'Better to Regret the Things You Do Than the Things You Haven't'
Ward 2 candidate Joy Crump says: “What I want Fredericksburg to be is what it already is.”
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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If you want to see Fredericksburg’s past, and the foundation for its future, through the eyes of Joy Crump, who is running for City Council in Ward 2, stand where she stood when she was first thinking of moving here.
“I remember being at Hyperion on the corner,” she told the Advance during an interview on Wednesday, “and walking down Caroline Street” at Thanksgiving time. “It was the Great Train Race, and I remember seeing adults dressed like turkeys and running with their kids, and I thought, ‘This is cool.’ That is what drew me in.”
That scene was a bit of a culture shock for Crump, who grew up in Pennsylvania, graduated from Penn State University, then worked in Los Angeles for about a decade where she worked in film and television development before moving to Atlanta where she worked in television and attended culinary school.
But shock quickly shifted to endearment. She was in Fredericksburg that November day with Beth Black, whom she met in Atlanta and has family here. Shortly thereafter, she became a resident of the city.
Moving here in 2010, Crump opened Foode in 2011 with Black, and now owns and operates the Mercantile, and an event venue.
Asked how she sees the future of Fredericksburg developing, Crump said: “What I want Fredericksburg to be is what it already is.”
That does not mean, however, that Crump wants the city to stand still. Quite the opposite. Indeed, she’s acutely aware of the issues that face the city, and the implications these issues have for its future.
And she sees in Ward 2 many of the issues that are concerning to all the wards.
One of those is data centers.
“Everyone is grappling with what happens if they come,” she told the Advance. “I think it’s irresponsible to not have them.” The revenue that these will bring, she argues, will enable the city to afford to do some of the things that everyone wants. Among those are affording and keeping skilled first-responders, supplying the school system with everything it needs, and making some headway on affordable housing.
How one addresses the latter issue, she admits, is challenging, and must be done on an “issue-by-issue” basis.
“This city,” she said, “is made up of people who cannot afford to live here.” However, there are a “nice band of opportunities here” via the hospital and the university in particular, for entry level jobs that people can go on to build careers out of, as well as make a decent living.
“Unfortunately,” she continued, “a lot of those jobs do not produce the revenue one needs to live here. So when something [like data centers] comes along that allows you to engage in projects” to address this issue, we should take it.
“The starter homes are where we need help,” she said. “As long as we’re not just developing homes that are in one price point,” Crump believes that the city can help create the more-affordable pathways people need.
Asked about the tensions that define the city at the moment — debates over said data centers; how much growth, and what form it will take, in Fredericksburg; and the sharp economic inequalities — she says that she has a lot of faith in both the city’s staff and its people.
“I think our city staff is hard-working, smart, and committed to the people of Fredericksburg,” she said. “There’s more that we have in common than we don’t.”
She feels that way based in large measure on her experience here with her businesses.
From the people on her staff, to the people sitting around the tables at her establishments, Crump says that “we have relationships” with all of them, as well as organizations like Micah, St. George’s Episcopal Church, and First Baptist Church.”
“My brand at Foode is built on the fact that no matter where you live or come from or what your orientation or background is, you are welcome through our doors.”
Her ability to work with people across a wide swath of the city would motivate her work on City Council, were she to win. “I don’t want the vote to be 6-1,” she said. “I want to bring those topics to the table and find a way that we can all get to yes.”
In many ways, Crump sees in Fredericksburg today the same thing that she first saw at the Great Train Race some 15 years ago. A community.
All of us, she said, are “building this perfect place to live in real time. Our ideal community doesn’t look the same to everyone, but mostly, we’re pretty damn close.” So we can pick and choose the ideas that we like and “together, create this amalgamation of a medium town” that works for us all.
But stand still and do nothing? That’s not in Crump’s character.
“Better to regret the things you do,” she said, pulling on the quote her father often used, “than the things you haven’t.”
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