Tuesday, June 7
’Hoos on third
Today the Washington Nationals drafted UVA third baseman Ryan Zimmerman in the first round of the 2005 Major League baseball draft. The pick is a historic double-play. As the fourth overall pick, Zimmerman was drafted higher than any Cavalier in history. Furthermore, he is the first draft pick by the Nationals, formerly the Montreal Expos, who are in their first season in Washington, D.C. Zimmerman hit .393 with UVA, and the Nationals say he is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman who could be ready for the majors in two years, according to The Washington Post.
Wednesday, June 8
Graves discovered at UVA
Today archaeologists from Rivanna Archaeology Services showed off new artifacts uncovered from a 19th-century family cemetery on UVA-owned land near Venable Lane and Jefferson Park Avenue. A free black woman named Catherine “Kitty” Foster purchased the land in 1833 and probably worked there as a laundress for UVA faculty and students. Construction workers first unearthed a coffin on the site while building a parking lot in 1993, and discovered a total of 12 graves there. UVA hired Rivanna to explore the site further in preparation for a memorial, and they discovered two more graves (which were left undisturbed) along with buttons, broken dishes, nails and a tiny doll’s head. “They didn’t have weekly trash collection in the 19th century,” says Rivanna archaeologist Ben Ford. “They just threw it in their yard.”
Thursday, June 9
We might overcome, one day. Maybe.
At noon today, the First Baptist Church on Main Street was nearly full with folks eager to honor the 2005 “Community Bridge Builder” honorees. Charlottesville City Council and the Bridge Builders Committee have given out the award since 2001 in recognition of citizens who have reduced barriers and bridged social gaps in the city. This year’s recipients were civil rights activists Paul Gaston, Eugene Williams, the late Gerald C. Speidel, the late Rev. Henry B. Mitchell, former mayor Nancy K. O’Brien, and the late Tillie K. Miller, a Downtown businesswoman. While grateful for the recognition, many honorees noted that there’s still work to be done, especially with civil rights. “Unfortunately, we are still singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’” lamented Williams in his acceptance speech. The honorees get a plaque with their name on it placed on The Drewary Brown Memorial Bridge.
Friday, June 10
Albemarle First Bank merges with Millennium
The share price for Albemarle First Bank jumped in heavy trading today on news that the bank will be combined with Reston-based Millennium Bankshares Corp-oration. This morning Albemarle First opened at $15.05 per share, up 32.5 percent over its previous closing price and far ahead of its 52-week high of $12.50. Albe-marle First, which has three branches in Charlottesville, will retain its name, according to an article on Business Wire, which valued the transaction at about $29 million. The merger, expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005, will combine Albemarle’s assets of $125 million with Millennium’s assets of $425 million. Shareholders of Albe-marle First Bank will receive, for each share they own, a number of shares of Millennium Bankshares’ common stock with an aggregate market value equal to $15.82 per share.
Saturday, June 11
Dogs from a single home stress SPCA’s resources
A week ago, dogs from an Albemarle home overrun with canines started arriving at the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA. By Monday, June 6, 34 dogs had arrived from that one house alone. Already at capacity when the dogs were discovered, the SPCA tapped foster homes in the area to make room for the influx. The organization also rallied the press, getting a front-page article in The Daily Progress, as a way to drum up community support in terms of both fostering and funds, says Patrice Batcheller, Director of Development and PR for the SPCA. To date, says Batcheller, as a result of the publicity, they’ve received approximately $1,000 in donations. Unfortunately, 15 of the animals had to be euthanized due to aggressive behavior. The remaining 19 dogs will be up for adoption within weeks.
Sunday, June 12
Hate rag nourishes local compost heap
Today residents on the east end of Charlottesville discovered copies of a 16-page newspaper, The Aryan Alternative, thrown on their front lawns. According to police, the white supremacist newspaper appeared at most homes from Park Street east to the 250 Bypass. Leaflets from a hate group called the National Alliance, which claims to have members in Char-lottesville, have appeared twice before in that part of the city. “They’re equal opportunity haters,” says John Gibson, artistic director of Live Arts, who found the paper while working in his garden at his home on Lexington Avenue. “If you’re black, Jewish, gay or liberal, there’s something here for you. It makes good mulch.”
Monday, June 13
Tingley blows his load
Three would-be Democratic successors to Charlottesville delegate Mitch Van Yahres made their last appeals to voters today. As of June 1, David Toscano reported a campaign war chest of $76,692 from 348 contributors; Richard Collins had raised $17,365 from 66 contributors; Kim Tingley loaned his own campaign $46,000 and collected another $9,092 from 34 donors. Tingley led all spenders, blowing through $46,665 as of June 1. The winner of the Democratic primary on Tuesday, June 14 will face Republican Tom McCrystal.
Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.
Special tree-ment
How the City will replace Mall trees with minimal disruption
It’s been hot as hell lately. And as any good Charlottesville lush knows, the place to camp out and enjoy a cold one while soaking in your own sweat is a Downtown Mall patio beneath a canopy of leafy trees. A small breeze, some blessed shade, and ahh, life’s infinitely improved.
Unfortunately, the facts of life dictate that our beloved Mall trees are going to keel over and die one of these days. Planted all at once when the Mall was constructed in the mid-’70s, chances are a day will come when the trees start dying en masse, potentially leaving Downtown to bake in the sun. That’s why it’s always good to plan ahead.
Mike Svetz, Director of Parks and Recreation for the City, says don’t panic. Replacement of the trees on the Mall will begin, s-l-o-o-w-w-l-y, when the much-planned, long-time-coming rebricking of the Mall commences.
Who knows when that will be, though. Construction is already underway on the Mall extension project and transit center, both designed by Wallace, Roberts & Todd, LLC, (the Philadelphia-based architects hired by City Council under former mayor and WRT fan Maurice Cox), but the rebricking plans are a bit behind. However, the rebricking plans are slated to arrive by the end of June according to WRT landscape architect Hank Bishop, who’s worked on the project from its inception.
Once WRT turns in its plans, the timeline is up to the City. How quickly things come to fruition will then depend on how quickly the City allocates money for construction and what priority it gives rebricking on its to-do list.
Estimates from a few years back put the rebricking project at $1.5 million to $2 million for each of the Mall’s now-seven blocks, says Bishop, but that price could come up a little short. As for the project’s status, City Councilor Kevin Lynch noted, “there are other balls of higher priority,” citing the east end project and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courthouse, as being more pressing.
So, we’re talking years here. But back to the slim shadies.
According to Svetz, a major trimming was done in January to prolong the lives of the 30something-year-old trees, but that effort was not enough to save the ailing maples in front of Central Place. Due to their poor health, those trees will be replaced when construction for Lee Danielson’s hotel in the old Boxer Learning building gets underway later this summer.
As for the rest of the trees, Svetz and Bishop want to stagger their replacement. The grand plan is to start by replacing trees nearer to the end of their life cycle. This way, should a drought or hot summer strike, all the trees won’t be pushed across the, um, River Sticks at once.
“The entire [rebricking of the] Mall is probably not going to be done all at once,” says Svetz. “The trees will be replaced in line with replacement of brick.”
WRT’s Bishop agrees with Svetz, saying the firm’s plans recommend maintaining a balance of shade and big trees, while simultaneously phasing in new trees as the older ones grow increasingly stressed. Moreover, WRT’s plans include planting additional trees in one or two spots that lack shade as it stands now, perhaps toward the west end of the Mall. And, hey, the more shade for midday cocktails the better.
“People really love those trees,” says Councilor Lynch. “We’re going to have to be really careful as to how we do [replace them].”—Nell Boeschenstein
Big man on campus
UVA’s new architect wants his buildings to teach a lesson
In a town that approaches architecture with an almost religious fervor, taking a job as head architect for UVA is analogous to putting on the pope’s miter. New UVA Architect David Neuman is designing buildings that will sit side-by-side with structures drawn up by The Big Guy himself, Thomas Jeffer-son. Pressure?
“It’s a challenge,” says Neu-man, who came here in Feb-ruary after nearly 15 years as architect at Stanford. Culturally, Virginia could hardly be more different from California—historically home to fortune seekers, actors and self-inventors. It’s almost like they’re on different sides of the country.
“Virginia is more interested in keeping closer to the tradition that’s here, right now,” says Neuman. “So how do you put contemporary people and contemporary buildings alongside buildings that are 175 years old?”
As UVA Architect, Neuman must walk a thin line. If he’s too conservative and clings to the red-brick-and-column formula, then the faux-historic buildings would only dilute the authentic history of places like the Rotunda. If he’s too liberal, though, his bosses on the Board of Visitors wouldn’t take kindly to some curved-steel-and-glass, Frank Gehry-looking art project on the South Lawn.
Since it takes three or four years to shepherd a building from conception to construction, we won’t get to see Neuman’s vision until UVA builds a new studio arts center at Carr’s Hill. “It will use the same materials and the same vocabulary, in an expanded way,” says Neuman.
Neuman will likely not depart too radically from what can be described as “the UVA look.” But he does have some ingenious ideas for incorporating contemporary thought into otherwise conservative buildings.
He hopes to incorporate new environmentally sensitive design elements into UVA buildings as a way to teach ecology—the lesson isn’t in the classroom, the classroom is the lesson. For example, he wants to build a new Commerce School building to employ such technologies as a “green” roof that uses plants to absorb and filter stormwater runoff (similar to the roof on Albemarle County’s new office buildings on Fifth Street Extended).
Other eco-technologies include “geothermal assist,” which uses an underground loop of pipes to chill water for air-conditioning, or biofiltration ponds that help clean stormwater and send it flowing gently back into local streams. (This technology is already being used for UVA’s new basketball arena—the pond on Emmet Street is part of the filtration system.) Also, visible electric meters could show students how much energy a building consumes.
It’s an ingenious idea. After all, environmentally conscious students are already aware of planetary health issues. But the business, law, economics and commerce students might be less likely to take an environmental studies course. If Neuman’s eco-buildings come to fruition, they won’t be as cutting-edge as the solar-powered buildings at Oberlin College, for example. And Neuman’s buildings won’t save the world by themselves. But they might make tomorrow’s captains of industry more ecologically sensitive.
If there’s one thing this town takes more seriously than architecture, it’s education. By greening UVA, Neuman hopes his buildings will show, he says, “that UVA is in a leadership role, as well as aware of its history.”—John Borgmeyer
The last supreme
Supreme Court decision to affect Virginia cancer patients?
In his dissenting opinion in the case of Gonzales v. Raich last week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “if the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states.”
Somewhat surprisingly, this impassioned response was the conservative judge’s rejoinder to the Court’s 6-3 ruling that the federal Controlled Substances Act trumps allowances certain state laws make for the usage of medical marijuana. In other words, Clarence Thomas doesn’t care if you want to smoke pot for your medically diagnosed ailments. Not because he’s soft on drugs, but because it’s just not the federal government’s bag, baby.
States rights advocates and cannabis activists are strange bedfellows worthy of an ironic chuckle, but depending on whom you talk to, Virginia’s cancer and glaucoma patients could lose the right to smoke medicinal marijuana in the wake of the Court’s June 6 ruling. And that’s a very serious matter.
A 1979 addition to the Virginia Code states that no one—no doctor, pharmacist, or patient—can be prosecuted for dispensing medical marijuana provided they have a valid prescription stemming from cancer or glaucoma. No provisions are made for supply, however, meaning that should a prosecutor go after the person who provides a doctor or pharmacist with pot, that person does not have a legal defense. Charlottesville’s Commonwealth’s Attor-ney Dave Chapman believes the Court’s decision could render these Virginia Code provisions ineffective.
Prior to June 6, Virginia law operated under the provision that so long as there was a good-faith belief that a prescription was valid, the patient, doctor or pharmacist was in the clear. However, says Chapman, in light of the Court’s ruling on federal pre-emption, “no person in the Commonwealth could or should have a bona fide belief that they were issuing a valid prescription for marijuana…”
In other words, no prescriptions dispensed under State law are valid because federal law prohibits marijuana even for medical purposes. U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, John Brownlee, declined to comment.
Supreme Court interpretations may change State law, in theory, but it’s another question entirely how that translates into local drug enforcement.
Al Byrne, secretary-treasurer for Patients Out of Time (POT), a medicinal cannabis advocacy group located in Howardsville, suggests that since the ruling pertains to federal law, not local law enforcement, nothing will change. Federal agents, he says, are concerned with larger distribution, not individual users.
“Locally,” says Byrne, “the sheriff here in Nelson County is not all of a sudden going to go on a witch hunt for medical marijuana purposes.”
Nelson County Sherriff Gary Brantley was out of town and could not be reached to respond to Byrne’s challenge.
Moreover, POT asserts the courts are not the way to attack this issue. In order to address medicinal marijuana issues, Byrne says advocates should either go to Congress and get the laws changed at the federal level, or go straight to the regulators.
In fact, says Byrne, POT has submitted a petition to the Drug Enforcement Agency to get cannabis rescheduled (official term for “reclassified”) from a Schedule I substance to a Schedule III or IV substance. A Schedule I substance is highly controlled by the federal government. A Schedule IV is available over-the-counter.
The DEA has approved POT’s petition and passed it on to the Department for Health and Human Services for review. Byrne says a response is expected soon.
Lt. Don Campbell with the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) task force, concurs with Byrne. He has never arrested anyone with a prescription to use marijuana for glaucoma or cancer and he doesn’t see himself doing so in the future.
“[Medical marijuana] has never been a problem [in the area],” says Campbell. “I’ve been here 20 years and the ruling’s not going to change how we do business.”—Nell Boeschenstein
Big hole to fill
East Mall project on schedule, but $4 million over budget
It’s right there on the official Loretta Lynn website—she’s playing the Charlottesville Pavilion on July 30, dirt pile or no dirt pile.
Although construction has gone slower than expected, City officials say that by the time Lynn hits the stage, construction on the Charlottesville Pavilion will be finished. Er, almost.
“It should be done to where people who are going to that event should have a good safe passage to the amphitheater,” says Aubrey Watts, the City’s chief operations officer, calling the ven-ue by its former name. He predicts that the east end will still be lacking some light fixtures by showtime; he also said some work on Seventh Street, which will be blocked off by the new east end plaza, won’t be finished until August.
According to a recent report from Watts, there have been a number of delays that will make the project a close call for Lynn’s gig. In March, workers discovered four underground storage tanks that had apparently once held bus fuel, and had to call the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for oversight of their disposal.
Heavy rains further delayed construction in May. The report also caused a slight stir when it claimed that “work on the Free Speech Monument, by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, has completely halted Mall Extension work at the west end of the project site.”
The Center’s Associate Director, Josh Wheeler, says he was surprised by the report. “We’ve met every deadline that has been set for us,” Wheeler says. “It was the first time we had heard that the monument was causing any delays to the project as a whole.”
Watts elaborated on the report to
C-VILLE, saying later that there were several causes for construction delays and “it’s not fair to put it all on the monument.”
No matter what happens, the venue will be ready for Lynn, promises Kirby Hutto, general manager of the Pavilion. “We will have that concert at the Pavilion,” Hutto says.
When City Council discussed the pavilion’s progress at their regular meeting on Monday, June 6, they were more concerned about the price tag than the timeline. An ultra-modern bus transfer center to be situated near the pa-vilion was originally supposed to cost $6.5 million, but that has climbed to about $10.5 million—despite the fact that the City has cut the transfer center’s size almost in half.
“Construction and capital costs are going up considerably,” Watts says. “Fuel prices, concrete prices, steel prices are affecting it. It’s not unique to Charlottesville.”
The City is obtaining State and federal grants to cover the extra cost. The Virginia First Cities coalition gave Charlottesville a grant for $600,000, and the Virginia Department of Transportation chipped in $100,000. The City also gets grants each year from the Federal Transit Administra-tion, and those grants over the next two years—a total of $3,111,706—will go to the transfer center.
The escalating cost of the transfer center is prompting some Councilors to question whether the grant money couldn’t have been better spent improving the city’s lackluster bus system.
“I’m not sure we’ve gotten the most transit bang for the buck,” says Councilor Kevin Lynch, a staunch transit advocate who voted for the transfer center project.
Councilors are also having second thoughts about how much money the City has spent on architects for the east end project. The previous Council, under the leadership of architect Maurice Cox, hired the Philadelphia firm of Wallace, Roberts and Todd to design the east end plaza, and so far the City has forked over nearly $1.3 million to the firm.
“The quality of architecture is not worth those dollars,” says Councilor Blake Caravati, a general contractor who also voted for the project. “In the future, we should look at local firms.”—John Borgmeyer
Legal Aid is in the house
Rock House rehab project proceeds at a lightning pace
One simple word, written in Magic Marker above a transom at the rear of the structure, tells the whole story of the Rock House: “leave.”
Leave, as in leave intact this piece of the interior that sends light through the historical property across from Washington Park. Leave, as in leave C.B. Holt’s “Rock House” standing 80 years after he built it by hand, stone by stone, from materials quarried from the Rivanna River. Leave, as in leave behind any notions of razing that the once-neglected building may have inspired. For the Rock House, a reminder of Char-lottesville’s early 20th-century African-American experience, is firmly ensconced in the next chapter of its vivid history.
Seven months after fundraising officially got underway to restore the house at 1010 Preston Ave. to a functional state, the project—spearheaded by the Legal Aid Justice Center—is more than two-thirds of the way toward its $230,000 goal. When Legal Aid purchased the former Bruton Beauty Supply building right next door, the Rock House, 30 years out of use, conveyed with the larger property. But for a couple of years, no one had any idea what to do with the one-and-a-half-storey bungalow-like building that was dank with mildew and rot due to extensive water damage. “I think it really was close to the bulldozer on several occasions,” Legal Aid Executive Director Alex Gulotta says.
But thanks to the confluence of good intentions, dogged research, philanthropy and social idealism, C.B. Holt’s Rock House will see a new life. By next year it will be home to a new pro bono legal practice that joins UVA law students with top-flight area law firm Hunton & Williams under the supervision of Legal Aid to assist people with family law or immigration and asylum cases.
Charles B. Holt was a furniture and umbrella repairman who married late and waited seven years after purchase of the property to construct his stone house on the site directly across from what became Washington Park. The era’s Jim Crow laws disadvantaged Holt as it did other African-Americans at the time, but his sheer determination to make something unique and comparatively stately could not be denied. Indeed, William Hale, who is construction manager for the res-toration project, speaks of Holt’s work in glowing terms: “Mr. Holt was trying for a certain substantiality and grace in what was being done. I’ve worked on a lot of rural housing and farmhouses of different economic strata restoring them over the years and I’ve seldom seen one done with as much attention to detail.”
If the unusual stonework of the house weren’t enough to commend it to history (most African-American neighborhoods of the 1920s were built of wood, according to Legal Aid research), the residents who succeeded Holt and his wife ensure the significance of the place. Holt’s step-daughter-in-law, Asalie Minor Preston, a schoolteacher, lived in the house until the 1970s. She endowed a scholarship fund, the Minor-Preston Educational Fund, which continues to give annually up-wards of $200,000 to low-income, college-bound students.
On the basis of the building’s architectural and social significance, Legal Aid was successful in winning a historic property designation from the City of Charlottesville in March. This development, along with the tireless efforts of advocates Margaret Dunn, who volunteers at Legal Aid, and Kimberly Emery, a dean at UVA Law School who specializes in pro bono and public interest work, helped secure fast funding for the renovation project.
For one, the Perry Foundation, a local charity that gives away about $1 million annually, has promised to pony up $60,000 if Legal Aid completes its campaign for the other $170,000. Two things inspired the pledge, says Gary McGee, the foundation’s vice-president: “One, the significance of the house itself and the structure historically to the black community.
“The topping,” McGee continues, “was when it was firmed up that it would be used for a pro bono project with Hunton & Williams and the law school.”
Indeed, it has been Legal Aid’s hope from the start of the Rock House project that it would land tenants worthy of the structure’s history. The pro bono project, championed by Emery, is the right fit, says Gulotta. “It’s a perfect match,” he says. “I can’t say it any other way.”
“Putting a pro bono partnership in that house with a hand-up instead of a hand-out keeps with the spirit of Charles Holt,” Emery says.
On top of committing a lawyer to the pro bono project full-time, Hunton & Williams has also committed $20,000 to the Rock House. And George Hettrick, a partner in the firm, says that the location of Legal Aid—and by extension the Rock House—made all the difference in Hunton & Williams coming on board. “We could have rented some garden-variety office space [for pro bono work],” he says. “This location is where all the clinical law students come and that tells me this location is where you go to help people who cannot afford lawyers.”
At present, the house is a skeleton on the inside, with old plaster ripped out and a few rotted joists awaiting their replacements. And though the plan calls for the Rock House to be occupied by the end of the year, there’s still the matter of another $90,000 that needs to be raised. To that end, July will be a big month for the project. Photographs by Jim Hall, who first captured the Rock House for C-VILLE in November, will be on display at the Charlottesville Community Design Center through that month. A community meeting is scheduled for July 9 at the Zion Union Baptist Church, just up the street on Preston Avenue, and on July 30, in conjunction with the African-American Festival, Legal Aid will give tours of C.B. Holt’s house.
Emery, for one, finds this latest installment in the Rock House story to be uplifting. “Having a chance to save a property like this and put it to this kind of use has been inspiring to us,” she says. “The track this has taken—the stars have aligned.”—Cathy Harding