Month: July 2006

It’s not often that local churches are for sale, and it’s even more rare for two to be on the market at the same time. But that’s been the case for nearly two months since Evergreen Baptist Church in Albemarle County went up for sale, joining Downtown’s First Christian Church in the local real estate market.
    But the churches may not change owners with equal ease. As reported in The Daily Progress last week, potential buyers of the First Christian Church, at the corner of First and Market streets, are wary that the city’s regulations governing older structures could limit future uses of the property. The property is currently assessed at $1.6 million.
    “It’s harder to move the property until you have answers to the questions,” says Lane Bonner, a real estate agent involved in the sale of First Christian. He noted that one “serious” buyer gave up on the purchase after he could not get assurances from officials that he could make changes to the property as he wanted.
    Specifically at stake is whether a brick annex that was added last century to the sanctuary could be renovated or demolished by future owners. Such changes would fall under the jurisdiction of Charlottesville’s Board of Architectural Review.
    According to board Chairman Fred Wolf, “Design guidelines, as well as rules for historic monumental structures such as a church, would suggest that any owners be careful about rearranging that site.”
    Potential buyers of the 118-year old Evergreen Baptist Church off Proffit Road in Albemarle, however, have not encountered similar problems (that property is currently assessed at $126,700). “I think the County would be amenable to any use, as long as someone wanted to use it within reason,” said real estate agent Carolyn Betts. The church is not a historic site, according to Betts, though the area where it’s located is.

Bob Moje co-founded local educational-design powerhouse VMDO Architects in 1976, the year he graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture, and has gone on to design dozens of large-scale projects (including the award-winning Manassas Park High School). As lead architect on the vast John Paul Jones project, Moje used every ounce of knowledge and experience he’s collected over the past quarter century to help make UVA’s arena dreams a reality. We asked him what it was like.

C-VILLE: How difficult was it to design a “Jeffersonian” building on such a monumental scale?
Bob Moje: Well, it was an enormous challenge. I mean, a project of that size is certainly going to be noticed. And we knew right from the beginning that it was going to be a project that not everybody would like… There’s always a fine line you’re walking when working among Jefferson’s buildings. The time we’re in, and the building types we have, these were things that didn’t exist in his day. Our goal was to get the best of all worlds.

What most influenced your design process?
Well, the building had significant functional aspects that we had to achieve. It’s not only the Jefferson context—it’s all the buildings of that type that have been done before. It’s a building type that has been built for centuries, going back to the Roman Coliseum… These kinds of buildings have been built many times over. We attempted to learn from those and do something that was a positive step in the evolution of buildings constructed by the University.

As a longtime Charlottesville resident, do you ever worry about excessive growth?
That’s always a big question to ask an architect. We’d like to have everything go the way we’d like; that’s what we do, is envision how it could be. I think Charlottesville is a wonderful place to live, and has a lot going for it. The debate tends to be growing or not growing—and I don’t think there’s any choice but that it grow. Therefore the question is how it can grow to be the best it can be as it gets larger. And I think the JPJ is an example of that. Too often, I think, we’ve settled for second or third best as we’ve done things, and I think, as long we continue to strive to create buildings that represent the best of what we can do, Charlottesville will remain a wonderful place to live.

A man with only four months left to serve made a dash for freedom Wednesday, July 19, when he jumped from an Albemarle County work crew truck at the corner of Avon Street and Elliott Avenue. Spokespeople for the County say this is the first escape incident since the 18-month-old program began, and it remains effective.
    “We have seen a lot of positive benefits, a lot of park enhancements that we would not have been able to afford, and we have not had an incident like this in the past,” says Lee Catlin, County spokesperson.
    The whole work crew was being brought back to the jail when Cortez Orlando Dade bolted. He stole clothes from a nearby clothes line and was captured within 30 minutes, Catlin says.
    Work crews are supervised by County parks and rec staff, who are instructed not to chase inmates. The County staff called for police assistance immediately, Catlin says.
    Inmates chosen for the work crew program are nonviolent, according to Col. Ronald Matthews, superintendent of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. They must be serving less than two years and get along well with other inmates.
    Dade, who was serving time for probation violation, has been transferred to the Virginia Department of Corrections. He may lose all of his “good time” acquired through work release and faces felony escape charges, which could land him several more years in prison. His girlfriend, Artina Michelle Cooper, has been charged with aiding his escape, and is being held at the regional jail.

Just inside the double-locked doors, past the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail’s lobby, the air is stuffy and hot. Inmates in orange jumpsuits line a narrow, tiled hallway—talking, joking, dragging their feet. Robert Lee Cooke, the man convicted of killing an Albemarle County police dog in October, 2004, while fleeing a burglary, is dressed in a striped jumpsuit. He maneuvers his shiny red wheelchair into a low-ceilinged office to be interviewed. Cooke was paralyzed from the waist down when Officer Andy Gluba shot him twice during a breaking-and-entering call nearly two years ago.
    Cooke has written two letters to C-VILLE Weekly over the past month. Among other things, he wants the public to know he’s not a dog killer.
    “I’m not the bad person they read or heard about,” he wrote on July 13.
Leaning forward, Cooke recounts the night he tried to rob a Reservoir Road home. Cooke maintains he didn’t bring the gun with him, he found it in the home, and he never shot at Gluba.
    “[Gluba] asked me, ‘Why did you shoot my dog?’ And I said, ‘I didn’t.’ He said, ‘Yes, you did,’ and that’s when the second shot was fired,” Cooke says.
    “I didn’t even know the dog was hit,” he insists. In the gunfire, Cooke maintains that either he or Gluba could have shot the K-9.
    “Why didn’t [Gluba] follow the rules and regulations?… I apologized—he could’ve at least stood up and said, ‘I wish this hadn’t happened.’”
    His trial, Cooke says, was “like a written play.” He feels the facts of his case were obscured by public outcry against the “police-dog killer.” Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos, he says, kept pushing for a higher and higher sentence. “Why do you need 20 witnesses? His whole side was like a put-in with the jury,” Cooke says.
    Cooke feels his sentence—seven years for shooting the police dog and three for the weapons charge—is unfair. He’s tormented by the Andrew Alston case, in which a former UVA student served less than three years for a fatal stabbing incident. “Ten years for a dog, three years for him, there’s not any right in the justice,” Cooke says.
    Cooke was first incarcerated when he was 18, on robbery and drug charges. After serving nine years, he was released in 2000. Then, he says, “I was working, doing what I was supposed to be doing.”
    The decision to return to crime in 2004 wasn’t entirely his own, Cooke insinuates. “On the streets, somebody asks you for something…you be a friend,” he says.
    Cooke has been at the regional jail for four months, and he is locked in his cell 24 hours a day. The TV is too far away for him to watch, he claims, but he reads newspapers, including C-VILLE, when they’re available. He gets two 30-minute visits per month—usually with his pregnant wife, and mother.
    When asked how his 6-year-old daughter is doing, Cooke breaks eye contact, turns his head to the side, and says that she’s very smart—she’ll be in first grade soon.
    Cooke is awaiting transfer to a penitentiary, which he hopes will have better medical care. When he was out on bond, undergoing physical therapy, “I was getting to the point where I could stand,” he says. But his treatment’s been on hold, since the regional jail doesn’t have a rehabilitation facility.
    Cooke also looks forward to gaining access to a law library, so he can appeal his case. He’ll continue to follow media reports and get an attorney who specializes in appeals, he says. Before wheeling himself into the muggy hallway back to his cell, he says, “I just can’t accept 10 years.”

After a few years of low-level marijuana busts, Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) officers recently confiscated what they price as roughly $4.8 million worth of the drug—one of the biggest hauls in JADE history. Officers found 4,400 pot plants surrounded by bamboo on property near Scottsville, charging Gary Peck with manufacturing marijuana with the intent to distribute.
    With that bust alone, JADE will likely topple last year’s total, a mere five pounds. Because the yield of marijuana plants widely varies, valuations based on pounds are hard to calculate, but street prices of $200 per ounce would translate that amount to only around $16,000.
    “We’ve seen a reduction in growing operations over the years,” says JADE officer C.R. Smith. Though Smith is uncertain why numbers would be up this year, she speculates that a lull in recent confiscations made growers less cautious.
    Anonymous tips are JADE’s primary source, says Smith. “There are also indicators like high electric and water bills that might tip you off if they’re growing indoors. Or neighbors might notice the odor.” Random fly-overs, not nearly as useful as tips, are done too, according to Smith.
    Bamboo is often used to camouflage marijuana, but few have the audacity to grow the drug in a large patch, as Peck did. Smith says it is more common to find plants mixed into vegetation at intervals of several feet.

Dear Ace: Has anyone noticed something missing from this season’s list of acts at the Pavilion? There is not a single female act on the bill this year. What’s up with this? Whatever the reason, they should have an all-female schedule next year to make up for this season’s male-only lineup. One can only hope!—Lylith

Dear Lylith: In the interest of fairness, Ace feels compelled to point out that there’s actually a number of female performers at the Pavilion this year. Three, to be exact.
    Fetching femme crooner Anna Nalick opened for Train at their benefit concert in June. Marti Dodson of the band Saving Jane opened for “American Idol”’s Bo Bice on July 22. And local folk songstress Terri Allard will bring her tunes to the venue in August for Fridays After 5. And if you include The Young Divorcees (of Jim Waive & The Young Divorcees, who play the Pavilion a week after Ms. Allard), the count rises to a total of five. Five, I say! If you were Mickey Mouse, you wouldn’t even be able to count them all on one hand.
    What’s more, reliable sources tell Ace that a number of women are in the Charlottesville Municipal Band, which will be putting on several free shows throughout the summer.
    But, Ace grants you, the ratio of female to male big-name artists at the Pavilion this year has been rather small. Is it possible that the malevolent hand of rampant misogyny and sexism is guiding the selection of acts at Charlottesville’s Pavilion?
    In a word, no. Ace got a hold of Kirby Hutto, general manager of the Pavilion, who assured Ace that he loves the ladies. According to Hutto, “when we can get a top female artist for the Pavilion, we’re absolutely going to pursue that.”
    “Lots of times you’ll have artists that are going out, and they’ll have a limited number of dates. And then you have all the various venues that are essentially competing for that limited number of dates. Sometimes we get lucky, sometimes we don’t.”
    Hutto also noted that, at the beginning of the year, employees of his company, Red Light Management, made a list of acts they personally wanted to bring to the Pavilion. “There were a lot of female artists on there. Unfortunately half of them are not touring this year at all, and the other half, for whatever reason, we have not been able to secure a date with.”
    There you have it, Lylith. As for your suggestion that next year include only female acts, Ace is only too happy to agree.