Month: June 2006

A major portion of the historic Woolen Mills dam will come down to make room for spawning shad, but some neighbors are not happy about it.

The Rivanna Conservation Society (RCS) is now accepting proposals for a “historical review of the Woolen Mills Dam” to gather data about the privately owned dam the RCS has sought to breach since around 2000.
RCS has been cooperating with the dam’s owners, and Albemarle County issued a demolition permit in March. The RCS plans to remove approximately 75 percent of the dam and keep the rest for “historical interpretation.” The Woolen Mills dam, built around 1830, was part of Charlottesville Woolen Mills, a textile factory which manufactured cloth for Confederate uniforms in the Civil War and remained a major economic driver through the turn of the century before closing in 1964.
Matt Rosefsky, RCS executive director, says the plan is to use “interpretive displays,” such as kiosks with photographs, to capture the dam’s history for the public.
The RCS plans to do away with most of the dam for ecological reasons—specifically the health of the American shad population. The dam breach would allow existing fish populations to return upriver to spawn.
”The driving force [for breaching the dam] is ecological, and it has other benefits as well,” says Rosefsky. “We’re going to be breaching it so that paddlers can canoe downstream and fish can swim upstream,” he says.
Though RCS documents show general neighborhood approval of the project, a few residents have voiced concerns.
Roger Voisinet, longtime resident and one of three riverfront homeowners in the Woolen Mills neighborhood, wrote a letter to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission in April 2006, asking that they stop the project. Among his concerns: decreasing water levels after the dam breach, destruction of the neighborhood’s historic character and a lack of independent studies on the ecological effects of the dam breach.
Proposals for the historical assessment will be accepted through June 16; RCS documents predict it should take about 30 days.
RCS has submitted a permit application to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Army Corps of Engineers, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
If the permits come through as expected, Rosefsky foresees the dam breach taking place in late summer or early fall.—Meg McEvoy

Scottsville, 20 minutes south of Charlottesville on Route 20, is known for its small-town charm. But that doesn’t mean the development craze that has been hitting Albemarle and the surrounding counties hasn’t had any effect on this town of 600 residents. According to Mayor Steve Phipps, the biggest issue facing his town right now is traffic, specifically from the rapidly growing counties of Fluvanna and Buckingham.
The other development-related issue Scottsville faced lately was what to do with a 230-acre lot in town. A development that would have brought about 150 new homes had been under consideration, but citizens concerned about increased traffic nixed that plan. Instead, Phipps says that a by-right development with around 30 homes will likely go up.
Scattered homes in the rural area are where the majority of the development is happening, as farms are broken up and sold off into smaller parcels. This has been a problem throughout the county, contributing to sprawl, but, as Phipps says, “I don’t know how much you can do about that. Family members just don’t want to keep [the farms] up.”—Nell Boeschenstein

A self-described “nerd debate kid” her entire life, Dahlia Lithwick’s fascination with court-related reporting began when she stumbled into the Microsoft anti-trust trial and discovered, as she puts it: “This is theater. This is Shakespeare.” Her subsequent Supreme Court writing has been tailored accordingly: a series of fun, irreverent pieces that portray the justices not just as arbiters of the law, but as personalities. Lithwick was recently the keynote speaker at the Community Chalkboard dedication, so we caught up with her to get her take on the wall’s success (and talk a little Supreme Court, of course).—Will Goldsmith

C-VILLE: How is the “Community Chalkboard” working out?
Dahlia Lithwick: I never expected both the quality of the speech and the people engaging with the blackboard to be pitched as high as it ultimately [has been]. So far, the part of me that was a little cautious is comforted by the extent to which people have understood that this is a place to talk to each other.

What are the most interesting Supreme Court rulings coming up?
The big decisions coming out in the next month are Hamdan, the enemy combatant Guantanamo case, and the Texas redistricting case. My dire prediction is that the Roberts court will be known for its hands-off approach. That’s the possible big, big, big shift. The Rehnquist court was conservative, but it was also the most meddling freakin’ court ever.

How do you make legal writing approachable?
It’s our obligation as a polity to engage with the court, to understand that these are people, and they have good days and bad days. There is something fundamentally undemocratic about treating the court as some magical, quasi-religious entity. Allowing the court to insulate itself and self-mystify is dangerous, ultimately—that’s the serious kernel at the bottom of my jokes.
As a pragmatic matter, it won’t demystify until they roll cameras in there. Then I’ll be out of a job.

Who have been your favorite personalities on the Supreme Court?
I look at them the way other people look at skating with the stars. Justice Scalia is the only one larger-than-life—when he retires, I’ll have to retire too. He’s the only one who gets that this is Shakespeare.
I miss Sandra Day O’Connor terrifically. She was a force on that court. I’m a big fan of Stephen Breyer, only because he is so goofy.

Architecture school Dean Karen Van Lengen says new additions to the A-school will alleviate the overcrowded Campbell Hall.

The UVA Architecture School will begin construction this summer on two additions that will add 20,000 square feet of office, classroom and exhibition space to the school, while also preparing Campbell Hall to mesh with the incoming Arts Grounds.
The East Addition will be the new “face” of the Architecture School, with sides facing Rugby Road and the soon-to-be-built Arts Grounds. A tall mini-tower will have reception space and jury space for student exhibitions. It will also provide a direct entrance to an auditorium.
The South Addition will add 26 new offices and more lab space. “We have been in a very tight situation for many years—so they’re going to alleviate that,” says Architecture Dean Karen Van Lengen.
The real facelift will come in the form of landscaping designed by the local firm Nelson-Byrd-Woltz Landscape Architects. New terraces and improved passageways to the Art Museum and Rugby Road will improve the dreary topography on the hilly site. The landscape design fits in with a larger scheme to create an arts and architecture hub at UVA. The Architecture School additions will take 18 months and should be completed in spring 2008. Most of the project’s $11 million budget has come from private donors. The Arts Grounds project is still in the fundraising stages.—Meg McEvoy

The UVA men’s lacrosse team wrapped up an undefeated season and took home its fourth NCAA national championship last week, defeating the University of Massachusetts 15-7. The senior class earned their second national championship ring, having also won the ultimate collegiate honor in 2003. Their victory came in front of a record-setting crowd of 47,062 in Philadelphia and a national television audience on ESPN. “The thing that made this team special was how unselfishly they played,” says Notre Dame lacrosse coach Kevin Corrigan, a UVA alum. “Rarely do you see a team with that much talent play so hard and so well together.” Corrigan’s team lost to UVA in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Matt Ward (pictured above) and Matt Poskay led UVA’s charge, scoring a combined 10 goals during the match. They were both selected in the oft-overlooked Major League Lacrosse draft on Wednesday, along with fellow Cavaliers Kyle Dixon, Michael Culver and JJ Morrissey.

Looks aren’t everything, but, according to a recent survey, a majority of college students think that looks count for a lot—at least when it comes to buildings. That could be good news for UVA, which has about 20 renovation and new construction projects planned, according to the Office of the Architect. Last week the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that almost 30 percent of students “spurned a college because it lacked a facility they thought was important,” and another 26 percent surveyed by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers turned a school down because they found key facilities to be “inadequate.” And no, it wasn’t cafeterias or student unions that mattered most. Students were keen on “buildings to support [their] major and open space.”
University Architect David Neuman is probably relieved to hear that, since the majority of projects on Grounds are academic in nature. Cooke Hall, for instance, which houses classrooms and offices for the College of Arts and Sciences, is in the midst of a $6 million repair. And though the $30 million Medical Education building revamp does not yet have a start date, once it gets going it will “add 60-65,000 square feet of space designed to accommodate an array of new teaching methods shown to vastly improve how students learn.”
While students were most concerned about academic facilities, they were not oblivious to other aspects of campus living. Men, in particular, were especially interested in seeing varsity athletics facilities when touring prospective colleges. All of which suggests that the new John Paul Jones Arena will be a must-visit site on any UVA tour.—Cathy Harding