Wheels keep on turning
The City tackles traffic from signals to bikes to gnarly street crossings
Mixed signals
Whenever City and County officials talk about traffic, the message is always an ode to regional cooperation. The traffic problem is bigger than any one jurisdiction, they say, so Charlottesville and Albemarle have to work together for everyone’s benefit. Isn’t that sweet?
So why is it that when officials actually do something about traffic, minor decisions turn into melodramatic turf battles?
When the City started building a traffic light at the entrance to the new Best Buy store on 29N, Albemarle flipped its lid. Recent City-County studies indicate the highway needs fewer stoplights, not more, and the County claims City Council didn’t give it a heads-up that Best Buy was moving in and that the store would require a stoplight.
"They knew damn well about it," counters Jim Tolbert, the City’s planning director. "We communicated with County staff about the light. It wasn’t a secret."
Tolbert says Best Buy started asking for a light in January. About that time, the City’s traffic engineer resigned, so the City hired consultants Kimley Horn to do a study. In April, Kimley Horn apparently found that Best Buy indeed needed a light, and Tolbert says he talked to the County’s planning department about it back then.
On April 14, County planning director Wayne Cillemberg sent Tolbert a letter thanking him for the Best Buy site plan and asking the City not to build a median break and signal for the store, claiming it would have "detrimental impacts" on traffic.
"The City never responded to the letter," says County Supervisor Dennis Rooker.
Albemarle wasn’t alone in the dark, however. Kevin Lynch, City Council’s representative to the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a regional transportation planning body, says he didn’t know about the light either. Lynch says that as recently as August, City staff told him there wasn’t going to be a new signal at Best Buy.
According to Tolbert, the Best Buy light isn’t really a new signal. It’s simply a "modification" to the existing signal at the 250 ramp, and the Best Buy light will run in synch with the 250 signal and the one at 29N and Angus Road.
"Technically they’re correct, but that’s a bit of a semantic leap," says Lynch. "I was surprised it went through without my knowledge, and I can see why the County was, too."
After all this, Butch Davies, the local liaison to the Virginia Department of Transporation, sent Mayor Maurice Cox a letter chastising the City for building the light without local dialogue. The County got a copy of the letter, and they made sure to send a copy to the Daily Progress––the official version of "Nanynany booboo, you got in trouble."
This is your bureaucracy at work, people. If our leaders can’t build a simple signal without a Clintonian debate about what a "light" is, or rounds of playground finger-pointing, how can we expect them to solve the real traffic problems that will come when the County builds Albemarle Place, projected to spit out almost 40,000 cars per day into the Hydraulic Road intersection? Almost makes us yearn for the old days when VDOT would just stomp into town with plans for some monstrous interchange nobody wanted. Almost.
A yellow bike comeback?
Last year, the City unveiled its Dave Matthews Band-funded "yellow bike" program to great fanfare. The City built yellow bike racks around town and filled them with refurbished yellow cycles, which were promptly stolen and gone forever. Burned, local bike enthusiasts plan to reinvent the program as a "bike library."
Developer and DMB manager Coran Capshaw donated warehouse space at a former car dealership near West Main’s Hampton Inn to the new yellow bike program. The space is filled with donated bikes that still need to be repaired. "It looks like endless bikes in there," says program coordinator Stephen Bach.
Bach is trying to recruit volunteers to fix up the bikes for the bike library. Instead of painting the bikes yellow and placing them around town, people who need a bike will come to the warehouse and borrow a bike for a deposit of $20. "If they bring the bike back
in useable condition, they get the $20 back," Bach says.
Bach says he needs about 10 volunteers working a regular basis before he can open the library, which he insists will not merely be an opportunity for dishonest people to "buy" a bike for $20. "We’ll want the bikes back," he says.
Look both ways
When the Music Resource Center moves into the former Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street, the children who use the MRC will have to brave one of Charlottesville’s gnarliest intersections.
Even for able-bodied adults, the intersection of Ridge/ McIntire, West Main, Water and South streets is like a game of Frogger, especially between 3pm and 5:30pm, when kids will likely be heading in and out of the MRC. The lack of bike lanes around the busy intersection make it even more hostile to youngsters.
MRC director and 25-year City resident Sibley Johns says she remembers when you could "shoot through" that intersection. "Now it’s quite a tangle," she says. "At that location, we think we’re going to attract a lot more kids, and most of our kids come on foot," says Johns. She says the MRC may establish a buddy system for kids walking home at night. "To be honest, we haven’t gotten that far, but it is something we’ll be sensitive to."
No matter how you cross the intersection, you always seem to end up scampering away from oncoming cars, and running that pedestrian gauntlet has become a joke for the employees of Category 4, an Internet company next door to Mt. Zion.
"We always say there needs to be a bridge. It’s a pain in the ass to cross," says Category 4’s Robin Stevens. "It’s especially hard for businesses on West Main, because there’s no link to Downtown. Also, I think there needs to be a tree at the corner of South Street and Ridge. That’s the hottest intersection in Charlottesville, because you’re standing there for freakin’ ever."
Edgard and Maj-Gun Mansoor, who run Mansoor’s Oriental art and gift shop at the corner of Ridge and West Main, however, say the intersection is no big deal. "Not for us, anyway," says Maj-Gun. Edgard says crossing Ridge before the intersection is easier than navigating the crosswalks near the Lewis and Clark statue. "I guess I’m breaking the law," he confesses.
The City plans to address the intersection as part of its plans to remake West Main Street and link it with Downtown. The work of Philadelphia architects WRT on that project is on hold, though, pending the recommendations of a "transit forum" the City plans to hold in October. So far, WRT has only recommended closing South Street to traffic, but the intersection will need a more extensive treatment if the City wants people—including young musicians—to walk between West Main and Downtown.––John Borgmeyer
Clothes to you
If threads make the man, this guy could be Dean Martin
The Downtown Mall is many things, including a catwalk of sorts. A casual stroll there affords you the spectrum of men’s fashions, from the stiff Burberry-wearing corporatista to the ratty skater punk in Fourstar cargo shorts. By the time you get to the east end of the pedestrian walkway, however, you’ll notice something distinctive and unexpected. Outside one of the City’s few remaining haberdasheries is likely to be relaxing a young man of slick hair and princely posture who wouldn’t look out of place with Frank, Dean, Joey and the rest of the Rat Pack. Wearing an impeccably tailored shirt and slacks, it’s clear this man is thoroughly comfortable in what he wears, even as his attire stands out like a Vivaldi rose in a cornfield. That comfort, Joseph Falvella will tell you, is the mark of a truly fashionable man.
"To each his own is the way I see it. I don’t fault anybody for what they wear," he says. A salesman at The Men & Boy’s Shop and a veritable poster board for a kind of custom-made fashion that seems to have faded away, the distinctive Falvella is hesitant to pinpoint his style. On a recent Monday afternoon, the reluctant fashionista wore his traditional garb of gray cotton shirt with a straight collar, tan suspenders, patterned tie—both of woven silk—brown worsted wool trousers, and two-tone leather spectators.
"When I was growing up, I always used to see my grandfather—he was a car salesman—always have on a nice shirt and a tie and pair of slacks. And it was always a nice clean-cut look," the New Jersey-born Falvella says. "Used to be, pretty much everybody wore a nice shirt and slacks. Nobody left the house without a hat."
That attention to detail in men’s clothing is something that Falvella, 28, feels is lost.
"I think people settle for going to your big box department stores, rooting around for stuff by themselves, not getting waited on. Thinking they know what size they wear. And most people just accept that that’s the way its supposed to be," he says.
Most men aren’t interested in shopping, so they don’t mind getting their fashions like their fast food—in a hurry. And while there are plenty of stores that cater to that "get it and throw it on" mentality, Falvella, a loyal employee who has worked at owner Michael Kidd’s store for 10 years, says, not surprisingly, that fellas can still find attentive service at The Men & Boy’s Shop.
"I’ve got guys who bought suits 10 years ago and they come back and they say ‘Hey, I need the waist taken in or the pants adjusted.’ No problem," Falvella says. "I think that’s where we’ve got most places beat."
But even a Dapper Dan like Falvella will allow himself a little fashion break on the weekend.
"I don’t own sweats. I don’t own tennis shoes. I’m comfortable in dress slacks and a shirt. Granted, I don’t walk around mowing the grass in a necktie. I’ll take that off, " he says.
Pressed to describe his style, Falvella says he likes to wear clothes with natural fibers that are "classic and traditional, but in a stylish, sporty sense." But he still resists offering any advice for the fashion-impaired.
"Whatever makes that person happy. It’s their hard-earned money that they’re spending on something for themselves. If they’re happy in it and they’re comfortable in it, that’s the bottom line."—Jennifer Pullinger
Charge of the light brigade
LED leaders Inova to brighten Water Street
At 11pm, the corner at Water and Second streets is dark. The only light emits from the buzzing fixtures on the side of the Water Street parking garage, the dull yellow of four lamps in the adjacent parking lot, and a smattering of streetlights. But this fall, the corner will look a little more like Times Square, bathed in moving light as the new City Center for Contemporary Arts—housing Live Arts, Second Street Gallery and LightHouse—will open, sporting 40-foot-plus signs not unlike those seen outside the studios of "Good Morning America." The urban décor comes courtesy of a big player on the computerized-signage market—one that just happens to live down the street. Introducing Inova, the biggest company in Charlottesville you’ve never heard of.
You might not know about Inova, but you’ve doubtless noticed its building. It’s the one visible from Belmont Bridge with the jumping dancer hanging off the side just above the office of Inova founder and CEO Tom Hubbard, who started the company with his wife, Wendy, in 1984. Back then, Inova was an enterprise for reselling LED (light-emitting diode) signs. In the years since the company has become a force in the technology market, creating its own hardware—shipping nearly 1,000 signs a year—and creating a software package that has been installed in nearly 3,000 locations worldwide.
The Inova lobby looks in to the "burn-in" room. There, dozens of signs stream information in a continuous loop: the weather, headline news, a quote of the day. As Seth Wood, Inova’s marketing guy, explains, if LED signs like these fail, it’s usually within the first few days of start-up. So to keep from sending its clients lemons, Inova runs the signs non-stop for several days to work out the bugs.
Wood says the company’s clients fall largely into two groups, telephone call-in centers (translated: telemarketers) and transportation systems. It has sold wallboards to airports and subway systems in Los Angeles; Chicago; Ft. Worth, Texas; and Washington, D.C., where Inova LEDs inform Metro passengers of delays, security alerts and more.
But this serious business is a diminishing part of Inova’s focus. "Our business is changing right now," Hubbard says. "We’re a technology company and we constantly have to innovate, adapt and anticipate the reality of what’s down the road. What’s happening is we’ve become more and more of a software company." The LightLink software that allows clients to tailor LED messages and which is Inova’s latest push, costs between $10,000 and $100,000 depending on the complexity of the system.
On the local front, Inova has kept mostly quiet—none of the signs or products is readily available to Charlottesvillians. That will change with the new C3A building, which will feature three signs from Inova—two 26′ signs along the Water Street front, which will overlap for a total of approximately 41′, and a 3′ sign on the Second Street side that should be visible from Central Place on the Downtown Mall.
Live Arts Artistic Director John Gibson brought Inova into the project after partnering with the company for a gala fundraiser five years ago. "When we started thinking about the new building and thinking about distinctive Central Virginia businesses that we would enjoy being associated with and that could make a meaningful contribution to the building, Inova was at the top of our list," he says.
Inova donated all the signage to the project, using excess materials and extra staff power. These mark the largest signs the company has ever made. Given that normal signs range from $2,500 to $20,000, that’s a substantial contribution.
No one is saying whether the signs will be ready for C3A’s late-October opening, and whether they’ll run 24/7. But once they’re up, Live Arts will determine the messages that run across the screens, a prospect that makes Gibson roar with delight. "I have lots of ideas," he says cryptically. "It will definitely be worth keeping an eye on that space."—Eric Rezsnyak