Hi, I am am also a strong believer in architects who can code. You won't get credibility from the development team (and often the develpoment manager, who can be the 'gatekeeper') without that. 

I also work in an environment where it's hard for me to directly make changes to trunk - there's a rigorous process to be followed, which I don't have the bandwidth to pursue for each of the things I want to happen. Initially this was very frustrating, but it has turned out to be beneficial! It has forced me to step back from the IDE, think harder about 'socialising' what I want to achieve, explaining the design, reviewing the code changes and generally getting more people involved with architectural issues and thinking.

By being obliged to push this out to others, it forces me to be a better communicator, think more carefully about the impact of changes on delivery schedules, customer constraints and all the other messy things that don't exist in an ivory tower. The developers know what's going on because they help make it happen, which makes them much more likely to stick with it and evangelise it amongst the team.

Cheers
Mike