uesday, September 20
Charlottesville lessaffordable than D.C.
Today the nonprofit research firm Accra released a cost-of-living study that confirmed what many of us already knew—Charlottesville is expensive as hell. The area’s combination of relatively low wages (the median income is about $34,000) and a cost of living that’s about 9 percent higher than the national average means that Charlottesville is comparatively more expensive than Roanoke, Richmond and even Washington, D.C.
Escaped POW appears at UVA
Today UVA’s ROTC cadets commemorated American prisoners of war with a ceremony on Grounds at the McIntire Amphitheater. After a flyover by F-16 jets from the Richmond Air National Guard, retired Army Major Ray Jancso told cadets that “courage is controlling fear, not the lack of fear.” He introduced retired Air Force Lt. Col. Warren Landes, who escaped from a German POW camp during World War II. Out of the about 94,000 U.S. soldiers to be taken prisoner during America’s wars, Landes is one of about 1,000 who successfully escaped.
Wednesday, September 21
Nobody arrives in Charlottesville
The camera crew running around town today was following Leon Logothetis, a Brit filming a documentary called Amazing Adventures of a Nobody, about traveling the United States on $5 a day. Read about Leon’s adventures with paranoid girls, UVA frat boys and various eccentric Charlottesville personalities on his blog at http://nobody.typepad.com.
All’s well that’s Orwell
Whether you agree with their politics, you’ve got to hand it to the right-wingers for one thing—branding. Today the Free Enterprise Forum released a report en-couraging the City of Charlottesville to build the Meadowcreek Parkway with a roundabout at the intersection of the U.S. 250 Bypass and McIntire Road, instead of waiting to build a federally funded grade-separated interchange there. The report, funded by the Forum, is called “Review of Reasonableness.” You say you don’t agree with the report? What are you, unreasonable? Why do you hate reason?
Thursday, September 22
Charlottesville Oil cleans up contamination
Today The Daily Progress reported on Charlottesville Oil Company’s efforts to remove more than 1,000 tons of petroleum-tainted earth from its Ivy Road facility. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has given Charlottesville Oil Co. until November 28 to remove all of the contaminated soil that surrounds the facility, following a January investigation that revealed significant groundwater contamination due to a leak in a petroleum tank. The $120,000 excavation project will remove 4,000 cubic feet of soil. Even though the facility hasn’t been in use for the past five years, the ground pollution dates back a half-century to when the site was connected to a railroad loading station. Charlottesville Oil Co. anticipates the project to be completed within a month.
Friday, September 23
Not another drought…
Gardeners scanned the sky today in hopes of seeing a rain cloud, and they got their wish later this evening—although we could all use more. So far this month, Charlottesville has only gotten 0.19 inches of precipitation, putting us more than 7 inches behind the yearly average. Thus far in 2005, precipitation totals 29 inches; the average for this time of year is 36.38 inches. In summer 2002, the region was shy about 40 inches of rain over four years before the City and County ordered emergency water conservation measures.
Saturday, September 24
61,000 people go home happy from Scott Stadium
After a ho-hum first half that netted the No. 23-ranked Cavaliers a mere 10 points against the unranked Duke Blue Devils, Al Groh’s squad exploded with four touchdowns in the second half to decisively win their first ACC match-up of the season. More than 61,000 fans filled Scott Stadium for the homecoming game, final score 38-7. But things could remain shaky for the Hoos as they face four more consecutive conference games, starting with next Saturday’s visit to Maryland. While tailback Wali Lundy was back after a first-game injury, left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson left the Duke game with 1:20 left in the first quarter, and linebacker Ahmad Brooks has not returned yet all season from a knee injury.
Sunday, September 25
Hats and drunkards united again!
Today marked the 27th Annual Fall Foxfield Races, a charitable event dubbed Family Day. Steeplechase enthusiasts, ladies in big hats, kids and other highbrow horse lovers, including some sodden UVA students, gathered on the overcast afternoon to enjoy six horse races—and an inane Jack Russell Terrier match-up. The third annual Chili Cook-off was a bonus in the sea of luxury tailgaters, and the Virginia Film Festival stands to benefit from this season’s proceeds.
Monday, September 26
City Council wants YOU…to be on the Planning Commission!
At press time today, City Council was scheduled to hold its final interviews with citizens interested in serving on the Planning Commission. On Thursday evening, the public had a chance to get to know the candidates at a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The five potential appointees who attended responded to questions ranging from their reactions to recent complaints by UVA architecture profs about the Universi-ty’s paltry use of modern architecture to their feelings about affordable housing. On Thursday, CPC Chair Cheri Lewis, who is up for reappointment, was joined by Planning Commission hopefuls Jim Kovach, an architect and co-founder of the Charlottesville Community Design Center, Adriane Fowler, an architect and preservationist, and Sgt. Mike Farruggio, a police officer and past president of the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association.
Local teen filmmakers on big-time TV
The Independent Film Channel continues today to re-air a locally produced six-minute documentary, “Sahar: Behind the Sun,” as part of the “Beyond Borders” project of teen documentaries from around the country. Light House, Charlottesville’s own youth media center, supported Sahar Adish and three fellow filmmakers who put the then-16-year-old’s story to film. A refugee from Afghanistan, Sahar was educated in secret for six years, in defiance of the Taliban, before her family was booted from their home. IFC will repeat the “Beyond Borders” program three more times this week.
Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.
Too much is not enough
Wherefore art Albemarle Place?
It’s been almost two years since the County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to rezone about 64 acres at the corner of 29N and Hydraulic Road for a major new shopping development called Albemarle Place. Since then, the arrival of Target at the Hollymead Town Center has only whet local appetites for disposable goods and lifestyle accessories. We want more, more, MORE!
We’ll just have to be patient.
“We’re in the middle of the site-plan approval process,” says Steve Lucas, senior vice president of the Landonomics Group of Oak Brook, Illinois. The company is the “master developer” for Albemarle Place, in conjunction with a Florida-based real estate company called Ezon, Inc. “We’re anticipating we’ll work through that process by the end of the year, then start clearing and grading by early next year.”
With the promise of 1.8 million square feet of new construction—including a hotel, restaurants, a cinema, retail outlets, a grocery store, a two-storey department store and up to 800 residential units—Albemarle Place would be the latest incarnation of Albemarle County’s “neighborhood model.” Adopted in 2001, the neighborhood model asks developers to create more “urban” landscapes by building according to 12 principles, including “pedestrian orientation,” “buildings and spaces of a human scale,” “relegated parking” and “affordability with dignity.”
With so many pieces to assemble, the lead engineers for Albemarle Place—the Charlottesville-based Cox Company—have spent the past two years working with County planners to prepare a site plan that will win approval.
“We’ve been looking at detailed plans, to get their development nailed down before they submit an official site-plan application,” says Yadira Amarante, a senior planner for the County.
Whereas the zoning application is like a rough draft of the project, the site plan includes more details about the size and location of buildings, landscaping and parking spaces. At press time, Lucas said he expected the County’s Architecture Review Board would have the site plan for Albemarle Place by the time you read this.
Once the site plan meets County approval, the developers will begin courting retail tenants. Lucas says he has some signed leases, with others in various stages of negotiation. “Tenants are reluctant to sign until they know the project is approved,” he says. According to the Whole Foods company website, the hippie grocer has plans to open a new store at Albemarle Place.
The impending construction of Albemarle Place will likely re-ignite the debate over how much retail space the County can accommodate. Wendell Wood openedthe Hollymead Town Center this spring, and he’s looking to bring even more retail to a new development in that area. Chuck Rotgin’s 270-acre North Pointe development at Route 29N and Profitt Road is also in the County’s planning pipeline. All developments supposedly reflect the neighborhood model, bolstering criticism that the model is just more sprawl cloaked in environmentally friendly buzzwords.
One thing’s for sure—the various components of the neighborhood model can keep a big project mired in the County’s planning department for years, a major complaint for local developers. “I have no comment about that,” says Landonomics’ Lucas.—John Borgmeyer
Prime parkland
Speculation on the two Water Street parking lots runs rampant
The two adjacent parking lots on Water Street across from York Place and the City Center for Contemporary Arts, a.k.a. the Live Arts Building, occupy some of Downtown’s plummest undeveloped property. For years, there’s been talk of developing the parcels—the eastern one owned by the Charlottesville Parking Center, the western one, by the City—both of which are currently zoned for mixed-use buildings with a minimum of two storeys and a max of nine. Now, with the CPC’s lot officially up for sale, it can’t be too much longer until the bulldozers roll in.
The name of the ubiquitous Coran Capshaw (no surprise) has been floated as an interested party in the CPC lot. In the Downtown area Cap-shaw already owns the old SNL Building, the coal tower property, Blue Light Grill, Mono Loco and the Charlottesville Pavilion. But regarding the parking lots, Capshaw’s camp, predictably, did not return calls and Jim Berry, president of CPC, put up the stonewall. “No comment to make,” says Berry. “I don’t have any comment at all.” City Councilor Kevin Lynch says he’s heard talk of Capshaw’s interest, but that it’s just that, he says: “talk.”
As for the City’s lot (which measures just under one acre), according to Aubrey Watts, Charlottes-ville’s director of economic development, it isn’t officially up for sale and no price has been named. Lynch, however, says he’s heard rumblings of assessments being made to prepare the property forthe market.
Both Lynch and Watts men-tioned now-out-of-date sketches the City had drawn up five years ago showing what development on the parcel could look like. The drawings show mixed-use retail and residential buildings with a parking garage in the middle, similar to the Queen Charlotte Building on E. Jefferson Street. —Nell Boeschenstein
Genius in our midst
UVA prof is one of 25 MacArthur fellows
Terry Belanger, founder and director of the Rare Book School, was among the 25 MacArthur Foun-dation fellows announced last week. An independent nonprofit institute located at UVA’s Alderman Library, the RBS trains those interested in rare books and manuscripts about virtually everything one could know about them, offering five courses with titles like “European Bookbinding 1500-1800” and “Introduction to the Illuminated Manuscript.”
As a MacArthur fellow, Belanger will receive $500,000 with no strings attached, a purse often known as a “genius” grant—probably because the overriding characteristic of recipients is exceptional creativity. No one applies to receive a genius grant. Fellows are chosen by an anonymous committee based on anonymous nominations.
Terry Belanger has spent most of his life channeling exceptional creativity on rare books—in 1971 he established a laboratory to train antiquarian booksellers and rare books librarians at Columbia University, where he later began the Rare Book School.
Interviewed via e-mail while attending a conference in San Francisco, Belanger declined to talk about anything but the Rare Book School, to which he seems singularly devoted.
“The real news is the good the money will do the Rare Book School,” said Belanger. “We are obsessed with quality. We don’t always get there, but that’s what makes us interesting, and that’s all that makes us interesting.”—Will Goldsmith
Dirty water>
Swill builds beneath Ivy Landfill
Toxic water is pooling in the Ivy Landfill, and officials fear it could leak out. That’s what they told City Council last week.
Findings by the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority blame a defective draining system for critically high leachate levels in the Ivy Landfill, which sits 10 miles west of Charlottesville. The toxic water is pooled in two pockets—Cell 3 Unlined, datingto the mid-1970s, and Cell 3 Lined fromthe 1980s—and may contain upwards of47 million gallons of leachate, according to the RSWA’s environmental consultants, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc.
The landfill’s wastewater drains in a collecting pool before shipment to Moore’s Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. RSWA Executive Director Thomas Frederick fears the drain from Cell 3 may have been faulty since the 1970s. It’s the latest in ongoing environmental problems for the landfill, which was closed in the late 1990s after Ivy residents filed a lawsuit over polluted groundwater.
“Now, we are in an environmental stage,” Frederick told City Council on Monday, September 19. Frederick says he aims to remove the toxic water without contaminating the surrounding environment, but he admits the solution to the Cell 3 situation will be both long-term and costly. Unfortunately, the problem lies underground, making it difficult to study, and even harder to treat, he says.
RSWA currently follows a three-pronged approach to leachate management and prevention. First, they continue to drill holes for pumping out existing water. So far, they have drilled 13 wells, each extracting only 250 gallons a week, on average—a fraction of the potential 47 million.
Second, they are evaluating the semi-permeable cap that sits below the soil and above the trash. Recent studies found leaks in 15 different areas, and investigation continues.
Third, they are exploring on-site treatment options for extracted leachate to avoid the high cost of waste transportation.
City Councilor Kevin Lynch would like to see the original landfill developers held accountable for a faulty job, and both the City and Albemarle County agreed to accelerate support payments for current measures. Moreover, the RSWA will continue to press the Department of Environmental Quality for the immediate release of $3.4 million in escrowed funds. “We will attempt to refine the cost,” Frederick promised, but future expenses remain unclear.—Doug Black
The fix is in
UVA’s employee drug plan cures what ails you
Employees who sign up for UVA’s health plans can obtain a wide array of controversial prescription drugs—from Viagra to birth control to methadone.
Access to prescription drugs—who can get what, where and how—is one of the most controversial topics in the United States. For example, some of the Commonwealth’s right-wing Republicans have tried to stop Virginia colleges from distributing high dosages of birth control known as “emergency contraception.” In 2003, James Madison University caved in to the politicians and stopped providing emergency contraception at its student health center.
Many employer-provided health plans have been criticized for covering Viagra for men, but not birth control for women. UVA, though, covers both.
UVA provides two different health plans—“low premium” and “high premium”—with prescription drug benefits that arethe same under both plans. According to the health plan (available online at www.hrs.virginia.edu/ benefits/descben.pdf), UVA will not cover experimental drugs, vitamins, diet pills, cosmetic drugs like Retin-A or Rogaine, nicotine gum, travel-related immunizations or infertility drugs. The plan will also not cover drugs prescribed by any person in the participant’s immediate family.
The drug plan at UVA does cover both Viagra and contraception, according to Joanne Hayden, UVA’s health plan ombudsman. UVA also covers methadone (a drug used to treat opiate addiction), as well as any other addiction-related medication, as long as it is approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration and has been prescribed by a physician.
It appears that more private employers are heading in the same direction as UVA. According to a recent article in The Washington Post, 86 percent of employer-provided health plans covered a wide range of contraception in 2002, as opposed to only 28 percent in 1993. The shift has apparently been spurred by criticism that health plans covered Viagra for men, but not birth control for women.—John Borgmeyer
Take a little piece of the Mall now, baby
Council to propose rent increase for street vendors
On October 17, City Council will discuss raising the rents for the Downtown Mall’s street vendors. According to the proposed ordinance (available online at www.charlottesville.org under the Neighborhood Development link), the vendors, who currently pay $400 a year for a 10.5’x10.5′ space, stand to face as much as a 300 percent increase in fees, should Council pass it next month.
City Councilor Kevin Lynch sees the issue as simple economics.
“There’s more demand than supply right now,” says Lynch. “It’s getting a little crowded and contentious for the space.”
Space is available to Mall vendors on a first-come, first-served basis—whomever gets there first in the morning gets the most coveted pieces of real estate. While the price is the same for each space, some are more trafficked than others, the prime property being between E. Third and First streets. The best way to solve disagreements over who gets to hawk their wares on which piece of the Mall, says Lynch, is pricing.
Based on location and size, the proposal would gradate Mall rents between $300 and $1,200 annually. The most expensive proposed spots are in and around Central Place, the least expensive, on side streets. At least one vendor is preparing to take the hit.
“It’s more money,” says Michael Pryblack, who sells jewelry at Central Place, “but I’ll just have to cut costs in other areas because it’s a prime location.”
While the street vendors aren’t pulling in as much cash as the merchants who have stores on the Mall, Lynch argues that whether they’re paying $400 or $1,200 annually, they’re getting a good deal, regardless. Rent for a permanent roof in the center of the Mall can run to $40,000 per year at $14 per square foot.
“The vendors add a certain amount to the atmosphere to the Mall, but economically they do pretty well,” says Lynch. “As highly trafficked a spot as they’re in, to be paying the rents that they’re paying is pretty inexpensive.”—Nell Boeschenstein
Can we get that in writing?
The City’s problems have been mapped out. Now what?
In 2002, the police department drew up a map of the city that highlighted a so-called “intervention area” based on crime statistics, calls for service and Police Chief Tim Longo’s own observations of “quality of life” factors—drug dealing, for example, and hous-ing decay. The “in-tervention area” spanned the area from 10th and Page to Orangedale and Prospect. Of the city’s 6,950 acres, the intervention area identifies 357 acres in south-central Charlottesville that need special help.
As Longo explains it, “these were communities I thought were in need of service delivery…not just from the police department, but from other City agencies.” Now, the City is trying to get various departments, from Public Works to Parks and Recreation, talking about how to help people in the area.
Since 2002, the police department has been deploying additional officers to implement the “community policing” strategy across the target area. Also that year, the City charged a data team to study quality of life factors across the city. Saphira Baker, director of the Commission on Children and Families and a member of the team, says their goal was to create a warehouse of statistics that various City departments could use to understand the area’s problems and work together on solutions.
The data, collected for 2002, 2003 and 2004, confirmed what the police department already knew: that crime and poor quality of life factors go hand-in-hand. When compared to the rest of Charlottesville, the intervention area had high numbers of non-white residents, single-parent households, special education students, substandard housing and domestic violence arrests, among other things. The data team’s investigation confirmed the police department’s original analysis of the intervention area.
The data was not collected for 2005, however, and this troubles Baker. She says that in order to gauge where, how, and how effectively the City is allocating resources, data must be updated constantly.
“What gets measured and looked at regularly is more likely to get addressed regularly,” she says.
While City Councilor Kevin Lynch says he sees her point, he also says that it takes time to see results.
“A lot changes in three years,” says Lynch, “but the things that we need to do to make a difference doesn’t change. Finding out what we can do to make a difference is why we collect data, and two years or three is an appropriate amount of time to make a difference.”
In an effort to get City departments cooperating on a regular basis, the City is planning to adopt a system called CityStat. With this model, all City department heads meet twice weekly for accountability sessions, and information on everything from crime to sick leave is entered into a computer database so that management strategies are developed on a weekly (rather than monthly or yearly) basis. CityStat is already used in Baltimore, Longo’s former post, he says, but he sees even greater potential for it in Charlottesville, because the problems here are more manageable.
“With Baltimore,” says Longo, “you’re just patching potholes…Our issues are so small that if you do a good job at assessing, you could do long-term problem solving.”—Nell Boeschenstein
Animal instincts
Mundie gets jail time for staging dogfights
On September 19, Davey Mundie became the first area resident to get sentenced under Republican Delegate Rob Bell’s 2003 bill that made dogfighting a felony instead of a misdemeanor. Mundie was sentenced to five years in prison, with all but 18 months suspended. When he gets out, he’ll face two years of supervised probation and will need to demonstrate 10 years “good behavior,” says Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos.
In the early morning of January 1, Mundie’s neighbor called the cops after seeing Mundie fight pit bulls in a brightly lit makeshift ring off Pea Ridge Road in Albemarle. Mundie was the owner of one of the pits, and caretaker for another four.
In addition to serving time, says Camblos, Mundie has to pay $7,500 in restitution to the SPCA, which took care of the dogs for six months during Mundie’s trial. Subsequently, four of the five dogs had to be euthanized.
While there are currently no other dogfighting cases pending in the area, Camblos said that he hopes press coverage of this case will encourage people to “sit up and take notice,” and report future incidents of dogfighting when they see them.—Nell Boeschenstein