Ease on down the road
City Attorney braces for a fight as Councilors squabble over MCP easement
Craig Brown seemed a little nervous. He shuffled a stack of papers, wearing the apprehensive expression of someone unaccustomed to dropping bombs.
“There’s no shortage of opinions in this community about the Meadowcreek Parkway,” Brown said, bracing for the uproar he was about to set off as City Council began its meeting on Monday, December 15.
In the most recent chapter of the Meadowcreek Parkway saga, Brown, who is the City Attorney, has found himself the reluctant center of a fierce game of legal brinkmanship that could pit Councilors against each other in court and cost the City hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I’ve been directed to ask the State Attorney General for an advisory opinion on easement by a simple majority,” Brown announced to Council at the start of the meeting.
“Directed by whom? This is the first time I’ve heard about this,” replied Councilor Kevin Lynch, seeming indignant. “Jerry Kilgore is the expert now? This is the same Attorney General who opposes providing contraception for college students.”
Councilor Meredith Richards apparently had spearheaded this particular escalation of the McIntire Park easement question, which these days is at the heart of the never-ending Meadowcreek Parkway problem. A nine-acre strip of City-owned parkland is the last obstacle blocking the Meadowcreek Parkway, which first came onto Council’s agenda in 1967. Albemarle County and the Virginia Department of Transportation want the City to grant right-of-way through McIntire Park so VDOT can build the Parkway, which would run through City and County lands. But a State law designed to protect public space requires a four-fifths supermajority for Council to sell parkland.
Only three Councilors––Richards, Rob Schilling and Blake Caravati––favor the Parkway, however. So in November they asked Brown whether the three of them could legally ease the land to VDOT for free, instead of selling it. Brown says an easement is legally feasible, while State constitution expert A.E. Dick Howard has opined that such a move blatantly violates the spirit––and probably the letter—of Virginia law. After Mayor Maurice Cox and Councilor Kevin Lynch went public with their vehement disapproval of an easement, Vice-Mayor Richards and her allies directed Brown to seek Kilgore’s advice. It was a transparent attempt to bolster their easement arguments, but not transparent enough. Lynch and Cox learned about the Kilgore idea for the first time on December 15, which apparently infuriated the Mayor.
“I had lunch with you today,” he stormed at Richards. “We talked on the phone this weekend. The idea that you were seeking the Attorney General’s opinion never crossed your mind? I’m appalled.”
Richards suggested that she was merely following the people’s will, as she had received many requests to contact Kilgore.
“No one’s asked me that,” Cox snapped. “Please forward them, so we can share in this sentiment you seem to have found among Charlottesville residents.”
After campaigning against the Parkway in 2000 and receiving more votes than any other current Councilor, Cox remains intent on blocking the Parkway; he continues to speak of the road in the subjunctive. Lynch, who also campaigned as an anti-Parkway “Democrat for Change,” has lately adopted a more compromising tone, by contrast, saying he would support selling the McIntire Park land if the City could secure usable replacement land from Albemarle. His other conditions include State appropriations for a Meadowcreek Parkway interchange at Route 250 and McIntire Road, and for proposed eastern and southern connector roads.
“I think we’re really close to a compromise and commitments that would put the Parkway in a context where it is an asset to the City,” said Lynch in an interview prior to the Council meeting.
But the newly combative Richards says she doesn’t buy Lynch’s diplomacy: “These claims are intended to kill the road, not improve the road.”
On December 15, Richards said she would be “happy” to see a court battle over the proposed easement. After the meeting, Schilling, who ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism, said he would have no problem with a lawsuit, either: “If that’s the way it has to go, then so be it.” Caravati wasn’t at the Council meeting, and was unavailable for comment.
The December 15 meeting ended with Cox telling Richards she should be “ashamed,” Richards accusing Cox of “bullying tactics” and Schilling threatening to walk out. Afterward, Brown sat alone among his stack of papers in the empty Council chambers.
“That’s not the way anyone would like to see a Council meeting end,” he said later. “I was spending a few minutes trying to reflect on what happened, and my role.”
Brown says this is the most intense conflict he has witnessed in his 18 years in City Hall. If Richards, Schilling and Caravati order an easement, Brown says, a lawsuit will probably ensue, and he stands ready to defend the majority’s decision.
“It’s not the easiest position to be in, but that doesn’t affect my analysis of the issue,” Brown says. “I approach it as unbiased as I can. My job is to present options available to Council, and the risk. Obviously, the risk here is being sued.”
Danielson returns
It’s been a while since Lee Danielson showed up at a meeting of the Board of Architectural Review. Given his history with that body, he had every reason to expect a lukewarm homecoming.
But on Tuesday, December 16, when Danielson’s architect, Mark Hornberger, described the California developer’s plans for a nine-storey, 100-room hotel at 200 E. Main St., the former site of Boxer Learning, the Board seemed enthusiastic.
“I’d like to see the Mall get this building,” said Board member Katie Swenson, echoing the general sentiment.
The plans presented were tentative, comprising various aerial views of a tall building measuring 53 feet across and nearly 300 feet long, from the Downtown Mall to Water Street. Hornberger showed several potential shapes for the hotel structure, but no design details. “We’d like to ask your opinion on massing,” said Hornberger to the BAR.
Some Board members wanted Danielson to preserve the building’s current façade, while others didn’t care if he tore it down. Although no formal vote was taken, the BAR gave Danielson the green light to proceed with design. Hornberger asked how the notoriously conservative BAR felt about modern architecture, then cited his own views: “We are in the 21st century, and as architects we have an obligation to mirror the 21st century.”
Board Chair Joan Fenton encouraged Danielson and his architects to consult with Board members—not because the BAR wanted to enforce a “traditional” design, but because the BAR could be willing to give Danielson more leeway than he might expect, given his past battles with the Board over the Charlottesville Ice Park and Regal Cinema buildings, which he developed in the ’90s with former business partner Colin Rolph.
“This board has been much more open to modern architecture, as evidenced by the new arts building,” said Fenton, referring to the modern City Center for Contemporary Arts, which is sited one block behind Danielson’s building. “There’s an openness to new materials,” Fenton continued. “Sometimes people shy away from a design because you think the Board won’t do it, but I encourage you to come talk to us.”
That didn’t sound like the stodgy BAR that infuriated Danielson during his prime as a Mall magnate. But the brash developer seemed himself a little different, too. Known for his bold declarations, Danielson kept mum at the meeting and offered only mild comments afterward.
“I’m a little gun-shy,” he said, declining to speculate on when construction might commence. “But I must say I’m glad about the reception [the hotel] is getting. Even people who are against everything seem to think it’s a good idea.”—John Borgmeyer
Under the knife
After lessons with a real-life chef, I know how the carved bird steams
Norman Rockwell was a crackhead. That’s the only way I can explain the utopian scene in his painting “Freedom From Want”—a perfectly coifed, multi-generational family gathered around the exquisitely placed Thanksgiving table, the aging matriarch delivering a turkey Arnold Schwarzenegger could drive, the gathered brood a portrait of Radcliffe futures and Howard Dean smiles.
Coming from a large family myself, I know this is not how it goes. Sure, it may start out this way—perfectly aligned silverware, well-bleached linens, the only spots to be found are on Grandma—but this is an aspiration, a beginning that has no possible future but to spin out of control into total holiday entropy. As soon as the knife pierces the skin of that turkey, the feeling that something’s got to give becomes the realization that something just did, and within minutes we are transformed from dinner at the White House to dinner with the Muppets’ Swedish Chef, a cacophony of drips, spills and airborne potatoes, a controlled food fight at best—“Vergoofin der flicke stoobin, bork bork bork.”
But all is not lost. The centerpiece of the feast is that massive winged SUV in the middle of the table, and if father can carve it like a surgeon instead of a lumberjack, he just might be able to save Christmas. After copious research and a demonstration by executive sous chef Dan Paymar at Boar’s Head Inn, I have ordained myself skilled (or at least capable) in the art of turkey carving. If necessary, I can stand in for father this year, and with these tips, so can you:
There are essentially four edible parts of the bird: breast, wing, thigh and leg. The breast is the white meat—the most tender—and the other parts are dark meat. While one could just haphazardly slice dark meat off the leg and white meat out of the breast, consensus seems to be that the carver should first separate the leg and thigh from the rest of the bird. To do this, insert the knife between the leg and the breast, slicing the skin and feeling your way down to the joint at the thighbone. Pry the thigh off at the hip joint while gently twisting the leg—this should remove the leg and thigh en masse. By further separating the thigh and the leg (again, find the joint between the two and slice) you will have a nice thigh and drumstick, which you can serve whole if you are related to Hagar, or cut into slabs of dark meat by slicing parallel to the bone.
The wing can then be removed by gently pulling it outward from the breast and using the knife to find the shoulder joint, slicing through where it gives way the best. Wings are too bony to yield good slabs of meat, but those Radcliffe-bound youngsters like chewing on them, so serve them as-is to the shorties at the kids’ table.
Last there is the breast, which is generally the most popular part of the bird. You can serve the breast two ways: cutting slabs right off the whole bird with long, slanty slices parallel to the rib cage, or pulling the breast out of the turkey and cutting the slices in the opposite direction, against the grain of the meat, which Chef Paymar insists results in juicier pieces. Either way, the turkey will cool quickly, so wait until the family is ready to be served before seeking perfection in your dissection.
For the neat-freaks who want to do all the carving ahead of time, there is another option. Section the bird as described above, then boil the remaining meat off the bones and use it along with the giblets to make a delicious gravy. When you’re ready to serve, just reheat the meat slices, douse them with gravy, and bon appetite! And if you ever find a Norman Rockwell painting of kids eating turkey sandwiches in January, let me know. At least that would be believable.—Chris Smith
The shape of things
Frank Stella’s former printmaker sculpts his own path in Charlottesville
Few of us ever meet a true art legend. Fewer still work side-by-side with one. Local artist James Welty is one of the luckiest few to do both. After taking printmaking at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he served as Frank Stella’s master printer for 12 years. Stella, famous for his 1960s “black paintings,” is also known for creating energetic assemblages of colorful, often circular spiral forms.
But that’s in his past—now Welty directs his own art career. In 1987, Welty left Stella’s New York workshop to focus on his own sculpture. He spent 10 successful years in New York City exhibiting at many spaces, including the John Davis Gallery. In 1999, his wife, Karen Van Lengen, was offered a position as dean of UVA’s architecture school, and they moved south to Charlottesville. Welty entered the local art scene in 2000 when he exhibited his welded copper sculpture “A Short History of Decay” in “Hindsight/Fore-site,” the collaborative exhibition between UVA and Les Yeux du Monde. Next year he will have his own show at the UVA Art Museum.
Welty brings a whole host of experiences to his art, from his time with Stella to his work in modern dance. He collaborated in New York with the Dan Wagoner Dance Company and The Kitchen, designing costumes and sets, and, in the case of avant-garde performance space The Kitchen, conceptualizing projects.
He also incorporates an encyclopedic range of knowledge from literature to anthropology to pop culture. He reads voraciously and cites sources such as Francois Rabelais, Henri Michaux and Franz Kafka. In the next breath he mentions Dr. Seuss and Daffy Duck. Welty finds kindred spirits that inspire and influence him.
Throughout his career, the juxtaposition of ideas (organic and mechanic, decay and rebirth, interior and exterior) has inspired Welty. Not unexpectedly, the way he envisions these dualities has evolved. In the last few years, his works have grown increasingly organic. His brazed copper structures often consist of hollow areas that suggest interiors, albeit interiors like the knotty cave formed by the tangled roots of a tree. As Welty says, “I am always returning to spaces that have tension and ambiguity.”
Early reviews of Welty’s work noted an inherent fearfulness in his structures. As his works have fleshed out, a sense of unease still exists—Welty acknowledges that some of his works might intimidate. However, this unease is more disorienting than ominous as Welty manipulates familiar objects into imagined forms. In “The Isle of Wild Sausages,” for example, a cylindrical form resembles a car part.
Underneath the gnarled, almost sci-fi veneer, Welty’s works want to invite us in. He reminisces about the cardboard structures his dad built for him as a child. He tries to recreate that sensation by building a “space to hide in,” he says, wanting his works to challenge but ultimately provide refuge.
Among the new works Welty is preparing for his June show at UVA Art Museum is a 50-foot scroll inspired by the “macabre, yet poignant” Japanese Hell Scrolls. Although a shrewd observer will undoubtedly notice the Stella construction in the museum’s adjoining room, she’ll surely conclude that Welty’s sculptures have lives of their own.—Emily Smith