Media General is selling the Daily Progress‘ offices, predictably enough. Though the property assessed at $4M a year ago, the utter collapse of the real estate industry has probably reduced significantly the value of the building. This may, in retrospect, look like the absolute worst time to try to unload 29,000 square feet of commercial space. The fact that they’re doing it now speaks to how hard up that Media General must be for an infusion of cash.
Though it’s possible that this could be a really great opportunity for the paper to become decentralized and nimble (as one former employee pointed out in July), it seems more likely that this will mark the beginning of a painful slide for the paper. With the slim publication consisting of more and more wire stories, printed in Richmond, and owned by a Richmond-headquartered media conglomerate, it’s tough to see the Progress as a local paper anymore. If the value of advertising continues to slide, the economy stays in the tank, and the format in which news is delivered continues to change (witness Detroit’s dailies curtailing of home delivery and the Christian Science Monitor going weekly and web-based), it’s possible that Charlottesville will prove too small of a market to support a daily newspaper. What happens then is anybody’s guess.
- Bricks on 5th St. NE get pulled up, back in November, as a demo of the work to come.
The Downtown Mall rebricking has begun, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. Beginning at Central Place, the $7.5M project will work outward from there, continuing six days a week for the next four months. The city did a legendarily terrible job working with merchants when the Downtown Mall was initially constructed, and did little better when bricking over 3rd St. last year. This time around they’re working closely with merchants, timing the work to avoid disruption, even skipping work on Saturdays, at the request of businesses. But lots of downtown merchants remain dubious of the whole project, fearful that it will be more expensive, more disruptive, and lengthier than the city has promised.
Want to follow obsessively each day’s progress? You’ve got a couple of options. There’s C-Ville Weekly’s “Brick Watch!” And there’s also, impressively, the city’s own blog dedicated to the project, complete with a Flickrstream. (Though all their photos are copyrighted, rather than being released into the Creative Commons, so I’ve had to illustrate this with an old photo of my own. That’s my sole quibble in an otherwise great effort.)
The Board of Supervisors has selected Rio District representative David Slutzky as its new chair, replacing Ken Boyd, of the Rivanna District, the county has announced via press release. But the shift is more than geographic—Slutzky is probably the most liberal member of the board, while Boyd is surely the most conservative. With the election of White Hall District’s Anne Mallek in 2007, the BoS became majority-Democratic. (Mallek was named the BoS’ vice chair today.) Slutzky can drive conservative Republicans to distraction, so expect today’s change to lead to some anger and hand-wringing in some quarters of the county.
Much of the Downtown Mall redevelopment work is being done by out-of-town firm, Dave McNair writes in this week’s Hook. Local firms bid on the work, but they were beat out by companies in Norfolk, Maryland, and Michigan. Only two of the seven contracts went to local businesses. One of the owners of those local businesses complains that while they pay reasonable wages, the out of town companies are trucking in guys for $8/hour. The city seems to be in an awkward position here, not least of which is that state procurement laws (which the city has to function under) only allow them to prefer local firms when there’s a tie between two bidders. But more than that, the city’s got to get this job done as inexpensively as possible…but they’ve also got to keep local businesses happy. And those two things are, as we can see here, often at odds.
A third-party efficiency review has recommended some ways to cut costs in city schools, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. The 331-page report recommends $17M in savings, coming from closing an elementary school and eliminating six of its assistant principals (about half of them), thirteen teachers, and 62 of the instructional assistants (again, about half), among dozens of other recommendations. Interestingly, the report makes no recommendation for eliminating staff at the school system’s central office, suggesting only a “restructing” that would be “revenue neutral.”
It looks like the Albemarle Planning Commission is going to maintain their prohibition on windmills at their meeting on Tuesday. County staff has recommended that the county revisit the topic in two years and, in the meantime, study how other localities in Virginia have handled any problems that they might present. Sean Tubbs covered the PC meeting on this topic in May, and found that there was significant disagreement among commission members about how to move forward. So the solution that the county has come up with is to continue to prohibit this form of renewable energy.
JMU conducted a study of wind energy on Buck’s Elbow a few years ago and found that it’s a great source of wind energy. The Southwest Mountains and the whole eastern slope of the Blue Ridge are excellent locations for windmills. My latest power bill was breathtaking, a result of Dominion’s latest price hike. I’ve looking hard at installing a Skystream, since I live in up in the Southwest Mountains, though I guess that’s not going to happen. If you’re interested in relying less on coal and foreign oil, and want to consider small wind, check out JMU’s Virginia Wind Energy Collaborative. But that’s about all you’ll be able to do, I guess. (Unless you’ve got an in with your representative on the Planning Commission.)
A reader who wishes to remain anonymous writes:
The hotel is coming to a stop again. All the workers came by a store at break today for munchies and said it was on hold for at least three months and the crane was actually coming down. Drove by Mid-AM and everyone was loading equipment on a truck.
The story is that the new developer will take three months to get up to speed before they can start again.
The saga of the Landmark Hotel has been tough to keep up with. Here’s hoping that they open up that lane on Water Street during this work stoppage. And I don’t know what the deal is with 2nd St. SE being closed between Water and South, but if that’s got anything to do with the Landmark, it sure would be helpful if that would open again, too.
UVA Dean of Admissions Jack Blackburn has succumbed to liver cancer. The 67-year-old held the position since 1985, and was popular and respected enough that $1.5M was just raised to establish scholarships in his name, the university points out in a statement on his death. He’d planned to retire in June.
The memorial service will be held at Westminster Presbyterian at 11 AM on Saturday, followed by a reception at Alumni Hall.
Charlottesville Sheriff Cornelia Johnson won’t be running for reelection, CBS 19 reports. First elected in 1998, the former down beat cop became the city’s first black, female officer in 1976 and was only the second female sheriff in the whole of the state. Her third term wraps up at the end of this year.
Reader J.L. tells me that Capt. Mike Baird, who works for Johnson, will be running for the seat, announcing his candidacy on Friday at 11 AM at the circuit court.
Should city and county schools consolidate into a single school system? That question gets raised periodically, and Will Goldsmith is chewing it over in the latest C-Ville Weekly. The city’s recent school efficiency study didn’t address the topic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering. City school board member Llezelle Dugger tells the paper that it’s just not viable, but Albemarle school board member Brian Wheeler thinks it’s well worth spending some time looking at it.
The notion of combining services has been around for a long time, as has the idea that we should just combine the two entities entirely. The word “reversion” still prompts shudders in the veterans of the mid-90s township wars, when some folks were pushing to have the city demoted to a town in order to force cooperation between the entities. Some sort of large-scale collaboration may allow the revenue sharing agreement to be set aside, or at least absorbed into the largest costs of running joint services, and that might be good for everybody.
The Albemarle Planning Commission gave the thumbs-up to windmills, Fania Gordon reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. In a unanimous vote, they directed staff to come up with an ordinance to let people put up small-scale windmills to generate power. County engineer Mark Graham explained that the conflict will come from wanting to preserve viewsheds and trees, but also wanting to generate sustainable energy. (For a windmill to be useful, it’s got to be above the treetops, whether by making it tall or chopping down some trees.) And four members of the public attended, all speaking out in favor of allowing wind energy in Albemarle. There’s no law in place yet, but there’s a consensus that they need to move towards allowing windmills. The next step is to massage a proposal from county staff into something that’s politically tenable, which will likely come in the next few months.
The developers behind the massive Biscuit Run project say it’s on hold, Tasha Kates writes in today’s Daily Progress, a result of the collapsed housing market. You’ll recall that Biscuit Run was sold to developers by the Breedens for $46M three years ago, and that the county calculated that the development would cost us the taxpayers $222M, but that we’re basically powerless to prevent it, so it was approved a year and a half ago. The planned 3,100 houses are to be located just south of town, but since nobody appears to be able to sell any existing houses right now, building new ones wouldn’t make any sense at all.
The YMCA is dramatically shrinking the size of their planned McIntire Park facility, Rachana Dixit reports in the Progress. Recall that the city gave away $2M of public park to the Young Men’s Christian Association after the group agreed to build the facility and allow the Charlottesville High School swim team to have priority to the $1.25M lap pool (which the city paid for). The 75,000 square foot facility has shrunk by a third to 50,000 square feet, which the organization says is a result of a lack of donations because of a tight economy. They need to raise $15M, but they’re stuck at $7.5M. The good news is that the softball fields aren’t going anywhere. The smaller size of the building means that there’s no longer any reason to tear them up.
Chicken farmer and faux celebrity Tommy Garrett has subpoenaed me for evidence in his lawsuit against The Hook. In the incredibly overbroad subpoena, his attorney asks for full documentation about any time I have ever communicated with anybody, ever, about Garrett or the lawsuit, along with everything I know about everybody who posted a comment to my blog entry about the case: names, e-mail address, IP addresses, etc. The idea that I could have any information relevant to this case is absurd, since I hadn’t written a word about the matter (or even heard of Garrett) until after his lawsuit had been filed.
What Garrett and his attorney may not know is that I’ve got a bit of a history of not taking any guff on the legal front—I was among the plaintiffs who took the youth curfew case up to the Supreme Court in the mid-90s, and I prevailed when Mattel came after me in federal court in 2000. So rest assured that I don’t intend to give up a thing unless compelled to do so by a court. Unfortunately, “hiring a lawyer to quash a subpoena” doesn’t appear in our household budget, so I’m acting as my own attorney here. But, hey, I’ve been exploring getting a law degree, so here’s a chance for a crash course. The requested information appears to be variously irrelevant, unnecessary to the case, confidential, and privileged.
I’d chalked up Garrett as a harmless kook, and pitied the guy enough that I’d resolved to basically ignore this matter save to cover the aspect of a local media outlet being sued. But my perspective is now considerably less charitable.
Charlottesville’s assessors have found that the value of property has increased in town, Henry Graff reports for NBC 29, and that will be reflected in real estate tax bills. On average, the increase is 2-3%, but some folks will see much higher jumps. Some Fifeville homes are up 18%, the gentrified 10th and Page is up 9%, and Belmont is up 8%. If you’re in Greenbrier, you’re in luck, tax-wise—that’s dropping 10%, on average.
Remember that assessments are based on the actual sale property of houses in a given neighborhood, with houses that haven’t sold recently being estimated based on comparable homes in the area. If you think your assessment is wrong, remember that you can appeal it. (But be honest with yourself. How much would you want for your house to sell it right now?) Next up: the debate over where to set the tax rate.
UVa bought the Econo Lodge on Emmett St. using a pseudonym, Will Goldsmith reports for C-Ville Weekly. They paid $6M back in May under the name “Meadow Creek II Corporation,” rather than as the UVa Foundation, which is the name of the corporation that holds the university’s property. They’ve never made their acquisition public—it’s Goldsmith who discovered it.
This is interesting because of the university’s relationship with adjacent landowners and the city itself. When UVa acquires land, it’s taken out of the tax base of the municipality, so their physical expansion is not particularly welcomed by the city or the county. (Hence the interest in UVa’s recent announcement that they’re looking to grow up, not out.) Some of the folks who own property adjacent to the university see themselves as holding the line against the school’s sprawl, so it’s reasonable to speculate that UVa used an alternate name to circumvent the prior owner’s reluctance to sell, and presumably to bargain for a lower price than might otherwise be exacted from the university. I can’t see that there’s anything illegal about that—there’s even an argument to be made that it’s a smart use of public funds—but if that is what’s going on, this does mark a new tack for the growing university.
Note, too, that the Daily Progress records a building permit to Meadow Creek II for 1600 Gordon Avenue, indicating at least one other property on the fringes of the university is owned by the corporation.
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