Ridge over troubled plotter
Regarding your “Plan of inaction” article concerning new developments and the Ridge Street Neighborhood Association (RSNA) [The Week, April 19], your article would have been more accurate if you spent more time talking to ordinary people.
I am not an officer of RSNA, but I have done a lot of leg-work on behalf of RSNA. The quote you pulled from our letter thanking Arthur Valente for his “openness and willingness to talk” was our attempt to encourage him to come down here. We were being gracious, not recording history. We have called him many times. He will return phone calls, but in the years of pursuing his project, he has never come down here to talk to anyone. He has submitted plans to the City twice, and has contacted the RSNA each time, the same week the plans were up for a vote before the Planning Commission.
That’s Banana Republic Democracy: You have your choice of one candidate, right now. What kind of input can the RSNA hope to have on plans so far along the process? That’s a token effort that could only benefit the developer, not the neighborhood.
The RSNA is not simply couching its objections in City code as you suggest. This neighborhood lived for years without City water, trash pickup, without paved roads. The City limit for dead-end roads is 700 feet for safety reasons. Our neighborhood has more than 4,000 feet of contiguous dead-end roads. Funny coincidence that it’s a black, unwealthy neighborhood.
Now the people who fought for years to get public services are watching four-storey cookie-cutter houses stacked up in front of them. Almost nobody in this neighborhood could hope to buy one of those houses. It may be legal, but it’s damn peculiar that the wealthier whiter people moving into such houses presume the unquestioned right to transform the neighborhood into which they move.
I was talking to some of the folks in the street the other day. One of the guys looked at me hard (I’m white; he’s not) and said, “I don’t mean to get racial with you, but you know what this is about. It’s about moving black people out into the counties where some people think they belong.” That’s what some of the ordinary people think.
Alexis Zeigler
Charlottesville
Can’t get no satisfaction
Your cover of April 19 brags “How do we do it? 80 Britney-free pages!” But your bragging rights bested your math: You only had 79 Britney-free pages of your 80-page rag thanks to the brag on the cover! Now if you have the guts to publish this letter, your next issue won’t be Britney-free either.
Randolph Byrd
Charlottesville
The editor responds: Counting STYLE, which was inserted into your C-VILLE last week, our feat equals 107 Britney-free pages.
CORRECTIONS
In last week’s STYLE supplement we printed an incorrect address for The Hip Joint. It is located at 115 Fifth St. SE.
In STYLE we also listed an incorrect price for the Sarah Lubin Geode Necklace at Sweet Beets. It actually costs $200; it only looks like it’s worth $2,599.
In last week’s Get Out Now section we mistakenly listed singer/songwriter Steve Forbert as Steve Forbes.