Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ plan to reorganize several city departments won’t be legally binding without approval by the City Council, City Attorney Norman B. Sales said yesterday. At the request of several council members, Sales issued an opinion on the restructuring plan announced last week by the Jones administration. He said the city charter gives Chief Administrative Officer Byron C. Marshall the power to temporarily reassign employees under his control but reserves for the council the authority to alter or reorganize city departments.

Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ administration announced yesterday its first shakeup of City Hall with a plan to create a consolidated Department of Economic and Community Development. Peter H. Chapman, who was hired this summer as deputy chief administrative officer for economic and community development, will lead the new department, which will control the city’s real estate holdings and its business-development financing programs.

Debate over the Echo Harbour development project proposed for the city’s riverfront began with differing visions. It gradually evolved into a test of wills—and now borders on a war of attrition. This trajectory is guaranteed to resolve nothing and satisfy nobody. Rachel Flynn, the city’s director of community development, has made plain her distaste for the condominium project. In April, she flatly refused the suggestion of a planning commissioner that her department review language submitted by the developers: “We’ve been talking with these developers for three years,“ she said. “We don’t agree. We’re not compromising anymore. If you want to compromise with them, go ahead.“

The building heights recommended by Richmond’s new downtown master plan aren’t the only obstacles to a proposed high-rise along the James River. Before the Echo Harbour development can be considered by the City Council, the Department of Community Development is requiring the developers to provide new and revised technical plans and studies on various aspects of the project.

Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones took control of City Hall in January, promising an era of openness in the administration’s dealings with the City Council and reporters. “I’m going to take the muzzle off,“ he said, referring to employees who feared a backlash from Mayor L. Douglas Wilder if they spoke to council members or the news media.

Richmond’s top planning and building official blames the collapse of the historic Eggleston Hotel on its owners’ slow response to years of urging from the city to repair the blighted building.

No one can accuse Rachel Flynn of being in the developers’ hip pocket. Richmond’s director of community development occasionally has irked the city’s moneyed interests with an inclusive, communitarian approach; she sees development as a collaborative process that grows from the ground up, rather than being imposed from on high (as her direction of the rewriting of the city’s Master Plan demonstrated). So her positive assessment of a condominium plan in the eastern part of the city ought to carry some weight with those who view the proposal with a jaundiced eye.

As the Richmond City Council is creating more favorable conditions for a proposed development on the James River, Mayor L. Douglas Wilder is reminding that the city could forcefully buy the land and preserve it as a park.

The proposed First Freedom Center in Richmond’s historic Shockoe Slip has a new look. The development, which awaits consideration by the city’s Commission of Architectural Review, would include two hotels and a center devoted to the study of religious freedom.