As the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Downtown Mall approaches in 2026, the city of Charlottesville is looking to make some improvements. The Downtown Mall Action Plan presented to city council outlines stakeholders’ priorities and suggested next steps, with a focus on the Mall as a public space.
“The goal was not to resolve, or even identify, every issue related to the Mall, which will be an ongoing process for the City,” reads an excerpt of the report, “but to begin to serve as a starting point for that process.”
The plan is the culmination of over a year of discussions by the Downtown Mall Committee, comprising more than a dozen local business owners, residents, nonprofits, students, and city leaders.
The report’s 22 recommendations are split into organizational, programming, and amenity categories. Four items of particularly high priority are: to have staff consistently on the Mall to bolster cleanliness and safety, to implement the Tree Management Plan, to create a lighting plan and guidelines that account for safety and aesthetics, and to “re-imagine the outdoor café spaces.”
“These four priority items, I think, [are] just a place of where do we start first,” says Greer Achenbach, Executive Director of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown and Downtown Mall Committee member.
At the core of all 22 action items is the idea of the Downtown Mall as a public space. When landscape architect Lawrence Halprin designed it in the early 1970s, there was significant emphasis on the Mall as a place for the community. Recommendations—including the installation of a permanent public restroom, increasing and improving public transit to the area, reconsideration of outdoor dining spaces, the restoration of Halprin chairs (movable wooden-backed seats designed by Halprin himself), and the addition of more public seating—are all aimed at improving the utility of the Mall as a communal space.
With more than a year spent considering the various elements of the Mall and its role in the community, it is now up to the city and other local actors to move from discussion to implementation.
“These are not new ideas; a lot of these things have been talked about in the community for a long time,” says Achenbach. “I’m just so thankful that we’re all getting together to specifically write it down and make a plan on how to make it happen.”
Many of the Downtown Mall Action Plan’s recommendations closely align with the goals of Friends of Charlottesville Downtown, and Achenbach anticipates working with the city on implementation.
“What I have learned over the past year is that we have a special amenity out there that has a lot of passion associated with it,” said City Manager Sam Sanders at the conclusion of the action plan’s presentation and discussion by councilors on May 20. “One of my priorities is … to recognize the Mall as the amenity that it is for the entire community.”