Tuesday, June 15
The Freshman 100
UVA today held a meeting in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom with about 100 local residents to discuss the school’s many plans for growth. Though the lengthy presentation by UVA architect David J. Neuman had the somnolent effect of an academic lecture, several specifics emerged. Neuman said the incoming freshman classes at UVA should grow by about 100 students annually, and though the school will build housing to handle the influx, most construction will focus on denser development within the current campus boundaries. Also on the agenda: the UVA Medical Center, which is getting a new parking garage, and an upgrade to UVA’s coal-powered heating plant. The $50 million improvements to the plant are to be completed by late 2008. The community meeting featured visual aids depicting before and after pictures of the plant, which, to a casual observer, appeared virtually identical.
Wednesday, June 16
Toast to Dublin
James Joyce’s epic, if not impenetrable, 732-page novel Ulysses was based on one day in Dublin, exactly 100 years ago. That centennial—called Bloomsday to honor protagonist Leopold Bloom—drew celebrations worldwide, including a reading at Gravity Lounge. The event, organized by the Irish American Society of Central Virginia and drawing a crowd of 65, featured hours of reading from Joyce’s work, the Irish band King Golden Banshee and many bottles of Guinness. Marie Moriarty, an organizer who wore the recommended spring frock and hat for the event, said she held the shindig at her house last year. At the microphone, Eric Wilson, a Washington and Lee English professor, began his reading by saying, “I also think Joyce is a better short-form writer. That may be heresy here.”
Thursday, June 17
Gunplay on Garrett
A man suffered minor wounds shortly after midnight when he was shot on the 400 block of Garrett Street. The unidentified victim was hospitalized, and Charlottesville Police report that at least one suspect remains at large.
School Board preps for new class
At its regular meeting this evening, the City School Board commended Chair Linda Bowen, who will retire on June 30. The following day, City Council will name the new board’s new seven-member contingent, which will be joined in charting the future of the 4,400-student system by incoming Superintendent Dr. Scottie J. Griffin. She will succeed Ron Hutchinson, whose two-year interim tenure as superintendent, also to end on June 30, followed a previous failed attempt by the School Board to hire a new superintendent.
Friday, June 18
Park and Locust slowed again
Drivers cruising the 250 Bypass encountered the familiar sight of closed lanes at the Park Street and Locust Avenue ramps as workers commenced bridge-painting projects expected to last at least three weeks. Last year, bridge repair work successively closed the ramps for several months each.
Saturday, June 19
Gillen sinks a deuce
Cavalier men’s basketball coach Pete Gillen has announced two additions to his coaching staff that might help dull the memory of the squad’s disappointing 18-13 record in the 2003-04 season. Improbably, both men, John Fitzpatrick of the University of Houston and Mark Byington of the College of Charleston, coach teams named The Cougars, adding to the hope that their presence will put some bite into Gillen’s style.
Sunday, June 20
County’s first murder of 2004
Two days after the bullet-riddled body of 23-year-old Shawn Gavin Hatcher was found near Oakwood Mobile Homes on 29N, Albemarle Police have identified 21-year-old County resident Daniel Bradley Limbacher as a suspect in the murder, the County’s first this year. Described as 5′ 10" and 150 pounds, Limbacher was last seen, police say, driving a 1996 Mazda four-door sedan as late as Saturday morning, the same day that the County force celebrated its 20th anniversary with festivities and public-safety demonstrations in the parking lot of Fashion Square Mall.
Monday, June 21
City computer $y$tem
A group of eight locals, mostly computer experts, has been raising hay about the cost and scale of the City’s $6.6 million new computer system, called CityLink. One of the group, Jim Moore, claims that Charlottesville’s new system is 10 times more expensive than what cities the size of Charlottesville typically spend on a computer upgrade and will cost $434 per household. “Computer systems are supposed to save money,” Moore says. Hefting its own math, the City fired back, claiming in a press release that CityLink is cheaper than a similar system used by Danville, and would pay for itself within nine years. At tonight’s City Council meeting, the City planned to issue an update on the contested computer system.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports
Bantu banter
Somali Bantu refugees navigate life in Charlottesville
Any parent could relate to the conversation that took place at a recent counseling session at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) office on E. Jefferson Street.
“She doesn’t hear, she’s like a deaf person,” one woman, speaking through another Somali Bantu woman as a translator, said of her misbehaving daughter.
However, the three refugee women face far more exceptional challenges than a willful child. The language spoken by Somali Bantus, Mai Mai, lacks a written component, so literacy is a novel concept for the new Charlottesville residents. Even the strawberries the two young children were munching on while politely weaving around their mothers’ chairs during the counseling session are no ordinary treat. It was the first time the women and children had ever eaten strawberries.
The three women are among 48 Somali Bantus who have recently come to Charlottesville from a refugee camp in Kenya. Bilal Abanoor, 21, the first of the group to arrive, landed at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport on January 15. A winter storm shortly followed Abanoor’s arrival, giving him a transition from blinding dust to ice and snow. Since then, the English-speaking Abanoor, who spent 12 years in refugee camps, has gone to work as a translator and refugee liaison for IRC. He has also spent much of his free time riding the bus and walking around his new town.
“Now I know most of the places in Charlottesville,” Abanoor says with a smile.
Asked if he hopes to ever return to Somalia, which he left at age 9, leaving his mother behind, Abanoor answers: “For me, no. I will never be in Somalia. I don’t think so.”
Though Abanoor says he might like to visit the refugee camps in Kenya, he is glad to be in Charlottesville, and says he’s more than content to learn about his new home and neighbors.
The Somali Bantus are descended from slaves who were taken to Somalia from Tanzania and Mozambique in the late 1800s. A racial minority that has long been ostracized in Somalia, the Bantus have often been attacked, raped and killed in the warlord-fueled anarchy that ignited in that country in 1991. As a result, about 12,000 Somali Bantu refugees have amassed in camps in Kenya. At risk from bandits and disease and with no homes to return to, the Somali Bantus have been classified by the United Nations and United States as high-priority refugees. The U.S. State Department began resettling members of the group—with a big hand from nonprofit groups—in several areas around the country in 2003.
“They don’t seem to have any nostalgia for Somalia whatsoever,” says Susan Donovan, IRC’s regional director. “The Bantu can’t wait to put it behind them.”
Though the desperate, pre-industrial lives the Bantus faced in Somalia and in refugee camps make the adjustment to Charlottesville an extreme leap, it may also give them a leg-up on locals and other immigrants.
“They have all this pent-up desire for education and to work hard,” Donovan says.
The IRC, which receives only $800 from the State Department for each refugee it helps resettle, places about 150 refugees in Charlottesville and Albemarle each year. Donovan says the IRC helps the new arrivals find jobs, mostly menial work for the Omni, UVA Medical Center, Farmington Country Club and other employers. If the refugees work hard in these jobs for six months, the IRC will often help them upgrade to higher-paying, more skilled jobs.
Tom Hubbard, the CEO of the Inova Solutions, a Charlottesville-based company that makes LED displays (including the one that fronts the City Center for Contemporary Arts), hired one of the Somali Bantus for a janitorial position. The new janitor does not speak English and had never seen a vacuum cleaner or an elevator before being hired. Inova employees staged pictures of someone vacuuming to help train the janitor.
But despite the extra training effort, Hubbard says of hiring the refugee, “we’d do it over again,” adding, “he had no trouble adapting.”
Over at IRC, Abanoor is clearly working hard to adapt to his new life. In addition to a full-time job with the IRC, Abanoor hopes to earn his GED this month, take a computer class and enter Piedmont Virginia Community College sometime soon. Furthermore, Abanoor’s t-shirt, sneakers and ringing cell phone are all evidence of his rapid acculturation as a young American.
And, just two weeks ago Abanoor got his driver’s license, taking perhaps the most important step toward becoming a Virginian.—Paul Fain
Rock ’n’ roll, but no drugs
BAR approves Capshaw’s amphitheater, disses Walgreens
On Tuesday, June 15, the City’s Board of Architectural Review gave tentative approval to Coran Capshaw’s plan for a new Downtown amphitheater scheduled to open next summer.
City Council had already signed off on the project earlier this month, transferring control of the amphitheater to its real estate arm, the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority, which in turn leased the land to Capshaw and loaned him $3.4 million to develop the new space.
Although the amphitheater project is a done deal, with construction scheduled to begin in October, board members had a chance to ask questions and encourage Capshaw’s architects—New York City’s FTL Engineering Design Studio—to tweak the design.
The firm uses lightweight fabrics to achieve swooping, modern designs. Their design for the amphitheater includes a fabric roof stretched over an 80-foot metal arch. It will cover about 2,750 portable seats, including about 250 “VIP” seats where concertgoers will enjoy extra legroom and service from waitstaff conveying food and drinks. The protocols call for the portable chairs to be set up on the afternoon preceding an event and removed by the next day. There’s space for another 1,500 people on a grassy lawn.
In his contract with the City, Capshaw claims that he will hold about 40 concerts a year at the amphitheater, including a “Fridays After 5-type event” during the summer “for free or at a reasonable cost,” according to Aubrey Watts, the City’s director of economic development. The rest of the year, the amphitheater will be open for public use.
Capshaw also owns the Merrill Lynch building near City Hall. Although there are no public plans to redevelop that site, don’t be surprised to see some mixed-use combination of a restaurant and residential units appear on that site in the not-too-distant future.
In particular, the BAR wondered about what kind of trees would be planted around the amphitheater, and whether pedestrians will be able to easily get from the Mall to the Belmont neighborhood. FTL will answer the questions at the BAR’s next meeting, on July 20.
Also on June 15, the BAR delivered a smackdown to pharmacy chain Walgreens, which asked the board’s permission to move a historic home to make room for a new location on Riverdale Drive.
The BAR approved the company’s request to demolish newer portions of a 1912 farmhouse at 1328 Riverdale, but denied the company’s request to relocate the historic structure, saying Walgreens didn’t show enough concern for the house.
“The application suggests no respect will be paid to the siting of the building,” said BAR member Katie Swenson.
Walgreens’ representative, Ned Vickers, asked the BAR for feedback on tentative drawings of the pharmacy, which included a two-storey tower with a fake window, and a parking lot surrounded by a 15-foot wall reading “Welcome to Charlottesville.”
The BAR roundly dissed the proposal. Yes, the City wants taller buildings, said member Joe Atkins, but the upper storeys should house offices or apartments, not ornamental windows. He also suggested Walgreens could save money by removing the wall, which the BAR found cheesy, and moving the parking lot behind the building.
Chain stores like Walgreens, accustomed to building with the same style in every town, usually experience similar troubles when moving to Charlottesville. Chair Joan Fenton said Walgreens could talk to the BAR members individually to help the company figure out how to meet the City’s design standards.—John Borgmeyer