted to keep the momentum going, and at that time of year the vendors wanted to keep their people working."
In addition to the long-range infrastructure effort, many Shockoe Bottom business owners appear to have been heartened by the city's more immediate response to the storm.
"The city did a fabulous job of cleaning it up very quickly," said Erika Gay, program manager of Venture Richmond, a downtown economic development and marketing nonprofit, formed in 2006 through the merger of four existing agencies.
"There were inches and inches of mud and debris left. Once those 8 feet of water went away, the city got rid of all that debris within a day or two," said Gay. "So when the business owners came back to see what had been damaged, they could see how much of it had already been cleaned up."
Business Returns
Just three months after the hurricane, The Washington Post declared the neighborhood "ready for visitors," and indeed, many restaurants and bars reopened speedily, though it took the better part of two years to get things back to where they had been before the storm. The last returnee was the popular bar Havana 59, considered by many to be an anchor to the neighborhood, Gay said. More than a dozen feet of water had filled the dining room.
Napier reopened in Shockoe Bottom 11 months after the storm. He scrambled to find the $200,000 he would need to restart his business, liquidating his personal assets for $100,000 and borrowing nearly $43,000 more from banks.
The city came through with a $57,000 grant, money drawn from funds generated by Department of Economic Development fundraising efforts. "That was really what made me able to get the restaurant reopened," Napier said.
As a federal disaster area, Richmond drew assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration. At the same time, local groups took an active role in efforts to get Shockoe Bottom back on its feet. The River District Alliance (now part of Venture Richmond) coordinated a "Back the Bottom" fund drive, with donations to be distributed among businesses that were most in need. The Economic Development Department managed the fund, which Gay said approached $200,000.
While the alliance previously marketed the river district as a whole, in the wake of Gaston, "we threw all our time and money into marketing Shockoe, telling people that ‘the Bottom is dry,' that businesses were open again," Gay said.
Numerous local media outlets made pro bono advertising space available. "The phone was ringing off the hook, anything from the Jewish Community Center wanting to give us ad space, to the Richmond Times-Dispatch," Gay said. "We usually did ads that included all the businesses in the river district, but for this we just listed the businesses in Shockoe Bottom."
The community effort culminated in the "Back the Bottom Relief Concert" in November 2004. Local music studio owner, David Lowery from the band Cracker helped orchestrate the event, which featured Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. The concert helped boost total local fundraising efforts to the $350,000 mark, according to published reports at the time.
Between city engineering and the support of local organizers, Shockoe Bottom has once again put itself on solid footing.
"It takes a long time for people to actually come back. You can't just say, ‘Oh, it's ready.' But they are coming back," Napier said. "Four new restaurants opened just this year. We have the only place in Richmond where you can walk down two blocks and see 10 different restaurants, none of them chains. People are now investing down here, and that will bring people back."
