The Albemarle County Historical Society has a great collection of old photos of downtown on their website, most dating from the 50s and 60s. It’s fun to try to match up the old images with modern day downtown; some are easy, but a few I haven’t managed to figure out yet. Some of the pictures document the demolition of Main Street and its subsequent replacement with the Downtown Mall. Seeing how disruptive the whole process was, it’s amazing that any businesses survived the process. There are a few familiar names on the signs, though, so it clearly worked out for some folks.
Archive for July, 2006
Dan Kachur hosts this week’s C’ville Blog Carnival, having selected his favorite blog entries from the past week and highlighted them for your reading pleasure.
As the town charter requires every so often (2003, 2001), a cow escaped from the livestock market on Franklin Street recently, leading police on a chase down Locust and Meadow down into the Rivanna before grazing on the fourth hole at the Meadowcreek Golf Course, Rob Seal reports in today’s Progress. Along the way she charged a woman and her dog and narrowly missed being tranquilized by an animal control officer.
What really makes the article is this quote: “Pumpkin was getting married that day, and we just couldn’t continue to chase it.” I hope that’s the Progress‘ quote of the day.
City Councilor David Brown has been selected for a second term as mayor, WINA reports on their unlinkable website. Council members also selected Kendra Hamilton as the new vice mayor, replacing Kevin Lynch. This biennial shuffle results from Julian Taliaferro and Dave Norris, who won the May election, joining Council last night for their first session.
It was one year ago this month that 18-year-old runner Kelly Watt died from the effects of heat stroke after training in 100° heat. Now Runner’s World magazine has an extended feature about him, entitled “The Last Run.” Writer Amby Burfoot lays out the narrative of Kelly’s run, medical crisis, and what’s gone on in his family’s life since. Even if you think you already know the story, it’s well worth the read.
The Board of Supervisors is facing a tough situation: a proposed new development in an area without enough groundwater to support the new population, but they don’t have the power to prevent it. Jessica Kitchin writes in today’s Daily Progress that the Glen Oaks subdivision, south of 250 in eastern Albemarle, intends to create thirty new lots despite members of the nearby Running Deer subdivision often lacking enough water for their own needs. Although the 2004 groundwater ordinance requires developers to assess whether there’s enough water available, it prevents the county from rejecting a development on that basis.
The developer figures that if he were allowed to spread the houses out more, there might be more water available. But the problem posed by this is larger than the immediate concern. Why in the world must we permit new developments to be built when we lack the resources to support them? Must property rights amount to a metaphorical murder-suicide pact?
This past semester’s Community Food Systems class in UVa’s Department of Urban and Environmental Planning conducted an extensive study of the food system in Central Virginia in order to assess how able we are to provide ourselves with food. The resulting paper (684k PDF) is just wonderful. They looked at farms, distributors, grocery stores, restaurants and food banks to determine where our food comes from, how much it costs, and to whom it’s accessible. The document concludes by identifying seventeen barriers to food production, processing, distribution, consumption and waste, with each accompanied by recommendations for how those barriers can be overcome. Along the way there are some fascinating maps and research results that provide a revealing look at Charlottesville’s demographics.
I’m having a hard time describing this without making it sound dry. In fact, this is forty seven page document is very much worth your time. I believe it’s the most interesting thing I’ve read about Charlottesville in quite some time—I’ll be chewing over these results for months.
07/06 Update: Dang, I knew this seemed familiar — Sean Tubbs interviewed the class members back in May, in a twenty-five minute story.
Animal shelter pressure group The No Kill Advocacy Center writes in their latest newsletter that in 2005 the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA saved 87% of their dogs and 67% of their cats, but that things have improved since new director Susanne Kogut came on board:
So far this year, 95% of the dogs are leaving the shelter alive. If that holds, Charlottesville, VA will become the safest community in the U.S. for dogs. As for cats, saving 7 out of 10 makes them the envy of most communities in the nation. But, once again, Kogut wants more.
Impressive! Thanks to Dave for the tip.
I’m told that downtown entertainer and Mudhouse chess maven Carl Carter passed away a couple of months ago. It was cancer that did it. He was in Tennessee at the time. Nobody who saw Carl could forget him, performing on the Downtown Mall in a clown costume, wearing a pig nose, fairy wings, waving a rubber chicken and playing violin or a child’s keyboard. He was almost always in character, but would drop it long enough for a chess game or a good conversation. Claudia Pinto interviewed him for the Progress a few years ago, but that article is no longer in their archives. Like Dancing Man or Singing Lady, Carl will long be remembered.
In Saturday’s Daily Progress, Jessica Kitchin and Rob Seal wrote that Qroe will continue with their plans to develop Bundoran Farm, despite the death of two top company officials in a plane crash on the property last month. Company CEO Robert Baldwin died in the accident, but his son, who has taken over the business, says that there should be no delay in moving forward with the project.
The good news is that violent crime has dropped in Albemarle and Charlottesville this year: homicides are down 100% in Albemarle and 50% in Charlottesville; rapes are down 19% in the county and 22% in the city; and aggravated assaults are down 12% in the county and 13% in the city. The bad news is that theft is on the increase — it’s up by 50% in Albemarle and 31% in Charlottesville. This after years of declines in burglaries in the county, dropping annually from 2000 to 2004. Given the small number of actual crimes (88 burglaries in Charlottesville from January 1 - May 31), police figure that this is a result of a small burglary ring at work. These break-ins are happening not at night, as was going on last year, but in the daytime, when people are less likely to be home. Note that the Albemarle statistics are just for the first quarter, while Charlottesville’s are for the first five months of the year. Rob Seal has the story in today’s Daily Progress.
Albemarle county provides some aggregate crime statistics on their website, while Charlottesville provides only this puzzling chart. I wish the area police departments would provide raw incident data on their site — date, time, crime classification and block address — to permit citizens to find out exactly what’s going on in their neighborhood or, better yet, compile their own crime statistics. I’d love to put together a Google map plotting crime locations over time, create a scatterplot of crime trends, or create an RSS feed to track auto thefts.
On the heels of the Albemarle School Board’s announcement they’ll be providing MP3s of each meeting, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors now has a podcast of their meetings. (The difference between a series of MP3s and a podcast being that it’s possible to subscribe to a podcast, whereas MP3s have to be sought out and downloaded individually.) The only problem is the size of the files — the July 5 meeting is an enormous 94MB. It’s properly compressed and is fine in all technical senses; the problem is that the meeting is a staggering seven hours long. Bravo to Albemarle County for putting together this great resource. (Via Charlottesville Tomorrow)
As long as I’m writing about podcasts, Albemarle High School principal Matt Haas has his own podcast, though it’s been expanded to include audio from other events of interest to AHS students and parents.
The ginormous sinkhole on Rt. 29 is back. It’s nine feet deep, seventeen feet wide, and it’s getting bigger. Southbound 29 in front of the Seminole Commons shopping center is down to one lane. Presumably it’s caused by the same drainage problems that caused it last year, indicating that repair crews probably didn’t fix the problem, just its sinkhole symptom. VDOT intends to get the road opened in a couple of days. I think we’d give them a whole week if they could make sure it wouldn’t happen again next year.
City Council has sold off downtown’s free parking lots over the past fifteen years, transitioning to a private model in which the city relies on the Charlottesville Parking Corporation’s garages and open lot to provide adequate parking for those who live, work, and visit downtown. Last year the rates increased by 50% an hour, from $1.00 to $1.50. Now the hourly rates are going up again, from $1.50 to $2.00. (The Water Street garage stays $0.50 behind the other spots, and is just now going from $1.00 to $1.50.) In today’s Daily Progress article about the change, John Yellig and Liesel Nowak toss out this bit without further elaboration:
In March, CPC raised the fee downtown businesses pay to validate customers’ parking stubs. Under the program, a business can stamp a paying customer’s ticket for up to two hours of free parking. The minimum fee went from $60 to $75 per month, but larger businesses saw higher increases, [CPC President Bob] Stroh said.
Motorists will no longer be able to use the two-hour validations at the Water Street lot.
(Emphasis mine.)
It’s not clear to me whether that means that the Water Street lot will not accept any validated tickets, or just not two-hour validated tickets, but in either case, I worry that this is the camel’s nose in the tent. 
The model for parking under which City Council has eliminated the free lots has been one in which the merchants foot the bill for customers and employees to park downtown. It’s awkward for out-of-town visitors, but it’s basically worked. Eliminating validated parking would completely change the model.
Something that I can’t fit into this puzzle is last year’s news that this very lot on Water Street is for sale. That chunk of land has been assessed at $7M, which must make it a tempting sale for CPC shareholders. But the company, established in 1959, has always prided itself on having a mission of providing inexpensive parking downtown rather than profit-seeking, so it’s not clear how the two interests intertwine.
As a private enterprise, CPC can do whatever it likes; if they want to charge $50/hour and the right to take your car on a joyride, that’s their business. Here’s hoping that the two garages — unlike the open lot — are governed by arrangements with the city that would prevent the elimination of validation. If the city has allowed itself to become dependent on CPC for parking without ensuring that the company would continue to provide free-to-visitors parking, that would be a tremendously nearsighted move.
UVa Dean of African-American Affairs M. Rick Turner has been placed on administrative leave after admitting that he lied to federal investigators in a drug investigation, Bob Gibson reported in Friday’s Daily Progress. Turner signed an agreement with the U.S. District Court stating that he’d intentionally misled investigators about “the activities of a known drug dealer,” placing him on a year of probation with the feds to avoid prosecution. Turner will be assigned a probation officer and will have to be tested regularly for illegal drug use in order to keep the charges at bay. What in the world is going on remains unclear, but presumably more information will become available this week.
Last year Money Magazine ranked Charlottesville #90 on their Best Places to Live listing. (Or, as David Sewell rightly named it, “Best Places to Live if You Have Lots of Money and Don’t Like Living Around Poor People.”) Good news, kids: we didn’t make the list at all this year. And with Reston, Columbia, and Cherry Hill all featured , I’ll think of this as a list of 100 places I’d never want to live. Fort Collins, CO, we wish you luck with your inevitable unsustainable growth.
cvillenews.com reader Brent has started a new community blog, hburgnews, which is to Harrisonburg as this site is to Charlottesville. I know there are a bunch of regular readers of this site who are closer to Harrisonburg than they are to C’ville — I hope y’all will get in the habit of reading and contributing to hburgnews and help build up the valley blogosphere.
Courteney Stuart broke the story in last week’s Hook that the Pregnancy Center has received $645,000 in federal funding to teach Christian-premised, abstinence-only sex education in local schools. The small organization should be thrilled with the substantial allotment, but has attempted to keep things quiet, treating Stuart with a suspicion when she called to inquire. They intend to teach the “Why kNOw” curriculum, which is a scare-based program that teaches that sex outside of marriage will ruin your life and that homosexuals should remain forever abstinent.
The Pregnancy Center was the subject of an alarming investigative article by The Cavalier Daily’s Leah Nylen, in which it was revealed that the group provides information to women that is demonstrably false and damagingly so, including that the birth control pill can cause cervical cancer, breast cancer, increased risk of AIDS, and infertility; that emergency contraception causes an abortion, rather than preventing conception; and that abortifacient RU-486 causes heart attacks, birth defects, and infertility. The organization is fundamentally opposed to contraceptives. Worst of all, studies show that this approach to sex ed results in kids having sex without condoms, has no impact on STD rates, and doesn’t actually stop kids from having sex.
The Pregnancy Center has broken their press silence and conducted an interview with Bob Gibson for today’s Daily Progress, in which their executive director states that their goal is to get their program into city schools. In order to do so, they’ll have to be placed on a list of approved speakers by the school board. Won’t that be an adventure?
It wasn’t that long ago that I took the required “family life” classes at WAHS. Trying to teach an abstinence-only course to my class would have gotten the teacher heckled out of the classroom. I can’t imagine it’d go much better this time around.
Inspired by Charlottesville blogging alumnus David St. Lawrence’s Floyd blogger gatherings, I think some of us local bloggers, blog commenters, blog readers, and would-be bloggers should get together informal-like. A half dozen of us got together for breakfast at Bodo’s about a month ago and had a fine time. It was great to put faces with names, swap advice and get to know one another.
I figure Sunday, 2pm, C’ville Coffee on Harris Street, and we’ll hang out for an hour or so. The spot is kid friendly, has WiFi, and has a relaxed environment conducive to this sort of thing. Even if you’re not a blogger, but you’d like to be, come on down and we’ll help you get started. Maybe I’ll be sitting alone, maybe there will be a dozen of us. Drop on in and find out.
Twenty-two year-old Adam Fargo, of Ruckersville, was killed by an IED in Baghdad yesterday morning, Liesel Nowak reports in today’s Daily Progress. The 101st Airborne medic was with a platoon responsible for keeping the route clear of IEDs. His vehicle hit an IED, killing Fargo and seriously injuring others.
Fargo’s death is the second of local boys, the first being Bradley Arms’ 2004 death in Fallujah. The war hit home again this May, when UVa graduate Kimberly Dozier was seriously injured in an IED attack.
The parents of the 13-year-old convicted in the school bombing plot have conducted an interview with The Hook’s Hawes Spencer, providing more details than ever in the matter. It’s clearer than ever that the boy and his family were railroaded by the police, both privately and in the media. Though his conviction isn’t operative because he’s appealed to a higher court, he’s not having much luck getting into schools — most area private schools won’t even talk to him, least of all consider him as an applicant. It’s not clear who benefits by this kid not getting a high school education.
At last, our long county nightmare is over. Just in case our hundreds of thousands of square feet of excess retail space currently under construction comes up short — something that keeps me up at nights — Richmond-based New Era Properties has submitted plans to the county to rezone 87 acres just north of 64, Jessica Kitchin reports in today’s Progress. They plan a whopping 400,000 square feet (or 9 acres) of commercial space, featuring department stores and a large home improvement store. There is no plan for a residential component.
In an article about podcasting — touching on Sean Tubbs Charlottesville Podcasting Network and Albemarle County’s podcasting of BoS and School Board meetings — WCAV announces that they have launched a podcasting service on their own. It’s a proper, full-on video podcast, with an RSS feed, properly-created Quicktime video, and only minor validation problems.
I griped about their lack of a video podcast in August of last year, forecasting that they’d probably never get around to it. I’m very happy to have been wrong about that. I can’t pick up any local TV stations at home, so I expect to watch these news updates regularly.
This isn’t quite the first local media podcast (The Hook claimed that mantle last week, and The Daily Progress has promoted podcasts by Charlottesville Podcasting Network, but they haven’t any of their own) but it is, oddly, the first media outlet with an RSS feed. Bravo to the Newsplex (whose name is still ridiculous) for leading the way.
In a ginormous bust, state and local officials seized 4,400 marijuana plants from a garden behind a guy’s house just outside of Scottsville, Rob Seal reports in today’s Progress. Gary Peck, 51, had a patch of bamboo with a 10′ by 10′ area carved out in the middle to grow the plants. I figure that’s 3.2 square inches per plant, or 1.8″ by 1.8″ — I wish I could grow things in my garden at that density. Peck has been charged with manufacturing with intent to distribute. Police are carefully drying it to…uh…preserve it.
Embattled UVa Dean of African-American Affairs Rick Turner has announced that he’ll be retiring at the end of the month, the AP reports. He was suspended two weeks ago after pleading guilty to lying to federal investigators in a drug investigation, though the details of that matter are a mystery. Presumably they’re not pretty, given Turner’s decision; on the other hand, he’s 65, and perhaps he figured it was simply time to go.
A lot of the fire was taken out of his role at UVa when the school named a Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity last September. Prior to that Turner was known for his work at UVa and within the community, as the head of the local NAACP chapter, often issuing fiery charges of racism at anybody unlucky enough to find themselves on the wrong end of his standards.
C’ville blogger Jennifer has done something unusual for a local blogger — an interview. With a little guidance from the Daily Progress’s Bob Gibson, she talked with Parks & Recreation director Michael Svetz about the recent cut in pool hours. It turns out that there’s a lot more going on than the change in hours, including systemic classism in the pools system and inefficiencies in the existing pools. Patrons of city pools will want to read this.
It’s really great to see local bloggers doing research into local matters.
Climatologists agree that fossil fuel emissions are worsening global climate change. Except for UVa Professor Environmental Science Patrick J. Michaels, who I can only assume is a never-ending source of embarrassment to the university. Today comes the news that Michaels is on the payroll of power companies, having accepted $100,000 from one power company and planning to accept another $50,000 from another. Burning coal significantly harms our environment, and power companies are desperate to cover up that message, hence the sponsorship of Prof. Michaels. He says that he sees no conflict of interest in accepting the money. To the extent to which he claims to be a scientist, there’s a clear conflict. But if he would confess that he’s simply a lobbyist, it’d be business as usual.
28-year-old Jack Meyerhoff lived in Charlottesville for a time, attending PVCC, when he was arrested for committing acts of ecoterrorism in Oregon with others from the Earth Liberation Front. In this week’s Hook, Lisa Provence looks into Meyerhoff, discovering that he moved here to be with his girlfriend, Lacey Phillabaum, who briefly wrote for C-Ville Weekly and freelanced for The Hook. Meyerhoff has pleaded guilty to 54 counts of arson and conspiracy, which may earn him almost sixteen years in prison.
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