| Your Starting Lineup. Some of them are well known. Others are strictly behind-the-scenes players. Some make life more livable. Some make us shout back at our TVs (and some give us more to look at on those televisions). Among them are actors, sculptors, teachers, politicians and businesspeople. They come in all shapes, sizes and ages, but they all have at least three things in common: They live here, their influence is felt here and they’re being recognized this year by C-VILLE Weekly. Ladies and gents, the C-VILLE 20, Class of 2005: The people and institutions that are shaping life as we know it right here, right now. You can’t know the players without a scorecard. Now that we’ve given you one, get out there and enjoy the game! |
The Philanthropist
Boyd Tinsley
Generosity comes as naturally to Boyd Tinsley as does dancing a bow across the strings of his violin—something he’s doing a lot this summer on his 14th tour with Dave Matthews Band. He may be a big star now, but he’s not such a big shot that he forgets his roots. Besides the fact that he still lives here in the town where he graduated from public high school, the money Tinsley has given to local philanthropies speaks to his deep local devotion.
Since 2003, Tinsley has sponsored three programs—a music program, a tennis program and an academic mentoring program —for area school children through the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation. For the past two years, he has donated approximately $25,000 to each program, ensuring that each of the three is not only extant, but also successful, according to Kevin O’Halloran, CACF’s director of donor relations.
The music program helps foster musical talent in disadvantaged kids in the city schools grades six through 12. In the past school year alone, 35 students have benefited from private lessons in string instruments such as viola, cello and, of course, violin.
The tennis program offers students at the city’s upper elementary and middle school opportunities such as participating in the Boar’s Head Winter Tennis Program and twice weekly after-school tennis lessons. (Last year, there was the added bonus for local adolescents of getting face-to-face with tennis hottie Anna Kournikova).
The academic program offers tutoring and summer enrichment programs as part of the Scholars Program, to CHS students who demonstrate academic promise, but need a little extra encouragement.
“[Boyd’s] been extremely generous,” says O’Halloran. “What’s more, he’s tailored his philanthropy to the problems that he saw growing up in Charlottesville and has tried to address those problems in very specific ways.”
And that’s not even beginning to list the philanthropic undertakings Tinsley’s done as a member of DMB. Just to name one of the group’s philanthropic endeavors, for example, in 2003 DMB raised $250,000 for the Music Resource Center—also a program benefiting local kids—with a concert in Central Park.
Two words for Tinsley? Thank you. It’s really that simple.—N.B.
The Party Animal
Andrew Vaughan
You’ve got to respect a man who turns a junky Downtown Mall kiosk into one of the most happening night spots in town. That’s what Andrew Vaughan accomplished this spring, and it’s that kind of vision for partying that made him Charlottesville’s King of Saturday Night.
“I just kind of fell into it,” explains Vaughan of his nightspot empire. After successfully launching Downtown coffee cart Java Hut in 1994, the 1992 UVA grad returned to the Corner and opened Orbit Billiards in 1996. Two years later he and Barbara Shifflett (and later Mike Rodi) brought eclectic food and purple pool tables to the Mall with Rapture, which spawned its attached dance club, R2, in 2003. And last year he added burrito bar/hipster hangout Atomic Burrito in the former Liquid location on Second Street.
Vaughan says he tried to give each of his venues a distinctly different vibe. Orbit, he says, offers town and gown a totally casual pool hall. Rapture focuses more on the food, with R2 pumping dance hits and filling the dance floor with the young and fabulous. And Atomic is more laid-back, with live bands and DJs playing in the small space and beer and liquor flowing at the bar.
“I love Charlottesville. It’s such an interesting town,” Vaughan says. “And there are so many different [night life] places around town, all building on one another. It’s a great town to do this in.”
If Vaughan’s success is reminiscent of another big-time restaurant owner in town, his next move might cement comparisons. He’s branching out into managing musical acts, specifically Travis Elliott, who plays an acoustic show at Atomic every Tuesday night.
“I don’t know a thing about [music management],” he jokes. Given how well things turned out the last time he “fell into something,” we’re sure it’ll turn out just fine.—E.R.
After 24 years as Charlottesville’s liberal champion in the General Assembly, perhaps the most important thing Mitch Van Yahres did this year was call it quits.
In bowing out, the 78-year-old Van Yahres has opened the door for a new State Delegate. As a bastion of both old-school 1960s liberalism and big money, Charlottesville could stand ready to take the reigns of the battered and bruised Virginia Democrats. Assuming that Democratic candidate David Toscano wins on November 8, Van Yahres’ exit will earn some credit in any would-be Dem comeback.
Since Van Yahres graduated from Charlottesville City Council chambers to the State Capitol in Richmond in 1981, the New York Catholic has watched the Republican right rise to power. It’s been a big change, for Van Yahres came of age as a politician during what he calls the “good old days.” Back then Republicans and Democrats took walks and vacations together and compromised on issues over which they disagreed.
That was then. This is now, and the game is “my way or the highway.” The Assembly is overrun with ideologues that put their faith in capital and fundamentalist Christianity. They despise the public sphere and nearly cripple it with tax cuts. “Compromise” is such a dirty word to the hard Right that during the primary season just passed, they tried to sabotage fellow Assembly Republicans who had cooperated with Democrats on tax issues last year.
The 57th District’s new delegate will be a barometer for how Virginia Democrats aim to meet this challenge. In handing primary victory to Toscano last week, Democrats seem to say they want the new guy to be a moderate who can forge alliances with centrist Republicans. But even the Republicans appreciate the Van Yahres influence: GOP candidate Tom McCrystal calls himself a middle-of-the-road progressive.
Perhaps the region’s most popular politician, Van Yahres has cemented voters’ expectations that no matter what, their guy in Richmond is fighting the good fight. By retiring, Van Yahres is allowing the next generation of local leaders to write a new battle plan.—J.B.
The Wattage
Sissy Spacek
We feel so close to her we just call her “Sissy.”
Charlottesvillians like to think that Sissy Spacek represents the best in all of us: Nice, wholesome, self-effacing, generous, beautiful, Oscar-winning…the list could go on. And while we may pretend we don’t care about the celebrities in our midst, folks, that’s just a front. Truth is, we may not be star struck but we’re pleased as punch our town is a desirable place to call “home” among the rich and famous. Sissy is our shiny gold star of approval: She’s our wattage.
Moreover, she doesn’t shirk from shining her light on community-minded causes. She’s lent her power to support autism, recording for the blind, historic preservation and more. One of the big stories of the past year has been the redesign of the east end of the Downtown Mall. The “free speech” wall, sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, is an integral part of that project and Sissy has been instrumental in fundraising to ensure it gets built.
At the beginning of May she was the, er, star attraction at an event to kick off the public fundraising phase of the project at The Paramount Theater. That night alone, TJCPFE tallied $20,000 in donations. Josh Wheeler, TJCPFE associate director, credits Sissy with attracting attention to the event and calls her a “big reason” for its overwhelming success.
“A lot of celebrities will lend their names to causes they support and that’s important,” says Wheeler, “but in Sissy’s case she not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.”—N.B.
The Good Neighbors
The Belmont Neighborhood Association
Recent studies suggest that despite rising standards of living, people are not getting any happier. Instead of more money, many would prefer a sense of community. In an era of bland suburbs and information superhighways, people want to feel rooted where they live. They want to know their neighbors.
If living local is a small way to fight the power, then revolution is afoot in Belmont. Once a bastion for longtime been-heres, Belmont has more recently become the neighborhood of choice for up-and-coming young professionals. As but one manifestation of the change, real estate assessments have catapulted in the southeastern city neighborhood, where recently a three-bedroom, 1,919-square-foot Victorian on Levy Avenue went up for sale for $419,000. Not only that, but groovy Santa Fe-ish color schemes have flowered practically overnight where a working class stainless steel palate once ruled. In many places gentrification would lead to conflict. But it’s different in Belmont, and the Belmont Neighborhood Association has been busy building community.
Examples: This year, Belmont residents organized a neighborhood safety meeting, attended by more than 100 people, in response to a break-in and attack. There was an effective neighborhood cleanup. And the neighborhood association helped to raise $375 for trash cans and newsletters to be distributed in Belmont thanks to a community yard sale. When a resident complained about litter at a nearby bus stop, the Neighborhood Association helped install a vandal-proof trashcan.
Chris Gensic, president of the Belmont Neighborhood Association, says the group is full of old-timers and come-heres, and residents who are not official members also take the lead on community projects. Gensic himself is a community planner for the regional planning district and lives on Bolling Avenue in a 1920s bungalow he describes as “a very good starter home.”
“Our role is to figure out how to turn complaints into a positive action,” he says. “People are willing to do all sorts of things, and we just try to support them. We’re a group. We’re all holding hands here.”
Sentimentality aside, as the city seeks to attract more new residents fed up with suburban life, Belmont is a good example of what Charlottesville has to offer.—J.B.
The Healthy Spirit
Chris Friedman
It’s as ubiquitous a Charlottesville cliché as the coupling of The New York Times and a latté: the Downtown Saturday morning parade of women and their yoga mats.
Around here, everyone and her sister do yoga, Nia, Pilates, T’ai Chi—the options are seemingly endless. But before there was everyone and her sister, before ACAC and Gold’s Gym jumped on the bandwagon, there was Chris Friedman.
Friedman has taught private lessons in the Alexander Technique (a posture-based movement philosophy) since 1990, opening her yoga and dance studio, Studio 206, in September 1999. With classes in Alexander, Nia, yoga, children’s dance, T’ai Chi and belly dancing, Friedman taught Charlottesville that fitness could be more than hours clocked on the Stairmaster. In Studio 206’s first year, Friedman blazed Charlottesville’s yoga trail with 15 classes per week, eight teachers and about 25 students a day. That’s how she remembers it.
Six years later, Studio 206 has two locations—the original on Market Street and the other on Monticello Road. Together, they offer about 60 weekly classes for all ages and experience levels in Alexander, nearly every brand of yoga, Nia, dance and more. Even more tellingly, Friedman now employs 25 teachers and counts about 75 students a day.
Those of her students who have gone on to careers in the body arts themselves feel her influence perhaps more than most. Jeanette Payne, for one, started with Friedman seven years ago as a student of Nia, the aerobic fusion technique that combines dance, yoga and martial arts and which Friedman pioneered here. Inspired by Friedman as a teacher, she became a yoga and Alexander teacher at the studio three years ago.
“The community that Chris creates, creates teachers,” Payne says. “She encourages those around her to believe they can share in a greater community; she sees how all the different parts of the puzzle fit together and wants to bring them together.”—N.B.
The Preservationists
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation
In 1803, Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and doubled the size of our nascent country for $15 million.
Two-hundred-and-one years later, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (the official name for the organization that owns and operates Monticello), purchased the 330-acre Brown’s Mountain adjacent to Monticello and put it into environmental easement for the same price. The Foundation was certainly acting in its own best interest to protect the viewshed of the Little Mountain from salivating developers eager to pounce on the prime piece of land that looks down on Jefferson’s place, the only American home on the United Nations’ World Heritage List. But beyond that, it was undeniably also giving back to the community. The Brown’s Mountain deal will preserve that land and keep it McMansion-free for generations to come.
While the idea of purchasing the mountain had been on the mind of Foundation President Dan Jordan for years, the deal was made in January 2004 and finalized in April 2004. The Foundation officially took over in July of that year and renamed the mountain Montalto, or High Mountain, which is what Jefferson himself dubbed the ascent that rises 400 feet above Monticello.
With former Montalto residents out of the picture now, Monticello plans to restore an 18th-century look to the mountaintop, with the intention of recreating Montalto’s landscape as seen in Jefferson’s day, complete with appropriate vegetation. Moreover, hikers will soon be welcome to walk up the trails and look down on Monticello from above.
Preserving Jefferson’s view is a fitting tribute by Jordan and supporters to one of our nation’s original agrarians. After all, it was Jefferson who once said, “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.”—N.B.
The Standard-Setters
Charlottesville Downtown Foundation
The Charlottesville Downtown Foundation is gone, but it is not forgotten. When the group, then known as Downtown Char-lottesville Inc., brought out the Fat Ammons Band, a lone beer truck and 800 spectators for a concert on May 27, 1988, it forever changed the city’s summer social landscape with the advent of Fridays After 5. Now when the weather’s warm, Charlottesvillians demand that their weekends kick off with lots of music and lots of people watching—all of it free. (We’ll pay for our beer, thanks!) It was CDF that fostered our expectations.
A disastrous 2003 season marred by rainouts and an unpopular admission fee essentially crippled the struggling nonprofit, and the coming of the Coran Capshaw-run Charlottesville Pavilion finally put it down. But its legacy is clear. “We felt obligated [to carry on Fridays After 5]” says Kirby Hutto, a five-year CDF veteran and now general manager of the Pavilion. “The public loves the event and we feel strongly that it should go on.”
So does Ray Caddell, leader of local swing/jazz band Big Ray and the Kool Kats. The band has played Fridays every year since 1995 as one of its few public gigs locally. “Fridays is important to our band because this is our town, and we love performing for the home-town folks,” Caddell says.
Under the Pavilion’s management, Fridays currently continues at a temporary home on the corner of Garrett and Gleason streets; next year it will move to the Pavilion, which will assuredly be completed by then. None of it would have happened, however, without CDF.
“CDF did a great job of taking that event and starting it off as this wishful idea and then nurturing it and growing it until it became this overwhelming success,” Hutto says. “And even though CDF is going out of the picture now, you have Charlottesville Pavilion stepping in to do the event…The future should be very bright for everyone.”—E.R.
The Last of Their Kind
David and Elizabeth Breeden
As Charlottesville yuppifies faster than you can say “Audi S4,” the hippie-artsy contingent that once defined this place gets pushed farther to the fringes.
The Breeden family—headed by sculptor David Breeden and his wife, Art-In-Place founder Elizabeth—are perhaps the archetype of this dying Charlottesville breed. For 25 years they’ve made art (some better, some worse). But not in a garret. They’ve welcomed the public to Wednes-day night potlucks and fostered an atmosphere that has made possible community projects like Art-In-Place (some better, some worse) at their Biscuit Run Studios and Forest Lodge.
The 1,000-acre estate is located southwest of town, on a prime piece of land on Old Lynchburg Road. David’s father, I.J. Breeden bought the land in the mid-’70s, well aware that its value would skyrocket, and planning to eventually sell. Remarkably, it’s remained a single undeveloped parcel all these years. That’s about to change.
Goodbye, arts-colony fantasy life. Hello, prime-real-estate reality.
In the past months, the Breedens have put their thousand acres up for sale. The bidding process is over, but negotiations are still in the works, so Elizabeth Breeden declines to disclose the selling price (who can doubt that it has many zeroes at the end?). Regardless, the sale will likely pass the property into the hands of developers who will in turn change Southern Albemarle as we know it.
While Elizabeth points to the need for development close to Charlottesville so that people aren’t pushed farther into Albemarle, the sale is bittersweet.
“I go for a walk in the woods and there’s a piece of me that knows that this will be over in the next five years,” she says, “and that’s kind of heartbreaking.”
Yeah, that’s what it feels like every time a dream dies.—N.B.
The Power Couple
Jill Hartz and Richard Herskowitz
“It is tricky to strike a balance between a corporate theme and an artistic enterprise,” says Paul Wagner. The Academy Award-winning director is talking about the challenge that faces his ally in cinema, Richard Herskowitz, who since 1996 has directed the Virginia Film Festival. Wagner’s words could as aptly apply to the work of Jill Hartz, too. In addition to being Herskowitz’s spouse, she is the director of the UVA Art Museum. As the film festival and the art museum have matured, Herskowitz and Hartz have deftly navigated the waters between commerce and art, recognizing that every viable cultural institution needs some of both.
Funky figures in their own right, Herskowitz and Hartz have drafted increasing calibers of star power to their enterprises. Under Hartz, for instance, the museum has entered the modern era (a sashay that will continue when the museum’s much larger new home is constructed in coming years as part of UVA’s new arts precinct). Colleague Leah Stoddard, who runs Second Street Gallery, says Hartz’s focus “on non-North American exhibits has really represented a change in the gallery.” Further evidence of Hartz’s broad outlook: the recent exhibit of European master drawings from the museum in Besançon, France, Charlottesville’s nascent sister city. Hartz’s ambition for the new museum has a big-city, modern feel to it, too. She wants to make it a “cultural and social center,” she says, and along the way raise the profile of UVA—not a school, it should be said, about which the words “great art collection” first spring to mind.
Hartz’s husband is well versed too in the task of broadening the appeal and raising the rep of a cultural institution. From a hometown festival that drew attendance of about 8,800 nine years ago, the Virginia Film Festival has become a favorite stop on the national movie circuit and last year had a record attendance of 12,000. Herskowitz has “put his own stamp” on VFF, Wagner says. And not just by drawing bold-faced names like Nicolas Cage, Sigourney Weaver, Sandra Bullock, Roger Ebert and Luke Wilson to the October festival and other VFF-sponsored events. By moving the VFF office to W. Main Street and involving Vinegar Hill Theatre (and soon, the Paramount) in screenings, Herskowitz has married national clout to local enterprise, truly forging the town-gown bond that gets so much lip service in other quarters.
With Herskowitz and Hartz now in their professional prime, when national interest comes a-knockin’, theirs is likely the door that gets the rap.—K.M.
The Newcomers
Gray Television
True, its CBS and ABC affiliates earned only 2 percent and less than 1 percent of the viewing audience, respectively, during the last Nielsen ratings period. That doesn’t mean Gray Television Inc. is any less of a player on the local scene. Just ask anybody living without cable whose network viewing choices increased by 200 percent when Gray began broadcasting last summer. That’s right, the Katie Couric set, so ably supported by NBC 29 all these years, can now venture into the world of breakfast with Diane Sawyer on ABC, and whoever-it-is on CBS, thanks to Gray.
More significantly, both affiliates (WCAV, the CBS station is Channel 19; WVAW, the ABC station is Channel 16) have launched their own local news shows. In the short time they’ve been operational, the principal difference they’ve made in joining the local news landscape is to add even more coverage along the lines of “There sure were a lot of happy families at the Dogwood Parade.”
But you’ve got to start somewhere, and surely the young reporters will learn how to pronounce Stan-Tun eventually. It seems likely Gray’s honchos will give them the time to do it, too. Last year the company clocked record earnings of $41 million, and it spent $7 million on broadcast facilities off Elliott Avenue in the former Frank Ix warehouse. Not only that, but Gray has agreed to buy WADA, a PAX affiliate in Charlottesville. They’ll call that station WAHU. It’s scheduled to start broadcasting soon on Channel 27, delivering a mix of Fox and PAX programming.
Earlier this spring, WCAV/WVAW general manager Roger Burchett laid out his goals and made it clear that slow and steady will win the ratings race, as far as he’s concerned:
“The first thing you’ve got to have is a product that people want to watch…. We want to put a news product on the air that people say, ‘I like it because it’s accurate, it’s well presented, it’s timely and I enjoy watching it. I trust these people,’” he continued. “We’re brand new, so to get all those goals lined up, all working at the same time, it takes time.”—C.H.
The Players
“The Boombox”
Good gravy, is that the same 50 Cent song again? If I hear “In Da Club” one more time, I’ll go insane in the membrane!
There’s a lot of people with perfectly good taste in music who dismiss the entire hip hop genre as trash. And how can you blame them? The music industry picks one guy, tells the suburban kids he’s “gangsta,” then plays his knucklehead song over and over until we’re ready to bust a cap in our radios. Guns, money, hoes… yawn.
Hip hop has a lot more to offer, although you’d never know from listening to commercial radio. Here in Charlottesville, however, we have one of the few places where you can hear rap’s full spectrum—no play lists, no censors.
“The Boombox” is the most listened-to show on WNRN (91.9 FM). Six days a week, from 10pm to midnight (with a four-hour show on Saturday nights), “The Boombox” ranges far and wide across the hip hop landscape. You can hear the socially conscious poetry of the underground scene, self-produced tracks from locals like the Beetnix, or a cut from the latest mix tape floating out of New York or Los Angeles.
And, yes, they spin the gangsta club anthems, but they emphasize variety. After all, the DJs who host “The Boombox” each night are actual hip hop aficionados playing music they like or they think somebody else might like, not just cynically spinning the latest hit. So when they spin 50 Cent, it’s likely to be a brand new track or a deep cut off the album.
There’s something about a freewheeling, uncensored hip hop show that doesn’t fit with the Charlottesville stereotype. That’s just what we love about it.—J.B.
The Brand Labels
Susan Payne and Lisa Ross
Last year Payne Ross & Associates, the advertising firm owned and operated by Susan Payne and Lisa Ross, developed an image ad for Norcross Station, the new apartment complex crafted from a converted warehouse right behind the railroad tracks on Fourth Street SE. Wisely, the ad made no allusion whatsoever to midnight-train-to-Georgia rumblings that jostle the building. Instead the sleek ad featured a Manolo Blahnik slingback with a kitten heel. With a single pair of shoes, Payne and Ross heralded Charlottesville’s official arrival as “The Little Town that Could.” Here was Charlottesville’s new self-definition for the metropolitan age: “We’re in the big leagues now, baby. If you can’t buy Manolos here, at least live like you can.”
It worked. With monthly rents ranging from $950 to $1,550 per month, Norcross Station was totally full in its first year on the Downtown rental scene.
The ad agency’s success was no fluke, however. They’ve got the Downtown identity thing down cold: They also designed the urban-spirited “Where Else But Downtown” ads and the Virginia National Bank logo, to name a few. Yet Payne Ross’ stamp on Charlottesville’s changing sense of self is not limited to one neighborhood. The Virginia Film Festival, the SPCA, Legal Aid and the regional airport also boast Payne Ross’ campaign handiwork.
Susan Payne and Lisa Ross started the company 20 years ago with a single brochure for a construction company. Word spread and over the years, Payne Ross expanded to 12 employees and into everything that could possibly be considered advertising, marketing or public relations. They’re still making brochures, but now you can add TV, radio, books, corporate branding, trade show displays and special events to the menu.
They’re a local success story to be sure, but not because everything they touch turns to gold. Rather, Payne and Ross are blessed with the Charlottesville touch.—N.B.
The Promise
Dave Leitao
Dave Leitao: Enjoy this moment while it lasts.
Right now, UVA’s new head basketball coach is The Man. The Savior. Of course, he hasn’t had his first game yet.
Which makes it the perfect time to be the new head coach of a team that’s desperate for a turnaround. Now, when UVA fans see Leitao on the street, they probably high-five him and say things like “Get ’em, Dave!”
Leitao’s predecessor Pete Gillen heard things like that back when UVA hired him to save the team in the spring of 1998. He was a nice guy, but what did that matter when Gillen could take the ‘Hoos to the NCAA Tournament only once in seven seasons? He got the axe in March, after racking up an overall season record of 14-15 and a dismal 4-12 record in the ACC.
Wishful fans fantasized about UVA hiring Tubby Smith away from Kentucky. Yeah, right.
Leitao, 44, is no slouch. He’s young, he’s African-American (a first for UVA Athletics) and he led DePaul University to a 58-34 record over three seasons. In 2004-05, he went 20-11. There’s no small amount of pressure on at UVA, however, because the $150 million, 15,000-seat John Paul Jones Arena is set to open next fall. The school—and its donors—don’t want a bunch of losers getting their butts kicked all over the brand new hardwood.
If that happens, Leitao might find out how fast Charlottesville’s Southern hospitality turns sour. But now, for Leitao and UVA, hope springs eternal.—J.B.
The Caretaker
Erika Viccellio
As executive director of the Charlottesville Free Clinic, Erika Viccellio commands the front line, maintaining the 13-year-old organization’s mission to provide free medical care to the working uninsured. Earlier this year, payoff came in the form of a grant from the Virginia Health Care Foundation that enables the clinic to pay for its first full-time nurse practitioner, thereby boosting its patient load by 40 percent.
Viccellio came to her work by way of a seven-year stint at the Virginia Institute of Autism, where she eventually became executive director. Her current challenge is making sure people in need of health care know where they can find it. “We’ve never had daytime appointments before,” she says of the clinic’s expanded hours. “We’re reaching out to smaller employers and
letting them know that they can
send employees to us when they never could before.”
Three hundred community volunteers and 150 medical volunteers staff the clinic and last year attended to more than 1,300 patients. That adds up to 3,600 appointments and countless free prescriptions in one year alone. But given that Viccellio conservatively estimates that as many as 10,000 people in Charlottesville and Albemarle are without health care and qualify for Free Clinic services, that means there’s still more work to be done.
“It’s a pleasure for me to work with these people,” Viccellio says. “But it’s about the community coming together to care for one another. It’s something everyone can relate to—we all deserve access to health care. We’re here to ensure that that happens.”—E.R.
The Rainmaker
Michael Gaffney
Michael Gaffney has his hands on Charlottesville’s hottest commodities.
You want it? Gaffney’s probably got it. In a region where real estate is more valuable than bubblin’ crude, Gaffney Homes builds custom high-end houses in places like Sunrise Farms in Earlysville and Old Ballard Farm in Ivy. The unassuming Gaffney has transposed his business success into political clout—he’s a past president of the National Homebuilders Association, one of the country’s most influential industry groups.
How about water? Everyone needs water, and Gaffney’s got his hand on that tap, too. Since 2003 he has served as chairman of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, the quasi-public body that manages the city and county’s water supply and sells water to Charlottesville and Albemarle. Gaffney is shepherding the organization through one of the most important stages of its 30-year history, as the Authority seeks a major new expansion of the local water supply.
Finally, Gaffney is getting a grip on the hottest commodity of all—money. He is a major investor in Sonabank, which will hold its grand opening here in Charlottesville on June 23 at its primary branch in the Forest Lakes shopping center. Gaffney sits on the bank’s board of directors. Sonabank already has raised $35 million in capital and will soon open a branch in Manassas, says bank Vice President Devon Porter. “Mike is tapped in completely,” says Porter. “He has an extensive amount of contacts in Charlottesville.” That may be his most valuable asset of all.—J.B.
The Advocate
Claire Kaplan
Talk about your uphill battles—Claire Kaplan is one of the foremost gay-rights activists in the most anti-gay state in the nation.
Virginia earned that distinction over the past several years as hard-right politicians in the General Assembly have built their careers on stoking animosity against homosexuals. The result has been bills like Del. Bob Marshall’s “Affirmation of Marriage Act,” which not only bans gay civil unions but also outlaws any legal contract between members of the same sex that resemble marriage benefits; in the most recent General Assembly session, the House and Senate voted to take the first step toward making an anti-gay amendment part of the Virginia Constitution. Other legislation is even dumber—ranging from bills to prevent gay couples from adopting children to bills promoting “Traditional Marriage” license plates.
In this climate, Kaplan fights hard. “She is your model local activist,” says Joseph Price, an attorney for the state gay-rights group Equality Virginia. “Claire is down in the trenches talking to legislators, rallying her friends and neighbors, talking to local officials. She’s tireless.”
Kaplan, a member of the gay rights group UVA Pride, must measure her success in small victories. In the fall she helped persuade City Council to formally oppose the Affirmation of Marriage Act, and she has helped focus media attention on the General Assembly. She is currently working to convince UVA to extend domestic partner benefits—which can include health insurance, tuition assistance and gym memberships—to gay employees. According to The Cavalier Daily, UVA is one of only three of the top 25 universities to deny partnership benefits to faculty. (The other two—Notre Dame and Georgetown—are Catholic.) Given the animosity toward gays even at Virginia’s premier university, it’s a good thing Kaplan has so much energy. Given the track
record in Virginia at large, she’s going to need it.—J.B.
The Agitator
M. Rick Turner
During the controversy that engulfed Charlottesville public schools this year, few speakers roused as much passion as Rick Turner, UVA’s Dean of African-American Affairs and the head of the local branch of the NAACP. While some citizens appealed to the School Board to justify the proliferation of standardized tests
or pleaded for better communication between Central Office and the city’s principals, Turner took a decidedly more antagonistic approach. You who oppose the new superintendent are all a bunch of racists, was his charge. White parents don’t care about how African-American kids do in school.
Two months after Scottie Griffin resigned her post as superintendent, Turner remains steadfast in his analysis without regard for how his words might have further strained race relations. “I think I’ve made a lot of people aware of issues they weren’t aware of because very few African-American folks talk about these issues,” he says with no trace of apology.
Indeed, why would he express regret? Since arriving at his UVA post in 1988, Turner’s sense of destiny has grown increasingly intense: “I feel as though I’ve been chosen to be a strong and honest and forthright advocate regardless of those who criticize my brand of advocacy. It has nothing to do with Rick Turner. It has something to do with being chosen.”
Without a doubt, Turner’s inflammatory rhetoric helped to focus attention on the disparities among students in Charlottesville’s public schools. People who hadn’t talked about the achievement gap before had plenty to talk about once Turner’s words were broadcast or printed—though whether those conversations always pointed toward a solution is a question still unresolved.
A father of four grown children, three of whom attended city schools, Turner has been quieter in the past couple of months, but that’s just timing. No question, he’ll be stirring it up again. Maybe soon.
“In Charlottesville I am [living] among a group of frightened and afraid Negroes that are reluctant to stand up for African-American issues,” he says, “particularly African-American children who continue to die in Charlottesville.”—C.H.
The Horticulturist
Gabriele Rausse
Despite TJ’s best efforts, Central Virginia’s dense, clay soil just wasn’t cut out to grow grapes. At least, it wasn’t until Gabriele Rausse came along.
Back in the 1970s Rausse flew in the face of convention by grafting wine-friendly European vines with the roots of disease-tolerant native grapes. His successes at Barboursville Winery, Jefferson Vineyard and others among the region’s 21 vineyards played a big part in the Commonwealth becoming the No. 5 wine-producing state in the country. And with the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing interstate wine sales, expect Virginia’s $50 million vino industry to grow even larger.
Sizable credit goes to Rausse, considered by many the patron saint of Virginia wine after planting hundreds of thousands of vines around the area. “I enjoyed every graft,” he told C-VILLE in April. “I have been a loser all my life. So the idea of coming here and doing something which
‘didn’t work’ was very attractive to me.”
Rausse’s expertise is very attractive to local vintners, including High Meadows Vineyard and Inn co-owner Rose Farber. In 1984 Rausse planted the Scottsville inn’s modest acre-and-a-half vineyard and remains a consultant, crafting the inn’s pinot noir.
“He’s a good all-around guy. He has an ability to teach, so that he takes all that wonderful knowledge, and he has a wonderful magic to pass it on,” Farber says. “It’s not that he does what he does, it’s that he teaches all of us how to do it.”—E.R.
The Entrepreneurs
Jessica Nagle and Reid Nagle
Even if their financial database company, SNL Financial, didn’t pump 275 gainfully employed people into the Downtown economy, Jessica and Reid Nagle would deserve commendation simply for the makeover they accomplished a couple of years ago. They took the hulking monolith formerly known as the Spy Building (and officially dubbed the National Ground Intelligence Center) and transformed it into something approximating a sleek, city-centric pillar of white-collar industry.
It wasn’t an impulse born of aesthetics that prompted them to relocate to 90,000 square feet on Seventh Street from their chunky brick building on Fourth Street. No doubt the deal they brokered with the City of Charlottesville to rent the Spy Building at rates far below market sweetened their interest in remaining Downtown. But what was the bottom line? Their company had outgrown its home. Again.
The Nagles relocated SNL and a handful of employees to Charlottesville from Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1989. Certain that they wanted to be in a college town where new graduates could supply fresh blood for their fledgling company, they narrowed it down to Charlottesville and Williamsburg with the help of Barron’s. “Charlottesville seemed like a little more of a real town,” Jessica says. Sort of. “The Chamber of Commerce had a video,” she recalls. “The highlight was that the Coffee Exchange had a cappuccino maker! It was a big adjustment coming from New York.”
Indeed their first corporate headquarters was a “suite” of offices above the Men & Boys Shop on the Mall. (These days SNL also has offices in Denver, Arlington and London, as well as in India and Pakistan for a total of 400 employees worldwide.)
Back in 1989, they might have found themselves in Mayberry, but that didn’t keep the Nagles from committing to local life. Sixteen years later, their company continues its employee-guided philanthropy program, which has benefited everything from Live Arts to MACAA and the African-American Festival.
Somewhat self-effacing about their roles (indeed, Reid begged off the photo session for this story), the Nagles now emphasize that they’ve passed the management torch to “the new guard.”
“For me personally it’s gratifying to see some of the people who we hired at 22 and where they are now,” Jessica says.—C.H.