Tuesday, June 21
Teen drinking couple gets another chance
The Virginia Court of Appeals today decided to review the case of an Earlysville couple who served alcohol to more than 60 teens at their son’s 16th birthday party in 2002 and were eventually sentenced to 27 months for their actions. Investigating three complaints of underage drinking at the party, Albemarle Police Cpl. Scott Cox drove into the family’s driveway and witnessed teens in the yard holding beer bottles. The case review will examine whether Cox conducted an illegal search when he drove up the driveway.
Wednesday, June 22
Plenty o’ love for Pleven
Charlottesville takes another step toward the sister-city death match today with a press release from
the U.S. Agency for International Development, which announced that though “Bulgaria would seem to have little in common with the state of Virginia,” City Manager Gary O’Connell has just returned from the town of Pleven, where he found “his community shares much in common” with the formerly Communist city. Sister-city enthusiasts recall that the “much-in-common” argument is a pillar of Councilor Blake Caravati’s effort to officially bond Charlottesville to Besançon, France. USAID funds a “CityLinks” project that gives Charlottesville the means to “assist Pleven in its local economic development efforts.” No word yet on whether Pleven seeks advice on how to broker sweetheart deals with deep-pocketed developers or send friendly contracts to its architect chums in Philadelphia.
Thursday, June 23
Council selects new School Board members
Concluding the unusually public selection process, City Council tonight named two new School Board members and reappointed an incumbent. Rev. Alvin Edwards, a former mayor, and Louis Bograd, a legal consultant who has worked with the Legal Aid Justice Center, were picked from a pool of 12. Peggy Van Yahres was chosen for a second term on the Board. During the month-long interview process, the issue of public communication took center stage. The new Board takes office July 1, when, it’s hoped, they’ll quickly move forward to substantive issues, such as hiring a new superintendent and improving Charlot-tesville’s high school graduation rate.
Friday, June 24
Curtain rises on Paramount’s 2005-06 season
Flush with the success of its premiere season (18 of the 32 performances were sell-outs), Paramount Executive Director Chad Hershner unveiled the Downtown venue’s “spectacular encore” at a press conference today. Big gets include legendary funnyman Bill Cosby (April 29), virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma (February 24) and blue-eyed soul masters Hall & Oates (September 10). The remainder of the 46-show season skews mostly to older audiences and families, although Hershner added that Starr Hill Presents would bring in even more big-name shows, like the recent Aimee Mann concert. Tickets go on sale to the general public on August 15. For the complete schedule, visit www.theparamount.net.
Reservoir pipeline: pals in high places?
Encouraged by a friendly reception from State and federal regulators to a pipeline proposal, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority will begin to draft a timetable for the project, according to a report in today’s Daily Progress. Earlier in the week, the RWSA met in Richmond with regulators to discuss four potential solutions to the region’s impending water supply problems. Reportedly, the option that met with the most support was a pipeline between the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir and the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, which could extend as much as 10 miles. Earlier in the month, a different pipeline proposal, to connect the James River in Scottsville to Charlottesville, spurred environmental protests.
Saturday, June 25
Negative vibration
Party people at Club 216 tonight had the opportunity to take a few minutes off the dance floor and gain some important personal health information with free HIV testing as part of National HIV Testing Day. Monday, June 27, is the event’s official date, but Charlottesville’s AIDS/HIV Services Group tested people all week long. ASG HIV Prevention Educator Amdie Mengistu says, “It’s best to know your status. It’s a wonderful feeling to know you’re negative.” The Virginia Department of Health estimates that 22,000 Virginians are HIV-positive, and up to one-third of them might not know it.
Sunday, June 26
Strikers hit UVA
The U.S. women’s soccer team’s weeklong practice in Charlottesville paid off today with a 2-0 victory over the Canadian national team in Virginia Beach. The American team arrived last Sunday for its first domestic training camp of the year, held at UVA’s Klöckner Stadium. The young group needs the work. Less than half of the current roster was part of the gold-medal team from the 2004 Athens Olympics, and the formerly dominant squad is struggling for an identity following the departure of superstars Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain, and the arrival of a new coach, Greg Ryan.
Monday, June 27
Public housing: Two down, three to go
One week after City Council filled two of four seats on the City’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners, the Commissioners themselves will announce today a new executive director. On May 11, CRHA dismissed Paul Chedda from that job, after a brief and contentious stint. The CRHA manages the City’s 376 public housing units, many of which are in extremely poor condition. Chedda was outspoken about the disrepair and lack of adequate funds to address it; he was also reportedly confrontational and hard to work with. Last Monday, City Council reappointed fellow Councilor Kendra Hamilton as a CRHA Commissioner and tagged Jason Halbert, a low-income housing advocate, for another seat. Council will fill the two CRHA Commission seats that remain open by July 11.
Compiled by Cathy Harding from staff reports and news media.
Big Brother and the scolding company
Creigh Deeds proposes GPS technology to track sex offenders
Little dots blink across a state police officer’s computer screen, tracking the movements of civilians. If one of those civilians passes within 100 yards of a school while on his way to work, an alarm will sound, bringing the officer monitoring these movements to attention. At that point, he’ll jump up, run to his squad car and gun it to said school.
This imaginary scene is the picture conjured by Democratic State Senator Creigh Deeds, who is now running for Attor-ney General. This is how AG Deeds would propose to track all the Commonwealth’s convicted sex offenders—with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology. Defined by the Virginia Code, sex offenders are people convicted of rape, attempted rape, aggravated sexual battery and indecent liberties with a minor, among other offenses.
“[Such] images of the war on crime are literal,” says Anne Coughlin, a UVA law professor and expert in criminal law and procedure, commenting on the GPS scenario. “This feels like a move towards a police-dominated state.”
Studies, such as one released in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Justice, support the theory that sex offenders repeat their crime at a higher rate (40 percent within a year of release) than other criminals. Moreover, one in four entries in the Virginia Sex Offender and Crimes Against Minors Registry is out of date, according to the Deeds campaign.
But besides putting Big Brother on speed dial, as Coughlin suggests it would, would GPS technology really make a difference in sex crime rates? Or is this another example of the campaign season’s favorite game, political lip service?
According to Kristine Hall, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, the Virginia Sex Offender Registry may represent only 10 percent of sex offenders. Although some may be listed in the registry, 90 percent, she says, are acquaintances of the victim and their crimes often go unreported. Thus, promoting GPS technology as protection against sex offenders, says Hall, could foster a false sense of security.
The Sex Offender Registry (http://sex offender.vsp.state.va.us) lists all convicted sex offenders in the Commonwealth. There are 90 cons registered in Charlottesville and Albemarle alone: to find them, type in your zip code and wait for their pictures to pop up.
In addition to the registry being out of date, currently only 10 or 11 state police officers are assigned to keeping an eye on Virginia’s registered sex offenders. Deeds, says his campaign press secretary Peter Jackson, sees the GPS technology as a way to simultaneously tighten the registry and provide needed support to police.
“It comes down to granting more rights to convicted felons or protecting children and Virginia’s families,” says Jack-son. “Deeds is err-ing on the side of keeping us all safe from violent sexual predators.”
As to why funds wouldn’t be better spent on more parole officers and rehabilitation, Jackson gave no specific response.
Originally developed by the U.S. Air Force, GPS systems use satellites to locate a person’s latitude, longitude and altitude to within a few hundred feet.
Pro Tech Monitoring, a Florida-based company, used this technology to craft a device that can track sex offenders. According to the company’s CEO, Steve Chapin, a 2.5-ounce anklet tethers the offender to a 16-ounce tracking unit on the belt. The anklet transmits a signal to the tracking device, so that if a signal is not received, those monitoring the device know that the offender has walked away from the anklet.
The device recently made headlines in the wake of the murder of 9-year-old Florida girl, Jessica Lunsford. In February, she was killed by a convicted sex offender. The murder prompted Republican Governor Jeb Bush to sign the Jessica Lunsford Act requiring lifetime GPS tracking for those convicted of sex crimes on children 11 and younger. This contraption, or something like it, is what Deeds proposes.
Besides Florida, red states Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas each use GPS technology to track convicted sex offenders. These programs, however, are all isolated either to certain geographical areas or to smaller groups within the convicted sex offender population, such as child molesters. Should Deeds be elected and his proposal to track all sex offenders in the entire Commonwealth come to fruition, it would be the harshest yet. (Deeds’ campaign has no estimate yet for the cost of such a comprehensive GPS program. In Florida, the price tag so far has been $4 million.)
Anne Coughlin agrees GPS tracking could provide a false sense of security. Other dilemmas arise, too.
“It’s treating [sex offenders] like animals,” she says. “We have invisible fences for dogs.”
Coughlin is also concerned about the Pavlovian response that seeing a GPS anklet might engender in children. The message it sends is that an enemy population lives among us, she says. It could be interpreted further as an invitation to vigilantism on the part of the greater community against a stigmatized population. For example, last month in Illinois, a neighbor allegedly set fire to a man’s house after hearing that he was a convicted sex offender.
According to Coughlin, the constitutionality of such GPS tracking will undoubtedly get tested in the courts, where concerns will center on questions of cruel and unusual punishment. It is there that the call will be made as to whether such tracking constitutes punishment or simply
civil regulation.
And then there’s the whole question of imperfection in our criminal justice system: Sometimes innocent people go to jail.
In a nutshell, “You just want to be really careful with these kinds of innovations,” says Coughlin.—Nell Boeschenstein
Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell!
Lee Danielson puts the Boxer building back on the market
Since January they’ve been saying the wrecking balls are aimed at the old Boxer Learning building at 200 E. Main St., near Central Place on the Downtown Mall. But a prominent “For Sale” sign that went up on the side of the 16,100-square-foot piece of prime real estate last week suggests otherwise.
The building’s owner, California-based developer Lee Danielson, maintained for a year-and-a-half that the plans were on track to turn the building into a boutique hotel complete with outdoor café, restaurant and roof terrace. January came and went, no go. Sud-denly, it was the end of April and the building stood stubbornly intact. At this juncture Danielson still insisted to C-VILLE that ground would be broken by July 1, and the entire project completed by October 2006.
But in the intervening two months things have apparently fallen apart.
Stu Rifkin is managing the sale for with Hasbrouk Real Estate Corporation. The asking price, he says, is $5.2 million, although he has yet to begin to market the building. However, when he does begin the marketing process, chances are Rifkin will still push the property as prime hotel material.
“I think that would be one of the highest and best uses for the building,” says Rifkin, while allowing that residential condos are also a reasonable possibility.
The City, says Aubrey Watts, Char-lottesville’s director of economic development, hopes Rifkin is successful in marketing the building’s hotel-readiness and that the previously planned makeover will go forward under a future proprietor.
“Our hope,” says Watts, “is that if there’s a nice hotel Downtown that [the old Boxer Learning building] would be a good place for it.”
Danielson made himself a household name in Charlottesville in the mid-’90s when he and then-partner Colin Rolph
put in the Regal Theater and Ice Park at
the west end of the Mall. He bought the Boxer Learning build-ing in 2002 for $3.3 million, after he and Rolph had parted ways acrimoniously.
Given the $1.9 million difference be-tween the buying price three years ago and the present selling price, is this deal a protracted real-estate flip? Danielson did not return repeated calls for comment before press time.
Run-ins with the City’s Board of Architectural Review stemming from the designs for the Ice Park and movie theater prompted Danielson’s vow that he would never build in Charlottesville again. He ate his words early last year, however, when he announced preliminary plans for the boutique hotel.
Early plans drawn up by San Francisco-based architecture firm Hornberger and Worstell (known for high-end hotel designs) retained the building’s black granite façade, and called for an additional seven stories on top of the original two. That would have added up to 90,300
square feet of hotel magic. The BAR was enthusiastic about the designs, and Danielson had already dubbed it The Landmark Hotel.
Moreover, Danielson said he had lined up the Windsor Capital Group to operate the place. This is the group that also runs chains such as Embassy Suites, Marriott, Hawthorn Suites, Radisson and Renaissance. While the impact on Downtown is yet unknown, the loss of one boutique hotel probably won’t hurt the Windsor group too much.—Nell Boeschenstein
Local motion
Richards launches grassroots rail group
Meredith Richards has a few numbers she wants you to learn: 4,118, 2,258 and 708. Those represent the ounces of chemical emissions created by a round-trip to Washington, D.C. from Charlottesville by plane, car and train, respectively. Come the next session of the General Assembly in January, Richards would like you to direct your newfound transportation knowledge to elected officials. Since the Virginia Department of Transportation has written rail funding into its six-year plan for the first time in 25 years—$1.5 billion for rail and public transportation projects, combined—Richards knows that the time is now to make the case for enhanced rail service.
“We may well need your help during the next session of the General Assembly,” Richards said at a press conference she called on Wednesday, June 22, to plug her new rail advocacy group.
Though she no longer holds elected office, the former City Councilor and longtime rail supporter has something of a second career pushing for the creation of rail alternatives around here. On Wednesday she announced the creation of Charlottesville Citizens for Better Rail Alternatives (www.cvillerail.org). The goal: to “promote accessible efficient passenger rail service” between here and Washington, D.C., particularly, to get the Virginia Railway Express extended southward from its last stop in Manassas to Charlottesville’s Union Station on W. Main Street.
Richards used the smartly refurbished, historic station as the setting for her press conference, where, despite the week’s headlines concerning the threatened elimination of a federal subsidy for Amtrak, she noted that “it’s not against the Amtrak backdrop that this work has been done.”
Indeed, even before Congress aimed its scalpel at Amtrak, State politicians signed off on the Rail Enhancement Fund, which, folded into VDOT’s six-year plan, provides $23 million annually for rail improvements. Richards says that some of that money could be applied to “improvements to some of the stations or the tracks.” For operating funds, she says, her group will go after other State transportation money.
Richards, joined by Butch Davies, the regional representative to the Common-wealth Transportation Board, as well as Harrison Rue, who heads the Metropolitan Planning Organization, laid out the many pluses of a 236-mile round-trip Char-lottesville-to-D.C. rail service. It’s better for the environment and relieves traffic congestion. It’s convenient for business travelers who can get work done both before and after a meeting. It’s easier on families with children, because it’s less confining. It lures D.C. tourists to our own historic burg. It could reduce the number of cars brought to the area by UVA students who would have another option for getting home to NoVa.
Even John Pfaltz, one-time Richards rival for a seat on City Council, joined in: “Transporta-tion is the issue facing Charlottesville today,” he said. “If we don’t get together—bus, transit, rail—so it works, this city will have serious problems.”
But some wonder if easier rail access to D.C. would yield some serious problems of its own. Richards mentioned the goal of two trains daily. “You hear a lot of people who are pretty divided on this thing,” says Stratton Salidis, chair of Alternatives to Paving, “some thinking it could create sprawl by making Charlottesville a bedroom community. But at the same time, anytime you can shift people to transportation that’s more efficient in some way, that’s good.”
The journey to the nation’s capital would run close to two-and-a-half hours, which seems at the extreme end of commuter tolerance. Still, Albemarle County Executive Robert Tucker allows that “there’s a balance you have to consider.”
But in the main, Albemarle is behind the idea. “The County has always been supportive of any kind of increased or improved rail service to our area,” Tucker says.
Peter Kleeman has also heard concerns about rail spawning sprawl. But the transportation planning consultant, who also sits on the board of the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation, a group promoting streetcars in Charlottesville, doesn’t buy it.
“People say from being our own center we would become a satellite community for a bigger urban center. I don’t think that would be the case,” he says, “but if we did, I don’t think that would be so bad, either.”—Cathy Harding
Invention is a mother
UVA’s Patent Foundation spreads the wealth among the innovative and lucky
In 1954, George Stibitz of Boonton, New Jersey, received a patent for the electric calculator. Five years later, Bertha Dlugi of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, earned patent number 2,882,858 for her invention—a diaper for parakeets. The calculator went on to revolutionize math class, while the bird diaper was lost in an indifferent marketplace.
Those are the breaks in the invention game.
“I’ve been in this business for 20 years,” says Robert MacWright, the bearded, enthusiastic, 51-year-old patent attorney who directs UVA’s Patent Foundation. “I’ve learned that you cannot pick the winners.”
Well, maybe the bird diaper was a stinker from the beginning. Most of the inventions that come through the Patent Foundation are far more complicated, and their potential doesn’t seem as crappy.
UVA’s Patent Foundation, housed on the third floor of the Lewis and Clark building on W. Main Street, shepherds ideas from UVA’s best minds from the laboratory to the marketplace. The process is complex. If the idea is good, though, and the inventor is lucky, the Patent Foundation can reap millions of dollars to spread around.
A lucrative invention is like a million-selling rock album—lots of people want one, many people try, but only a few succeed. For UVA inventors, the process begins when they disclose an invention to the Patent Foundation for an evaluation.
“We consider its ‘patentability,’” says MacWright. To earn a patent, an invention must, first of all, be useful. It must be new and original. Finally, it must be non-obvious—that is, you can’t take a green lamp, paint it red, and call it a new invention. “There has to be a spark of genius, as it were,” MacWright says.
Since it can take three years to finally get a patent, the Foundation first applies for a provisional patent, a shorter process that basically lays claim to an invention while a full patent is pending. Once the U.S. Patent Office grants a patent, the invention is legally protected from copycats for 20 years. If an invention has at least a patent application on file, companies will consider developing it for sale.
In the past two years, UVA inventors have disclosed 311 inventions to the Foundation, with about half coming from the School of Medicine. Of those, 253 earned provisional patents, while only 33 earned a full U.S. patent. In 2003 and 2004, 108 inventions patented through UVA earned deals with companies, reaping a total of $11.6 million in license fees and royalties for their patents.
Depending on how much an invention earns, the inventor draws between 50 percent of the total profits (if that figure is below $100,000) to 15 percent (if it’s more than $1 million). Money also goes to the inventor’s laboratory, the Patent Foundation, and the school where the inventor works.
Benjamin Gaston, a professor of pediatrics at UVA who earned three patents through the Foundation last year, says UVA is a better place for inventors than other elite schools. “It’s better than Harvard. They’re just out for the cash,” says Gaston, who has invented various techniques for diagnosing and treating respiratory diseases. “The Foundation here is pretty reasonable about keeping the inventor involved and returning some of the licensing fees to the labs where they work,” he says.
In 2000, the Foundation established a for-profit consulting subsidiary called Spinner Technologies, which counsels faculty inventors on how to start their own companies. One such UVA spin-off is a Charlottesville company called Respira-tory Research, Inc. Run by UVA pediatrics professor John Hunt, Respiratory Research now distributes Gaston’s device for monitoring asthma to customers on six continents.
It’s a gratifying process for Gaston, who says that while he knows something about lungs, he doesn’t know squat about product development. Without guidance from the Patent Foundation, his asthma treatment could have ended up alongside the parakeet diaper.
“In the capitalist world in which we live, there’s no stomach for developing an idea that won’t make money,” says Gaston. “And an idea won’t make money if it’s not protected. It’s the only way an idea will ever get turned into anything useful.”—John Borgmeyer