Month: June 2005

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

Tuesday, May 31
In Charlottesville, even the Republicans are progressive

While politicians in the rest of Virginia make a beeline for the right-wing, here in Charlottesville even the Republican candidate wants to be “progressive.” Today city Republican Tom McCrystal, 44, announced his candidacy for the 57th House of Delegates seat to be vacated by Mitch Van Yahres. Democrats on June 14 will decide which of three candidates McCrystal will face on November 8. A former GOP precinct chair in the Tonsler precinct, McCrystal says he’s running as a…progressive? “I think I’m squarely in the center,” he says. “Progressives are for the little guy. I think people who turn ‘progressive’ into a code word for liberal are taking something that isn’t theirs.”

Man sentenced to four months for hit-and-run

Robert Steven Newell was sentenced in Albemarle Circuit Court to four months in jail for a November collision on Earlysville Road, which killed 19-year-old Martha Jones. Jones had already crashed her car, but had made her way out a window and onto the road when Newell struck her. He left the scene of the accident and turned himself in to the police one week later. The Daily Progress reported that Judge J. Howe Brown called the case a great tragedy for both families involved.

Wednesday, June 1
38 seniors have nothing to show for their city education

Responding to Memorial Day absenteeism, which was eight times above normal, the Charlottesville School Board tonight voted 5-1 to retain Memorial Day as a holiday next year, protecting it from becoming a snow make-up day again. The meeting, marked by a newfound cooperative spirit, also brought disturbing news from the high school: Of the 218 seniors in the Class of 2005, some 38, or 17 percent, will not graduate. Factors contributing to this alarming statistic include absences, insufficient standard credits, failure to meet Standards of Learning and dropping out.

Thursday, June 2
Protestors decry pipeline

More than 70 people lined up in their rain jackets and huddled under umbrellas at the Scottsville Farmer’s Market this afternoon to sign a petition against the proposed James River pipeline. The protesters say the pipeline—one of four proposals the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is considering to increase Charlottesville’s water supply—would encourage unwanted development along Route 20, lead to increased water pollution and negatively affect those whose livelihoods depend on the river. Its estimated building cost is $49.9 million. The protesters heard from speakers and later, on the count of 3, the crowd yelled, “Stop the pipeline!” as a banner went up on the bridge across
the James.

Friday, June 3
See it now, while it’s still old

Yesterday the National Trust for Historic Preservation put a 175-mile portion of Route 15 and Route 20—running from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Charlottesville —on this year’s list of the nation’s most endangered historic places. The journey includes six presidential homes, among them Monticello, and important Civil
War battlefields such as Antietam and Manassas. The threat is growth. That area has lost 150,000 acres of farmland since the early 1980s, as the population along the route has doubled. Speaking to The Washington Post, National Trust President Richard Moe said, “I think there is more significant history in this corridor than any comparable space in America.”

Saturday, June 4
Beachward, ho!

The sun came out in earnest midday and, lo and behold, Charlottesville had a beach day on its hands. Plenty of locals headed to one of Albemarle’s “beaches,” really, lakes with sand, at Chris Greene Lake, Mint Springs and Walnut Creek. “I want to get a tan, I reckon, relax and enjoy myself,” said Greene County resident Troy Morris about why he had joined the beach-goers for this official opening weekend. Albemarle’s beaches are open through Labor Day.

Sunday, June 5
UVA’s Zimmerman the next Ripken?

Though a loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes yesterday squashed UVA baseball’s NCAA run, the season could finish on a high note for Ryan Zimmerman, who’s being touted today as a hot prospect when Major League Baseball’s supplemental draft begins Tuesday. The Washington Nationals are taking a close look at him, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. And an unnamed scout paid Zimmerman a high compliment, saying he’s “one of the best defensive third basemen I’ve scouted in all my years.” The scout added, “But don’t be surprised if he moves to shortstop. With his athleticism, he could be a Cal Ripken-type.”

Monday, June 6
StoryCorps catches local tales

It’s been one week since the StoryCorps trailer parked on the Downtown Mall. One of the more fascinating stories so far is how Brian Korbon Field in McIntire Park got its name. Korbon was 9 years old when he died during a baseball game there 12 years ago. According to his parents, Brian foresaw his death in the months leading up to the game, and he left goodbye notes on the day he died. “He wrote that he was going away for a trip, and that everything was O.K.,” said his father, Gregg, who recorded his son’s story in the trailer with his wife, Kathryn, on June 2. StoryCorps, a project of National Public Radio, hopes to collect 100 stories from Charlottesville before leaving on June 13 to continue the tour of the East Coast. Some 250,000 stories will eventually be housed in the Library of Congress.

Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.

 Dr. Moreno’s House call
Stem-cell reversal in Congress tied to UVA ethicist

Usually you’d figure the last person Congress wants to hear from is an ethicist. Yet it seems some of our Representatives are taking the advice of UVA bioethics professor Jonathan Moreno quite seriously.

   Moreno co-chaired a committee from the National Academies (sort of a public think tank that assembles experts to inform the government and the public on matters of engineering, science and medicine) that in April released a report setting guidelines for human embryonic stem-cell research. Even though the rules are voluntary, the 131-page report represents the first attempt to move the United States another step forward in establishing protocols for stem-cell research.

   Embryonic stem cells are extracted from unused frozen embryos in fertility clinics. The embryonic stem cells can give rise to all of the body’s 200 or so cell types, including nerve, liver, skin, bone, heart muscle and pancreas. This makes the cells uniquely useful in studying spinal cord injuries, heart disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.

   Christian conservatives—championed by President Bush and his Republican buddy Speaker of the House Tom DeLay—have raised moral objections to a method of research that, they say, demands the sacrifice of human life. “The best that can be said about this research is that it is scientific exploration into the potential benefits of killing human beings,” DeLay told The Washington Post on Wednesday, May 25.

   The National Academies’ report is all the more significant because it preceded a surprising vote in the House of Representatives: 50 Republicans broke with Bush and DeLay and passed a bill repealing some federal restrictions on stem-cell research on May 24. In August 2001, Bush put strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, a move critics labeled as a triumph of religious dogma over sound, ethical science. The May 24 vote came down 238 to 194 in favor of reversing those restrictions.

   Moreno calls the vote “re-markable,” but notes that the Senate has not yet voted on the bill. Bush has vowed to veto it, which could be a first in his four and a half years in office.

   Ironically, Moreno says, federal opposition to embryonic stem-cell research actually opens the door for ethical abuses. Without federal funding, there’s no federal oversight, and so companies that choose to proceed with embryonic stem-cell research do so without a clear ethical standard.

   “It basically leaves the industry to its own devices,” says Moreno. “If you withdraw funding, you remove the American people from knowing what’s going on.”

   As an example, Moreno cites the issue of in vitro fertilization. The Reagan Admin-istration ignored it, and the industry developed without public oversight. Now it’s common for the eggs of an Ivy League graduate to fetch $50,000. “It raises some policy questions about medical services that put people at risk when money is changing hands,” says Moreno. “Poten-tially people could be exploited.”

   Moreno supports getting the National Institutes of Health (the leading federal agency for medical research) more involved in embryonic stem-cell research. With federal guidance, the United States could move forward scientifically to meet countries like South Korea, Israel, Great Britain and Canada, where research is proceeding apace. In the meantime, he hopes that universities, state governments and private research firms will adopt the guidelines as they push forward, with or without federal funding.

   Even if the rules are voluntary, Moreno says it’s unlikely that researchers would flout them. The rules create a community standard that image-conscious institutions will be wary of violating. “Venture capitalists don’t want to go with companies that might get sued or shut down,” Moreno says.

   The National Academies’ guidelines say, for example, that embryonic cells should be freely donated by both parents. The rules also set limits on the manufacture of chimeras—creatures composed of human and animal cells—limiting, for example, injection of human embryonic cells into primates as well as any chimera that could give rise to a human-like brain. Any experiment that results in a human embryo developing inside an animal’s uterus should also be banned, says the report.

   The report suggests that after being donated freely by the mother and father, the embryos should be cultured for no longer than 14 days, the point at which the human nervous system begins to form. The report’s key recommendation is that all institutions researching embryonic stem cells set up independent oversight bodies to evaluate proposed experiments.

   Although the guidelines are sensitive to ethical questions, they do not attempt to resolve the religious questions that are more akin to politics than science. After reading DeLay’s quote in the Post, Moreno said, “I’m not sure he knows what he’s talking about, technically.”—John Borgmeyer

 Read the National Academies’ guidelines on embryonic stem-cell research at http:// books.nap.edu/catalog/11278.html.

NoVa, here we come!
Is the Loudounization of Albemarle an imminent threat?

Huddled together underneath a tent in the center of Scottsville on a recent rainy Thursday, a group of concerned citizens donned their “Stop the Pipeline” t-shirts and raised their voices in opposition to the proposed James River pipeline. The pipeline, they say, is not good planning. Rather, it’s a precursor to unplanned growth.

   Taking the microphone to welcome the crowd and rile them up on June 2, Jeff Werner of the Piedmont Environmental Council bellowed, “Don’t let us become the next Loudoun County!”

   The crowd applauded and bobbed their heads in agreement.

   Lately, as the commercial monster of Route 29N creeps ever northward, “Don’t let us become the next Loudoun County” has become a familiar chant among those concerned about Albemarle’s long-term future.

   Loudoun County (everything from Dulles Airport to the horse farms of Middleburg) is the fastest growing county in the United States. Before Dulles opened in 1962, Loudoun County had a population of about 20,000 and was primarily rural. By 2001, its population had swelled to 200,000, doubling in the past decade alone.

   Overwhelmed, Loudoun voters elected a slow-growth board of supervisors in 1999. This board passed strict building limits allowing for only 10,000 new homes. Developers took the limits straight to court and the rules were thrown out this March. With pre-limit zoning back in place, the county is potentially zoned for at least 37,000 new houses, though a compromise is in the works.

   Moreover, frustrated that the slow-growth board had not eased Loudoun’s growing pains, citizens put in a Repub-lican-led, pro-growth board in 2004. The result was political stalemate.

   Therefore, when people refer to the “Loudounization” of Albemarle, they’re referring to one of two possible concerns: exponential growth or a political standoff.

   Sally Thomas, a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, dispels concern of a similar political situation here. Because Albemarle elects only half its board every two years, instead of the entire board every four years as Loudoun does, Albemarle avoids the wild political swings to which Loudoun has been prone, she says.

   The sprawl up there is the eyesore, however. Luckily, due to the simple facts that Dulles is not part of the Albemarle equation and there’s no D.C. octopus nearby to dispatch its tentacles into our farmlands, Albemarle’s growth potential is not nearly on the scale of Loudoun.

   The two counties may operate on different scales, but Albemarle still expands. The steady 2 percent growth rate for the past 10 years means the county’s population could double every 32 years if the pattern holds.

   Thus, says Jack Marshall, president of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population (ASAP), “Population growth is not a false fear here in Albemarle County. We are no longer in a position of having an unbridled frontier.”

   Marshall suggests planning ahead for optimum population growth by putting caps on the population. These caps, he says, are already implied in zoning laws. They’re not intended to keep people out of the county, as some ASAP critics allege, but to pace the county’s growth.

   The issue of population control is a sticky one. Neil Williamson, executive director of the Free Enterprise Forum, which is pro-growth and often speaks for the Chamber of Commerce, considers such options elitist.

   “I am opposed to digging a moat around the county and keeping new residents out,” he says, adding that he thinks the county is already working well to accommodate disparate growth interests.

   When development talk turns philosophical, things can get interesting. After all, who can see into the future? Who would have pre-dicted 20 years ago, for instance, that a three-bedroom house in Bel-mont would sell for more than $200,000?

   Thomas says that, pragmatically speaking, people can only plan 20 years at a time (coincidentally, the time frame that Albe-marle attaches to its master planning process). But be it planning for 20 years hence or 100, Jim Burton, a member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, warns Albemarle that even if certain circumstances differ, we should nonetheless take heed if we don’t want to go the way of Loudoun.

   “Set in place rules and regulations now that will keep things under control,” he says. “Hopefully, you’re already in the process of doing that.”—Nell Boeschenstein

Bidding Big Mouth Pizza goodbye
At the public auction, one man’s misfortune was another man’s jackpot

The parmesan cheese shakers are still half-full. They’re clumped on a shelf with the roasted red pepper, salt and pepper shakers, an ashtray and a small shell tchotchke with the words “Big Mouth Pizza” written across the figurine’s “mouth.” Collectively, this is Lot No. 34.

There are crumbs in the crevices of the Sunfire gas stove (Lot No. 48) and the floor could use a good mopping. The lucky bidder on Lot No. 57 will take home the contents of both bathrooms, including the unemptied trash cans, and three half-used rolls of toilet paper.

   An itemized list compiled by the City Sheriff’s Department of everything up for auction is available at the front door for the deal hunters as they file in.

   This is a public auction: The end of the road for small bus-iness owners who default on their rent payments.

   Big Mouth Pizza on W. Main Street, owned by Frank Cramblitt, officially closed four months ago when its landlords, Main Street Associates (owned by Allan Cadgene and Gabe Silverman), filed a civil suit in Charlottesville General District Court. The suit claimed the pizza joint owed $25,762.10 in unpaid rent from October 2003 to February 2005. The resulting judgment found in favor of Cadgene and Silverman, ordering a public auction (administered through the City Sheriff’s office) of all Big Mouth inventory to help pay Cramblitt’s debt.

   The auction isn’t set to begin until noon, but Jack Davis has been sitting outside since 11am. He’s a sales rep for a restaurant supply company based in Waynesboro and sold Cramblitt much of Big Mouth’s kitchen equipment when the restaurant opened. Today, however, he’s looking to buy that merchandise back at a sweet deal.

   Asked about whether he has sympathy for his former client, Davis shrugs.

   “That’s the way of life,” he says. “Some people make it, some people don’t.”

   Sharon Johnson agrees. She comes to auctions like this all the time in search of a deal, especially on anything electronic. TVs, computers, CD players. She’ll buy any number of electronics so long as they’re cheap. If she can’t use another
TV, she’ll pass it on to her church “or the next person.”

   “I’m just a scavenger,” she says smiling. “I like to see what they got.”

   The auction starts promptly at noon. Deputy M.T. Greene reads the terms and conditions of the sale, before opening the bidding at $1,000 for Lot No. 1: The entire contents of the whole business.

   “$1,000. Do I hear $1,000?”

   Cadgene nods his head, but a man quickly outbids him across the room. Cadgene raises to $3,000. The man across the room counters again. Within two minutes the price has risen to $8,000, Cadgene being the last bidder.

   “$8,500? Do I hear $8,500?” asks Deputy Greene.

   There’s a moment of shocked silence before Deputy Greene seals the deal with a booming, “Sold for $8,000!”

   The 20 or so hopefuls look like they don’t know what hit them as Cadgene heads over to another deputy manning the door. He writes the check on the spot.

   Johnson breaks the semi-silence with a laugh. “That was a quick sale!” she says, shaking her head and walking out.

   Within minutes almost everyone has dispersed. Cadgene paces the driveway talking on his cellphone. When he hangs up, he looks pleased.

   The plan is to put another restaurant in the space, he explains. Buying the whole shebang gives him and Silverman a ready-made space to offer “about three” interested parties.

   As for the legal tangle, says Cadgene, forget the rent aspect of the equation and Big Mouth still wasn’t turning a profit. But this marks the end of the road for Main Street Associates LLC v. Big Mouth LLC.

   “It’s not worth pursuing,” he says. “[Cramblitt] just doesn’t have the money.”—Nell Boeschenstein

Quick, close the door!
Goode takes a hard line on Virginia’s 100,000 illegal immigrants—again

Immigration policy has returned to the front of the national political discourse. Having become entwined with the debate over national security in the wake of 9/11, immigration measures have swung pivotal legislative fights. And on the general issue of what to do about the country’s large and growing undocumented population—estimated at around 10 million—President Bush’s decision to steer toward somewhere in the middle ground with his “guest worker” proposal has revealed deep fissures in the Republican Party.

   Virgil Goode, Charlottesville’s Congress-ional representative, has made restricting immigration a pillar of his political career. “Illegal immigrants take jobs from our citizens. I’m working to stop illegal immigration and secure America’s borders,” he proclaims on his campaign website. Goode regularly gets perfect marks for his voting record from anti-im-migration advocacy groups. He has co-sponsored bills cutting back legal immigration and a resolution to amend the Constitution to restrict citizenship from children born in the United States whose parents are not legal residents.

   When Bush announced in January 2004 his proposal to grant renewable, three-year “guest worker” status to illegal immigrants, Goode was a visible member of the opposition. “It’s a glide path to a green card and citizenship,” Goode tells C-VILLE. “It encourages persons who are here illegally to get a reward… That’s the wrong message to be sending persons. If you’re here illegally, the only way you can come into the United States is go back and get in line with everyone else. Or if you’re in a guest worker program, you got to go back to your home country and apply in that country for a guest worker program.”

   Goode describes his position as “no amnesty for illegals, period.”

   “There’s a general rec-ognition by people on both sides of the immigration debate that there’s an urgent need for comprehensive immigration re-form,” says Tim Freilich, managing attorney with the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers. “You have people who tend to favor enforcement over providing a more balanced system that ensures there is
a path to legalization
for immigrants, rather than just a boundless supply of labor for employers.”

   Early last month Senators John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced legislation in line with Bush’s temporary work-permit idea and which created a path to permanent residency and citizenship.

   In Virginia, the undocumented population has been estimated in excess of 100,000. The Commonwealth ranked 25th between 1990 and 2000 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of the growth of the percentage of its population made up by foreign-born people.

   Some Republicans have espoused the cause of “millions of hard-working men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive, undocumented economy,” as Bush has put it, a posi-tion that melds with commercial interests dependent on immigrant labor and the party’s desire to court rapidly growing numbers of Hispanic voters. The crosscurrents between them and immigration hardliners have produced a welter of dueling legislative initiatives.

   Republicans stumbled badly late last year after sweeping to victory with a new lease on the presidency and improved congressional majorities when dramatic intelligence reforms—modeled on recommendations from the September 11 commission and favored by Bush—were held up by dissident Republican leaders. In part, objections arose because measures tightening controls against illegal immigrants had been dropped from the package. This year, federal provisions requiring confirmation of legal residency for state driver’s licenses were successfully attached to the $82 billion Iraq spending bill that passed in May.

   Proponents of the McCain bill expect a tough fight. Of the varying policy prescriptions Goode says, “It would be difficult for me to say that any has a consensus majority.” But Freilich identifies a baseline curb against the toughest anti-immigration proposals that points toward accommodation. “We have an im-migration policy right now that doesn’t reflect the economic realities in Virginia or the rest of the United States,” he says. “We are largely dependent on un-documented workers who perform the toughest and lowest paid jobs in the economy.”—Harry Terris