Ticket sales were down this year at the Albemarle County Fair, which wrapped up yesterday—they sold 11,000 tickets, rather than the 16,000 that they generally sell. Though pretty hot (which was nothing a little lemonade couldn’t help with), the weather was otherwise sunny and nice this time around, so it’s not clear to what to attribute the decline in attendance. After a series of rained-out fairs for some years, they’ve finally had a run of dry weather in the past few years, but it hasn’t been enough. Adam Rhew reports for NBC 29 that fair organizers are thinking about running it only every other year, since they think they may have actually lost money this year.
Supervisor David Sluzky has started pushing transferrable development rights (TDRs) again, Charlottesville Tomorrow reports. The Weldon Cooper Center is hosting a series of discussions about whether creating a development-rights market would be helpful in shaping growth in Albemarle County. The meetings are including stakeholders from all of the major local groups interested in the topic. Now that state law has enabled the county to do so, Sluzky has renewed his efforts to establish such a system, despite the BoS’ prior disinterest. I’m not smart enough to know if TDRs are a great idea, but I know I’ll be the first in line to sell my development rights.
On C-Ville’s “This Just In” blog, Chiara Canzi writes that CHO is looking for people to pretend to be victims of a plane crash as a part of a emergency preparedness drill. I drove by the airport the other day and saw that they had a simulator set up at the far end of the runway, which is presumably what they’ll be using for this. If you’re interested in being made up to look like you just survived a terrible accident, the Office of Emergency Management is the place for you. And, for god’s sake, post the photos to Flickr.
Bryan McKenzie wrote about former city councilor Rob Schilling’s show on WINA yesterday in the Progress, highlighting how the Republican is using his knowledge of city government to act as an outside agitator. (I’m a sucker for local media articles about other local media outlets.) The Schilling Show is firmly conservative and anti-establishment, and features the sort of guest lineup that you’d expect—Agnes Cross-White, Rick Turner, Ken Boyd, Keith Drake, etc. The city Democrats quoted in the piece are less than thrilled with the show, describing him and his show as “full of ridicule” and “a lot of hot air stitched together by a fair amount of blatant demagoguery.” Recent interviews are archived on the page’s webpage—decide for yourself.
There’s increased suspicion of secret dealings between the city and the Charlottesville Parking Center, Rachana Dixit writes in the Daily Progress:
A rejected bidder for the Charlottesville Parking Center’s assets is filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the city, the latest development in an ongoing saga on whether the city will attempt to purchase CPC’s shares.
Spencer Connerat, formerly of Collective Resources Corp. and a CPC stockholder, said the suit is an attempt to force the city to specify if and when it inked a confidentiality agreement with the CPC. Such an agreement would be needed to allow the city to bid on CPC’s assets.
Connerat claimed city officials did not disclose the agreement’s date, and have not responded to his requests to get the information. The action was sent to the city’s General District Court last week.
All of this is over the open, paid lot on Water St:
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The Hook has been following this story for a while, and Hawes Spencer recently wrote about CPC’s odd rejection of a pair of private bids, leading some to suspect that CPC expects the city to come in with a higher price. The lot first went on the market three years ago, and Spencer called shenanigans on the whole thing last spring. So the suspicion that this isn’t entirely on the up-and-up isn’t totally out of the blue.
I’ve heard people remark about the large number of vacant spaces on the Downtown Mall recently, something we haven’t seen much of since about fifteen years ago. Henry Graff reports for NBC-29 that the real estate might be empty, but it’s spoken for. Only 3% of all Downtown Mall spaces are vacant, while everything else that looks shut down is undergoing renovations or have leases pending.
It looks like the debate over the Downtown Mall bricks got interesting when I wasn’t paying attention. Dave McNair writes in this week’s Hook about the question of why the city isn’t reusing the existing bricks to rebrick the Mall. Since the new surface will use bricks of the same dimensions as the current ones, and since the city’s own estimate is that 80% of the bricks are in good shape, it stands to reason that they could be reused. McNair points out that a similar project in Columbus put high school students to work de-mortaring bricks to prep them to be laid anew. I’m yet to see a price tag on the actual cost of new bricks, only the $7M figure for the entire overhaul, but it seems like an option well worth exploring.
Local food banks are in a bad way, Scott Shenk writes in today’s Daily Progress, facing strong increases in demand with corresponding increases in donations. Both the Emergency Food Bank and the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank report increases of 200-300% over this time last year, forcing them to cut off supplies to needy families. Things are toughest in the summer, since kids don’t have access to the daily subsidized breakfasts and lunches that they do during the school year. The need, of course, is for more people to donate food.
The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which covers about a third of Virginia, gets a lot of their food from grocery stores, while the church-run Emergency Food Bank relies heavily on individual donations and canned food drives. I called and asked a few months ago, and the BRAFB isn’t really keen on people just showing up with food, but you can contribute at area grocery stores. [Update: The BRAFB says you’re welcome to bring food to them, too, despite what they told me.] I’m partial to the Emergency Food Bank, who is thrilled to have people arrange to come by with a sack or two of canned soups, boxes of cereal, tins of tuna, etc.—e-mail them to arrange a contribution, if you’re able to help.
Dave Matthews Band saxophone player, Charlottesvillian, and all-around wonderful human being LeRoi Moore died a few hours ago. Band management issued a statement this evening:
LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. Moore had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.
LeRoi was 46 years old.
Many Johnson Elementary students can now walk to school, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress, thanks to the Safe Routes to School program. Two new trails were put in recently, resulting in “throngs of people” using the paths to get kids from Johnson Village to the school yesterday. Not only is the exercise great for kids, but reducing the demand on the bus system is always helpful.
08/23: Actually, the city had a neighboring developer pay for this, in collaboration with the city—not Safe Routes to School.
A local fellow is proposing a pedestrian bridge over the Rivanna, Tracy Clemons reports for NBC-29, for what sounds like a pretty sensible reason. As Pantops continues to develop—a process that will accelerate considerably with Martha Jefferson moving there—it’s becoming a sort of a black hole of pedestrianism. Though the whole area is just across the river from the Woolen Mills, the route to the extended downtown residential area requires following the bypass clear down to Long St. before turning onto High. This is the area in question:
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That’s a two, maybe two and a half mile trip, a considerable obstacle to anybody wanting to commute on foot or by bike. At this point, it’s just an idea: what it would cost or if there’s even any sense to the idea, nobody’s saying. But if the Pantops area is to continue to develop, as it undoubtedly will, it stands to reason that it will need a viable non-vehicular point of access to the rest of town. Is this it?
7:40pm Update: Sean Tubbs provided a way more detailed article about this for Charlottesville Tomorrow two days ago, from whose blog I assume NBC-29 got their story. Daily Progress reporters get used to seeing their stories appear on NBC-29 a few hours later, but taking stories from blogs without attribution is rather a new phenomenon.
Charlottesville’s black population is shifting into the county, Stephanie Kassab writes in today’s Daily Progress. UVa’s Weldon Cooper Center’s Qian Cai has just finished an analysis of census data and population trends, finding that the city’s black population has dropped by 756 in the past seven years; in the same period the county’s black population climbed by a strikingly coincidental 757. Cai is quick to point out that these estimates don’t tell her why this shift is taking place, only that it is happening, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this is the inevitable result of Charlottesville becoming an awfully expensive place to live. Mayor Dave Norris points out in that this has been the trend since the destruction of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood in the 1960s. The effect is the opposite of the white flight that has defined urban centers since the 1950s.
The county is trying to figure out what to do in the face of declining revenues, Brandon Shulletta wrote in the Progress a few days ago, so they’re surveying citizens about whether we’re willing to pay more taxes for services. Though the numbers aren’t in yet, Albemarle anticipates a steep drop in income, what with declining property values, so either services have to be cut or taxes have to be raised. The state is facing the same shortfalls, which may well result in a cut of funding to localities, as happened in 2002. Ultimately, it’s up to the BoS to make the call on what to do, but survey results will help them figure out what the public wants.
A fourth brewery is being built in the area, Brian McNeill writes in the Progress today. The Devil’s Backbone brewery is preparing to open near Nellysford, complementing Afton’s Blue Mountain Brewery and Farm, Charlottesville’s South Street Brewery, and Crozet’s Starr Hill Brewery. This newest brewery intends to offer a Helles, a Vienna lager, a hefeweizen and an IPA. We’ve got lots of folks drawn to the area in part to visit wineries, so the prospect of beer tourism is certainly an attractive specter, and that’s precisely what local breweries are planning.
I despise sign spam, those wireframe-cardboard signs illegally (§18-4.15.7) stuck up along roadways. Anecdotally, the scourge of these eyesores has increased quite a bit in the past year or two. One needs only spend a few minutes driving on secondary roads in northern Virginia to know how really, really bad things could get if nothing changes. So I’m glad to see that Albemarle and VDOT are considering teaming up to solve the problem, paying a $25/sign bounty to folks who pull them up and turn them in. VDOT imposes a $100 fine against the advertised business for each sign posted illegally, so the math works out on this. Here’s hoping that the Board of Supervisors (and City Council!) has the wisdom to make this happen. I’ll be the first in line to collect on it, my car piled high with signs.
09/02 Update: This story just isn’t true. Keep reading for the explanation and the correct story.
Continue reading ‘Sign Spam Bounty Proposed’
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