Month: June 2003

These are interesting questions, but earlier today, I was copying a file to disk and the computer ate it. Now the computer will neither open the file nor read the disk. How can Charlottesville expect you to write encomiums to its greatness when your computer files are being eaten? Not that you care. No one in Charlottesville cares about my lost file. You want to hear about Charlottesville instead. Fine. Charlottesville is the best city of its size in central Virginia. Charlottesville is the longest one-word city name in America. Charlottesville means trees, nice people and a decent quality of life. Charlottesville means red bricks and white columns, which remind us of red bricks and white columns.

Anyway, it’s part of American culture to complain about where you live. “There’s nothing to do.” “The people are stupid.” Here is never as cool or good or rich or cultural as There. The people you know can’t possibly matter as much as the people out there in the vague beyond. It’s also part of American culture to say all places are the same—it’s what you make of them—or that you should be loyal to the place you live. There’s truth in all these statements, meaning that they’re all basically bullshit. People may be the same everywhere, but they’re organized very differently and that means a lot. Yet, no matter where you go they use pretty much the same file-eating computers.

Lately I haven’t much liked Charlottesville. First, what’s with the rain? It didn’t rain last year. Second, if this were such a great city, why are my computer files being eaten? What’s with computers? They can send a shuttle into orbit and almost bring it home, but they can’t make a damn computer that works.

With that, D&R Development was born. A big boost to the new company came in 1996, when Batten Rolph undersigned a $17.5 million loan to D&R from Wachovia bank. Danielson says that sum would have been impossible to obtain without Batten Rolph’s largesse.

“She was extremely instrumental in making the vision a reality,” Danielson says.

Rolph and Danielson seemed like an ideal match. Danielson played the role of the big-talking ideas man while Rolph’s reserved nature cast him as the silent partner with a fat billfold. According to a former D&R employee, they were close friends.

By the late ’90s Danielson and Rolph were certainly not the only people making big moves Downtown. Gabe Silverman, Charles Kabbash, Kuttner and Lewis all spent money on Mall or near-Mall properties believing that Downtown was changing. By all accounts, the competition was friendly, with developers sticking up for each other in the press. But the combination of Danielson’s personality (C-VILLE dubbed him “Central Virginia’s version of Donald Trump”) and Rolph’s checkbook made D&R Development the most powerful player.

“Having Lee and Colin come was great. It brought in more players, more people to push the envelope,” says Silverman. “They did something none of us would have done––the Ice Park and the movie theater. They could afford to take chances. They had more money, more chutzpah, you could say.”

In 1995, a smiling Toscano led a groundbreaking ceremony at a parking lot that, one year later, would become D&R’s flagship development, the $4 million Charlottesville Ice Park. Then, in summer 1996, D&R opened 200-212 W. Main with new tenants, Regal Cinema. (An ill-fated ice cream parlor and the steakhouse directly across from the movie theater were also among D&R projects during this period.)

The process leading to the cinema and ice park wasn’t smooth, however. D&R faced legal challenges from construction companies and the City. The BAR, which enforces aesthetic guidelines regarding Downtown architecture, spanked D&R when the company tried to put a stucco façade on the Regal Cinema building. The City also ordered D&R to replace several outdoor lights on the Ice Park. D&R complied, but not without public tirades from Danielson, who commanded the Planning Commission to “stay out of the way, period.” Danielson called for chief planner Satyendra Huja’s resignation and threatened never to build in Charlottesville again.

Danielson responded in 2000 to what he perceived as government roadblocks by forming a political action committee, Opportunity for All. During the City Council race that year, the pac sunk $20,000––a whopping sum in local politics––to support a business-friendly hybrid ticket of Republicans Jon Bright and Elizabeth Fortune, plus Democrat Meredith Richards. Opp for All also called 3,000 potential voters in what C-VILLE at the time branded a “push poll” to promote the controversial Meadowcreek Parkway.

There were other problems shrouding D&R, too. Faulconer Construction, which built the Ice Park, sued D&R in May 1996, charging that the developers had not paid a $326,000 bill. D&R settled the suit, but inside sources say the Ice Park’s construction was a fiasco that would haunt and ultimately doom the D&R partnership.

The company was structured like this: Rolph, Batten Rolph, Danielson and his wife, Barbara, acted as D&R’s four directors, with the women taking only a periphery interest and the men working together on day-to-day business. Danielson and Rolph each held 50 percent interest in D&R.

The pair set up limited liability companies (LLCs) for each property they purchased. For example, “Charlottesville 2000” held the Ice Park, while “Downtown Cinema Partners” held the Regal Cinema buildings. There were other LLCs for D&R’s three other holdings––the Exchange Center at 201-207 W. Main, which houses the Downtown Grille and the Southern Environmental Law Center; the four Wachovia buildings; and 200 E. Main, the former home of Boxer Learning. D&R also built a $4 million ice rink in Fredericksburg.

The strategy, says Danielson, was to keep each property a separate entity, “so one wouldn’t drag down the other.”

However, the Charlottesville Ice Park was “nowhere near” making money, according to sources close to the partnership, especially considering its expensive construction. Rolph was funneling D&R money into the Ice Park. Danielson objected to this, and, according to court documents, stated he wanted to shut the Ice Park down.

By 1997 the relationship had begun—perhaps inevitably—to deteriorate. According to a lawsuit filed by Rolph in Albemarle Circuit Court, Danielson asserted he was president of the company even after D&R hired Tim Slagle for that position in April 2000. Danielson fired some employees, Rolph rehired them. Danielson tried to change the locks on D&R’s offices to keep Rolph and Slagle out. Rolph’s suit says Danielson “refused to approve the application of funds to meet the financial obligations” of the company, “causing creditors’ invoices to remain unpaid.”

The conflict between Rolph and Danielson went much deeper than company leadership, however. D&R suffered significant debt. In 2001, the total appraised value of its properties was $10.8 million. But Danielson and Rolph each owed Wachovia $8.75 million dating from the bank’s $17.5 million loan to D&R in 1996. The company also owed First Union Bank (now merged with Wachovia) another $1.2 million on the Exchange Center building.

Furthermore, Rolph loaned Danielson “substantial sums” for personal expenses, according to court documents. In a deposition of Owen Strange, the attorney for Danielson’s father, Strange said, “As long as I’ve known [Lee], he’s been in debt. He’s a businessman.”

In a handwritten agreement dated 1996, Danielson promised to repay his debts from his share of his family’s inheritance, estimated at between $16 million and $19 million. But when Danielson began collecting the money in 2000, Rolph alleges, his partner refused to pay up.

In October 2001, with a quarterly interest payment coming due to Wachovia that D&R would be unable to pay, Rolph sued Danielson to dissolve the partnership and have its properties liquidated by a receiver. As a result of the lawsuit, Albemarle Circuit Court handed over all $10 million-plus of D&R’s holdings to developer Gaylon Beights. He was instructed to manage the properties and sell them for their “highest and best” value. Before the properties went to the open market, however, Rolph and Danielson each had a separate chance to buy them back. Danielson bought 200 E. Main and the Fredericksburg Ice Park, while Rolph purchased the Charlottesville Ice Park, the Regal Cinema building, the Exchange Center and the Wachovia buildings.

The court records are filled with Rolph’s account of Danielson’s transgressions, but they contain little of Danielson’s side of the collapse. A gag order forbids him from talking about the suit, but, naturally Danielson, who now lives in California, can’t stay silent.

“The great thing about real estate is that if one thing doesn’t work, you reconfigure it. But [Rolph] wasn’t willing to change anything about the operation,” Danielson says.

“The whole thing was mishandled from the beginning,” he says. “It never should have gone to court. In a business situation, you go through a business solution. Rolph was basically covering up his mistakes.”

Rolph would not speak on the record in response to Danielson’s comments.

Rolph referred queries about what he calls these “disputed” allegations to his attorney, Daniel G. Dannenbaum, who told C-VILLE “These are hust allegations in a court pleading. Nothing, obviously, has been proven.”

One person who claims not to know or care much about the Rolph and Danielson battle royale is Bruce Williamson. “All I know is what I read in the papers,” he says. “It’s not a matter that concerns us.”

His stance is curious, perhaps, because Williamson, along with three other partners––his wife, Roberta Bell Williamson, Robert Toby and Ellen Anderson––now owns the Charlottesville Ice Park. The four partners call themselves Acme Ice Company. They would not disclose the sale price, but the City assessed the Ice Park last year at $3.4 million.

Like Rolph, Williamson is a hockey fan, albeit a recent convert. “I learned to skate and play hockey two years ago,” he says. “I fell in love with playing goalie.”

Last year, Williamson says, at least one other party wanted to buy the Ice Park from Rolph and give the building a new use. But Rolph wanted to sell to someone who would retain the ice rink.

“We knew skating was in trouble,” says Williamson. “If we didn’t get the Ice Park, we would have built one.” He says there’s “zero” chance of the new owners dispensing with the ice.

The recent sale of some of what became Batten Rolph’s holdings––the Ice Park and the Wachovia buildings––signals the final demise of D&R. The properties that were once part of the ambitious Charlottesville 2000 vision are now in the hands of separate owners, each with his own vision. But now that the Mall has become the bona fide entertainment district Danielson believed it could be, the new owners are taking significantly less risk on the properties than did D&R.

“We’re not concerned with what happened in the past,” says Williamson. “The important thing is that those people had the vision to build this.”

Danielson left town in 2000 because, he says, his wife wanted to move back to California. “People thought I left town because I owe people money,” he says. Danielson says he doesn’t owe anybody anything, but that he lost “significant” money with the demise of D&R.

“Hello baby,” he says, “I’ve had to adjust my lifestyle dramatically.”

Danielson may be on the move again. His 8,000 square-foot home in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood is up for sale for $7.9 million, reduced from an original price of $10 million.

Rolph is still in Keswick and refuses to discuss Danielson. “What we did Downtown was nothing new,” Rolph says. “It happened in Santa Monica in the mid ’80s. It was the right place and the right time for Charlottesville.

“Whenever I come Downtown on a Friday, and see all the people, I’m proud of what we accomplished. I’m proud for all the restaurants and businesses, for everybody.”

Eure Communications owns three radio stations––WINA, 3WV, WQMZ––in a local market increasingly dominated by behemoth Clear Channel, which owns five stations and effectively flaunts regulations by running a sixth in a management agreement called a “time brokerage.” In 1996, the Telecommunications Act loosened restrictions on station ownership, and since then Clear Channel has bought up over 1,000 local stations nationwide. There are a total of 10 stations in the Charlottesville market; Eure says that under current rules, one company is allowed to own six stations in a market, but not more than half.

Eure’s parents founded the company more than 30 years ago in Petersburg. He took over in 1984 and moved the business to Charlottesville four years later. “I learned to do broadcasting by being involved in the community, to reflect the mores of the community in the programming,” he says.

Eure’s stations touch the main bases of commercial radio––WINA provides local news on the AM dial, 3WV offers what Eure says is more “male-oriented” programming, broadcasting from bars and letting fly with the occasional potty joke. When there are kids in the car, listeners can tune into WQMZ’s lite rock without fear, he says. Also, the Eure Communication Grant, in its second year, offers $50,000 in advertising to non-profits like the Salvation Army and Children, Youth and Family Services.

“It’s really important to know what’s going on in Charlottesville, and what’s important to each stations’ listeners,” Eure says. “You have to go beyond the music that you play.”

For 20 years, Alvin Edwards has held center stage at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. After serving as City Councilor and Mayor during the 1990s, Edwards remains an offstage player with one of the most important skills in local politics––the ability to fill a room.

Last year, the arrest of 10 black CHS students for assaults on white UVA students prompted renewed hand-wringing about race relations in Charlottesville. And Mt. Zion served as the rallying point for political leaders, community activists, parents and young people. A group called Citizens for a United Community emerged from those lengthy, sometimes heated gatherings. Two months ago, CUC held a mass meeting exposing the un-secret that race issues infest economics, housing, education, social habits and nearly all aspects of life in Charlottesville.

Just as the problems do not waver, nor does Edwards’ conviction that the purpose of all the gatherings has been “to heal the community.” Cynics will note the apparent incongruity in members of the town’s white elite joining hands and singing Negro spirituals, as they did at the close of the CUC meeting, and they’ll wait perhaps for this group to fizzle along with the promise of previous such collectives.

Nevertheless, the CUC is earnestly trying to address Charlottesville’s complex and deep-seated race problems. Charlottesville still has miles to go on the issue. Cynics and optimists alike can agree on that, and on the fact that Edwards deserves credit for getting the conversation started. Again.

City Planner Satyendra Huja recalls that when he arrived in Charlottesville in 1973, people told him to “go back to India with your crazy ideas.” Now, after 30 years, Huja is retiring with the proverbial last laugh.

When he came to town, businesses and residents were moving to Albemarle, and City leaders feared Downtown Charlottesville would soon be a husk of vacant buildings. Sprawl multiplied like bacteria along Route 29, with subdivisions and strip malls connected by wider roads and ever more spacious parking lots.

As Albemarle welcomed cars and pavement as agents of commercial growth, Huja took the opposite view. The way to save Downtown, he said, was to get rid of cars altogether. One of Huja’s first and most controversial big ideas was to turn E. Main Street into a pedestrian walkway in 1976.

For more than a decade afterward, the Downtown Mall felt like a ghost town after 5pm. People said it was a failure. But as the Mall added housing, restaurants and bars, it became one of the few such pedestrian malls in the nation to successfully concentrate jobs, homes and entertainment in a walkable space.

As the City’s lead planner, Huja enjoys the credit for eventual triumphs like the Mall. But his position also makes him a target for those on the losing end of the City’s agenda. Recently, Huja employed his disarming demeanor to assuage business owners on Preston Avenue who say a proposed City development there will ruin their businesses. He tried the same tack with renters on Prospect Avenue who fear the City’s plan to increase middle-class home ownership will push the poor out of Charlottesville.

Whenever the City acts as a developer, emotions run high. As the City grows more dense, more gentrified, and more crammed with boutique accessory stores, Huja’s name will be the one praised––or cursed.

The name John Grisham may not immediately bring the word philanthropist to people’s lips. His lucrative dynasty of legal thrillers tends to overshadow his gifts to humanitarian causes, but Grisham contributes far more to the community than take-a-number signings at New Dominion Bookshop once a year.

Last year, Grisham and his wife, Renee, donated $280,000 to the Legal Aid Justice Center, facilitating its move from the old Albemarle Hotel building on W. Main Street to the renovated Bruton Beauty Supply warehouse on Preston Avenue. He also chaired the advisory council for the center’s capital campaign, convincing other donors to pony up the total of more than $1.85 million necessary for Legal Aid’s relocation. Readers of his novels know Grisham to be a champion of those in need and his statement on the center’s website confirms that his beliefs are more than the work of fiction: “Legal Aid is at the center of the last line of defense for the basic civil liberties of the poor. If this line fails, we are all at risk.”

Need more reasons to praise Grisham? How about his generous donations to regional baseball. He sponsored the construction of the pristine Cove Creek Little League park in southern Albemarle and a stadium at St. Anne’s-Belfield. He is rumored to be an anonymous donor behind UVA’s new baseball complex, too. It’s nice to know the man’s John Hancock graces some well-placed checks to area causes and not just the title pages of his latest bestseller.

When Second Street Gallery Director Leah Stoddard moved to town in the summer of 1999 she intended to take some time off. But restlessness overtook her and she soon nabbed a gig as part-time development director of the City’s oldest independent gallery before quickly being promoted to executive director. The job, if not the title, suited her.

“I changed it to simply ‘director’ as I thought ‘executive’ sounded too daunting,” she says. “I wanted a kinder and gentler contemporary arts space.”

That sums up Stoddard’s vision for the 30-year-old gallery. “What I wanted to do, and I think a lot of museums/galleries are trying to do, is break down the elitist conception of arts spaces, but still maintain a level of scholarship,” she says.

Her work has paid off: Last year Second Street earned a $40,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation to support the organization’s innovative and scholarly presentations of contemporary art. The gallery will take it to the streets even more come fall, when it moves from its current location in the McGuffey Arts Center to a new, more accessible storefront in the soon-to-be-completed City Center for Contemporary Arts.

Stoddard sees the move as a huge boon for the organization—and the timing doesn’t hurt, either. “I am sort humbled by this,” she says. “Not only did I have to help design the space, but I have to do right by our 30th anniversary and put together an exhibition of the last 30 years. I’ve only been here three years and I’m just trying to do right by this organization’s impressive history and do it all justice.”

The blue anti-war signs that suddenly mushroomed across local lawns at the start of the year were but one indication that the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice stays on top of its game—even if membership numbers rise and fall like so many political fortunes. Founded 20 years ago as the Interfaith Peace Coalition, the group’s first agenda was to promote nuclear disarmament. In those days, they pressed City Council to declare Charlottesville a nuclear-free zone, an action they emulated in the spring when they spurred Council to pass a resolution in support of continued Iraqi weapons inspections and opposed to unilateral military action.

Through perseverance, outreach and well-timed public events (such as the free lecture by C-VILLE columnist Ted Rall), CCPJ kept the war debate alive and kicking during the early months of this year. The protests have dwindled and other stories preoccupy the ever-fickle national press, but CCPJ is not off the case. The mission now: Continue the dialogue about how citizens can respond non-violently to future political and military crises worldwide that are sure to arise.

By day, William Lewis runs his 15-year-old small copier business, Duplex Inc., on the Downtown Mall. By night, he’s a small-business counselor, a television show co-producer and mentor to at-risk kids—seven of them, to be precise.

Lewis’ show, co-produced with Greer Wilson, is appropriately dubbed “FYI” and runs on Government Access TV, Adelphia cable channel 10. In a one-on-one conversational format, the show tackles everyday issues like living with Alzheimer’s and features interviews with prominent African-Americans like UVA Dean of African-American Affairs Rick Turner and former Virginia Delegate Paul Harris.

In an upcoming installment, “FYI” will tackle death and dying—and how to pay for the sudden expenses. In the coming weeks, the seven protégés—all television producers from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center—will be hosting their own show, under the guidance of Lewis and Greer, of course.

“This is just one way for these kids to have up-close access to real business people that they otherwise may see as people they could never talk to,” says Lewis.

Forget Avril’s “Sk8ter Boi.” Energy & Rhythm proprietor Hawkins is the real “extreme” deal. The former pro snowboarder and current skateboard aficionado, designer and salesperson at the local skateboard shop has spent the past five years trying to make a positive scene for Charlottesville’s halfpipe crowd.

“I saw how much of a gap there was in between the kids and the sort of underground culture and there not being an actual meeting spot for that,” says Hawkins. “Aside from Barnes & Noble and the University itself there really wasn’t a centerpiece for information or a creative outlet. I felt like I had a lot of things I could share with the kids.”

So in 1998 the lifelong skater (he started at age 6) started Energy & Rhythm, moving it from its original Elliewood Avenue location to W. Main Street last year.

That’s not all. Hawkins got involved in the renovations at the McIntire Skate Park, presumably to do more than just build a dedicated clientele for his cool boards and related stuff. While he says the resulting park, finished in 2000, is only about 60 percent of what he had hoped for, Hawkins isn’t complaining. In short, he is thrilled to be the big kahuna of the local skater scene, which he figures numbers between 200 and 300 avid members ranging from ages 7 to their late 40s.

“I like the scene here, everybody knows each other,” he says. “It’s communal and super-cool, and not a lot of cliques. And I’ve tried to promote that sense of reality and brotherhood.”

Few people better embody the City’s dual nature—wanting at once to be a small town and to be the City (read: New York)—than Daphne Latham, the inspired hair and makeup artist who lends her talents to Live Arts (and runs her own business, Running with Scissors, by day). Raised by local jazz bluebloods John D’Earth and Dawn Thompson, Latham spent half her childhood in the bustle of the Big Apple and half in Charlottesville’s more sheltered environs. Lucky for us, the trend hasn’t changed.

Although Latham’s talent and sensibilities could easily sustain her in the metropolis, where she still spends much of her time, she has devoted a great deal of energy and hair gel to Live Arts. She became involved with the production of The Rocky Horror Show two and a half years ago, after meeting Live Arts board member Cate Andrews. Since then, audiences have seen Latham’s work—whether they’ve realized it or not—in about 17 productions, including The Wiz, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Wild Party and currently Bat Boy, in which she is also a featured actor.

“I didn’t ever know I was going to get involved in the way that I did,” says Latham, whose Running with Scissors business caters to private clients as well as stage, video and photo productions. “This year, because I’ve been so much more involved at Live Arts, I’ve spent less time in New York.

“That’s not a bad thing,” she hastens to add, then notes in typical Charlottesville form, “I didn’t used to say that I liked Charlottesville, but as I get older I really do.”

You’ve got to give Coran Capshaw his props. He struck gold managing Dave Matthews Band and could live comfortably anywhere in the world, yet he’s chosen to stay in Charlottesville––and piece by piece buy up the whole town.

Fittingly, he’s got the music market cornered. His Starr Hill Music Hall is the only stage in town for mid-level touring acts like The Wailers and local stars like Corey Harris. His Musictoday.com business hooks up music fans with all their favorite band paraphernalia. And Red Light management guides fledgling acts to the next levels of stardom.

Capshaw also has a restaurant empire, including Starr Hill Restaurant & Brewery, Blue Light Grill and, most recently, the Belmont tapas joint Mas. He’s a tough businessman, but he has softened his reputation as town father by donating thousands to local charities through the Charlottesville-Albemarle Foundation.

Now Capshaw is dipping his toe—well, his foot, leg and hip, actually—into real estate. Bulldozers are at work on a Capshaw-owned apartment complex across W. Main Street from Starr Hill. Whole chunks of Downtown are in his portfolio, too. But perhaps his biggest coup will come when he closes a deal with the City to manage the revamped Downtown Amphitheater, a deal that will draw on Capshaw’s many areas of expertise. The City is planning to pour millions of Federal and local dollars into a bus transfer center and pedestrian plaza on the east end of the Mall. The City wants to turn the amphitheater into a 5,000-seat outdoor pavilion better suited for big music acts, then lease it to Capshaw. Word has it he’ll probably open a restaurant there.

They filled a canyon-wide niche, namely for a cheap, fast and reliable Downtown lunch. For that reason alone, Dragana Katalina-Sun and Sun Da could earn a place among this year’s C-VILLE 20. But there’s more. The owners of Marco & Luca, a.k.a. the dumpling shop on Second Street, embody an American dream. Since they opened their closet-sized operation on December 31, 2001, the couple and their two adorable children (for whom the shop is named) have captured the imaginations—and stomachs—of hungry Downtown denizens.

They met in Germany in the mid-’90s, she a refugee from Bosnia and he a refugee from China. By 1999 they were transplanted to Charlottesville, beginning to dream of owning their own business.

“We wanted to bring the people quality and quantity,” says Dragana, “and we wanted to bring it to all kinds of people, all classes.

“We love that everyone can afford it,” she says. Indeed, at $2.50 for six fresh-made dumplings or $3 for a tub of sesame noodles, it’s no wonder Marco & Luca customers line up around the corner for their meals (Marco & Luca averages 120 customers per day).

“We love it here, so many people are so very friendly,” says Dragana. “My friend from Sweden was telling me just today that if you say hello to someone there, they look at you as if you’re insane.”

During his sophomore year as UVA Athletic Director Craig Littlepage has effectively declared his concentration: To pump up sports at UVA like so many linebackers on Androstenedione. It’s good news and bad news. A successful athletics program will pour even more tourist bucks into the local economy and make Charlottesville a top-tier destination within the state. But with that acclaim will come traffic congestion and possibly dilution of UVA’s academic reputation.

Littlepage must be betting on the positive side of the equation. Consider that $129 million basketball arena, which broke ground earlier this month and that theoretically will improve recruiting possibilities for coaches Gillen and Ryan even as it contributes to severe traffic congestion in the Ivy Road/Emmet Street neighborhood. Or the shiny new baseball stadium, which enjoyed a decent virgin year as the team went 29-25 for the season (but only 11-12 in the ACC). How about the NCAA championship-winning lacrosse team that prompted the question “Syracuse who?” among legions of ESPN viewers last month?

And then there’s the football program, by which we mean the Pep Band. The pigskin ’Hoos have been on the road to recovery for a couple of years already under Al Groh. But after the state of West Virginia threw a collective hissy fit over a satirical skit presented during halftime at a UVA-West Virginia away game, Littlepage evidently concluded that a big-time sports program is best served by something conservative and predictable—like a marching band. Littlepage has earned UVA notice for other reasons, too. The first black athletic director in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the former basketball coach last week was named Athletic Administrator of the Year by the Black Coaches Association. If all goes according to plan and UVA improves its rank in the sure-to-expand ACC, bringing more TV and promotional rights to the University in the bargain, Littlepage’s fame likely will grow brighter.

With a souring political climate internationally and increasing numbers of displaced persons, Susan Donovan’s work becomes ever more important. That’s because as regional director of the International Rescue Committee she helps settle more than 100 refugees in the area each year. When she took her present position in 1998, Donovan had lived in the City off and on for almost 15 years. She spent much of the ’80s traveling with IRC. She wanted to work with the group, she says, “because it’s so effective. It meets problems directly, without bureaucracy.”

IRC resettles 10 to 15 percent of the refugees who enter the country, and the Charlottesville office is the smallest in its 19-branch national network. The group opened an office here, Donovan says, because “Charlottesville is so welcoming and full of community spirit, and it’s so easy to network here.”

In addition to the City’s openness to newcomers, Donovan cites the region’s freakishly low unemployment rate (currently at 2.8 percent) as a bonus. Her office sponsors a refugee clinic at UVA and an interpreter service with bilingual speakers of 12 languages, including Serbo-Croatian, Burmese and Swahili. On June 20, Donovan’s office celebrates IRC’s 70th anniversary and World Refugee Day on the Downtown Mall. Meanwhile, Charlottesvillians can celebrate the countless contributions Donovan and her colleagues have made in the five-year history of the local IRC.

David Toscano

After 12 years in local government, attorney David Toscano is tucking a $6 million feather in his political cap.

As a former City Councilor and Mayor, Toscano witnessed the Downtown Mall’s evolution from sketchy dead zone to the center of Charlottesville’s social life. Now he’s overseeing a multi-million-dollar project to usher in the Mall’s next incarnation as a tourist net.

While building the Mall in 1976, the City ran out of money before it could finish an east end plaza. In 2001, Council decided that a $6.5 million Federal grant for alternative transportation could be used for a bus transfer station and pedestrian walkway outside City Hall. (The space is tentatively dubbed President’s Plaza, although Toscano is asking creative citizens to suggest a more inspired name.) The City also will pour local money into a Mall overhaul, including a new amphitheater, a complete rebricking and destination signage (may we suggest “This way to boutique-and-latte wonderland”?).

Council tapped Toscano to lead a steering committee of Downtown business owners. They’re supposed to be advising the project’s architects, although some members complain the committee is merely a rubber stamp for the City’s agenda.

Either way, Toscano is presiding over the biggest changes to Downtown since the Mall’s construction. As a Councilor, Toscano helped bring the Federal dollars to Charlottesville, and he helped get the project underway as the Feds warned Council to use the money or lose it. Just as 30 years ago a proposed change to the Mall engendered controversy, so does this transfer station project make some skittish. As a former elected official, Toscano is unfazed by the noise: His affinity for the give-and-take of politics is still making things happen in Charlottesville.

In the name of higher teacher’s compensation, eighth-grade civics teacher Margie Shepherd has been a major pinprick in the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors’ sides for years now. As President of the Albemarle Education Association, she’s not afraid to come out kicking.

At the March 12 Board of County Supervisors budget hearing, Shepherd, who teaches at J.T. Henley Middle School, stood before the large crowd and screamed into the microphone, “We get awards for excellence in our schools and you get awards for being too tight-fisted to give budget increases?” When it comes to bread-and-butter issues, Shepherd has a long history of yelling the loudest.

“You find the money,” she hollered at the Supes, referring to the 2003-04 fiscal budget. “It’s all in the priority!” The next month, they approved the 2003-04 school operations budget exceeding $104 million and coming in at $4 million above the previous year’s budget.

Victory is sweet, but Shepherd will continue to fight, she says.

“I think that the County School Board is headed in the right direction,” she says, “but the Supervisors are more concerned with keeping the budget low than they are doing the right thing by the students and educators.”

She has other fights up her sleeve, too, like extra planning time for teachers. “There’s been an increase in demands with no increase in teachers’ time,” she says. For the 2003-04 school year, Shepherd plans to add mentoring projects to her busy schedule—including a project for new teachers to be managed in conjunction with UVA.

That doesn’t mean she’ll lose sight of her core concern. Where advocating for teacher’s salaries is the matter, she says, “It’s definitely not a done deal!”

For an organization that previously operated in relative obscurity, the Charlottesville Downtown Foundation has taken a lot of heat in the past couple of months. Now nearly everyone knows the name of the non-profit group behind Court Days, the Dogwood Blues Festival and Fridays After 5. But the newfound fame does not come because CDF has been successful in its mission to promote the Historic Downtown area nor because it contributes profits to a slew of local charities. No, CDF’s notoriety arises from a $3 price tag—the fee the group attached this year to the Fridays’ gate, which for the previous 15 years had been free.

While it’s possible that no one will ever be able to tabulate the real value of a Foreigner concert (the ’80s rockers will play a rescheduled show at the Downtown Amphitheater on September 19), the public has offered plenty of other wisdom to CDF—to wit, find new sponsors, raise the beer prices, if you must, but for Pete’s sake keep Fridays free.

As if Fridays didn’t raise enough sparks, CDF’s already burned credibility (high employee turnover and a perception of mismanagement hasn’t helped) went to charcoal with the news last month that it would discontinue its annual Fourth of July fireworks display.