Month: August 2006

It may come as a surprise, but lazily drifting down a secluded section of the James River on an inner tube with a few buddies and a six-pack is considered drinking in public, and it’s illegal. Drinking on the river caught up to five teens Sunday, August 13, when a 16-year-old boy fell on Rock Island, down-river from Warren Ferry. Several of his friends, two 16-year-old girls and a 15-year-old boy from Palmyra, were given citations for underage drinking. The accident may put a damper on the beer-soaked fun of other rafters for what’s left of the summer.
    Drinking on the river is a concern for companies that rent supplies to river-goers. “We do the best job we know how to do,” says Kevin Denby, owner of James River Reeling and Rafting, a Scottsville company that offers canoeing, kayaking and tubing trips down the river. “We have [the no-alcohol policy] posted on our website and brochures. Other than searching people’s coolers, which we can’t do,” the rafting companies are left with few options, Denby says.
    River Sports are increasingly popular—Denby says his business has tripled in the 20 years he’s been renting canoes, kayaks and tubes.
    Reeling and Rafting cards young renters, whose parents must sign a waiver form before they’re allowed on the river. But, parents can sign the forms at home and aren’t required to accompany teens.
    The owner of another company, James River Runners, Christie Schmick, says, “I can’t control the whole river but I do control my business as much as I can.”
    Schmick’s company has a private officer to oversee put-in and take-out of rafters, which might help to discourage imbibers.
    It is not known whether the teens reached Rock Island through a rental service or on their own—use of the river is open to the public.
    Christy Smith, with Virginia ABC, says, “Drinking anywhere along the James is considered drinking in public and is not allowed,” no matter what your age.
    The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries patrols the James River, but they could not be reached for comment.
    The youth was in serious condition at press time; it is not known whether
he was under the influence of alcohol.

As Virginia Senator George Allen’s biggest verbal blunder of his campaign saturates the media, the Republican hopes to put the recent monkey business behind him.
    Allen, speaking at a campaign rally in Southwest Virginia on August 11, called a campaign aide for his opponent a “macaca”—a remarkably obscure term—and welcomed the young man to America.
    The man singled out, S. R. Sidarth, is a UVA student and native Virginian.
    The all-white crowd reportedly chuckled when Allen addressed the aide, who is of Indian descent and was videotaping the event for Allen’s Democratic opponent, Jim Webb. “Let’s give a welcome to macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen said.
    Heated arguments over the Senator’s intended meaning persist.
    A new definition of the divisive term appeared in The Washington Post on August 17. A letter suggested that Allen’s mother, familiar with both the French and Arabic languages, might also be familiar with the term’s use as a racial slur.
Additional explanations of the word range from primate terms to haircut mismatches.
    The parties debating Allen’s gaffe are yet to offer their comments on Sidarth’s haircut. The UVA student’s mullet-mohawk hybrid was a popular early explanation for Allen’s misstep.
    Allen offered a public apology in an effort to shed the garb of embarrassment. However, the political insiders seem eager to wear their opinions on their sleeves. Thanks to CafePress.com, any individual can sport a novelty “Macaca” t-shirt.
    The “Macaca” product slogans range from “Macaca for Senate” to “Macaca? C’est moi,” which runs beneath a photo of the Senator. If Allen’s possible GOP candidacy in 2008 relies on the willingness of the public to forgive and forget, the flash-in-the-pan fashion of “Macaca” may pose the biggest threat.

Property values for the 45 or so historic buildings at UVA Foundation’s Blue Ridge Hospital site are dropping fast as land values in the area off Route 20, south of Charlottesville, continue to rise. This means adaptive reuse of the buildings on the 140-acre property may become even less worthwhile for UVA.
    According to the most recent County assessment from May 2005, the land is worth $6,771,900, up 158 percent from $2,628,900 in 1996. The buildings are worth only $467,500, down 97 percent from $16,388,200 in 1996. The structures now account for less than 7 percent of the total property value.
    “The land is getting so high in value that the buildings are not contributing anything,” says Bruce Woodzell, Albemarle County Assessor. “It gets to the point, economically speaking, it would be cheaper to tear them down and build new.”
    This is bad news for historians who want to see the former tuberculosis sanatorium and surrounding buildings preserved. Among the noteworthy sites, the Wright Building, built in 1926, housed tuberculosis patients until 1978. People sometimes spent years on the sleeping porches, napping until they recovered or died. The stone chapel is in decent shape, and is a likely candidate for renovation. Other properties include the Lyman Mansion, circa 1870s and the oldest place at the site, and the old dairy, which provided fresh milk thought to help TB patients.
    The site has been a thorn in UVA’s side since 1978, when the State turned it over to the UVA Medical Center. Bypassed as the site for the new hospital complex in the 1980s, the State finally turned the mostly vacant property over to the UVA Foundation in 2000.
    Deciding what to do with the property since then has been slow going. A deal with Monticello for a 95,000 square foot visitor’s center fell through in 2002. In a December 2004 Inside UVA article, UVA Vice Prez and COO Leonard Sandridge said UVA was seeking private developers to work with them on the site. If none could be found, UVA would consider turning Blue Ridge Hospital back over to the state.
    UVA spokesperson Carol Wood says that is no longer the case. UVA is not considering selling to the State or private developers, she says, and they’ve got ideas for a research park after UVA architects complete an historical assessment. There is no timeline or budget for the research park.
    Professor Dan Bluestone, an architectural historian at UVA, told C-VILLE in 2003 that the situation was “demolition by neglect.” With almost no headway on potential projects, this may be the case. And the longer UVA waits, the harder it will be for the historic structures to stack up against the soaring value of land near Monticello.

The future site for North Pointe, a mixed-use development planned for Route 29N, just north of Profitt Road, seems less like a “places we’ll lose” and more like a place we’ve already lost. The now wooded land would be yet another link in a chain of developments—Forest Lakes South, Hollymead, Forest Lakes—that run along the congested highway. The Board of Supervisors approved a revised North Pointe development August 2. Though developers are still in site-planning stages for the 269-acre housing and commercial development, other nearby projects carved out the area’s character long ago. Nevertheless, I went last week in search of traces of Route 29’s past.
    One access point to the future North Pointe site is Leake Lane, which, with only a garden center, self-storage facility and lumber yard, is not a lively spot. Lengths of barbed-wire top aging fences. There is a lot of forest back there, but it’s not exactly a nature preserve.
The noise from Route 29, bright with sunlight glinting off dozens and dozens of cars, is audible. Surrounding communities with new houses and cul-de-sacs infringe on all sides. If North Pointe is the new kid on the block, it will fit right in. Commercial space (675,000 square feet) to the south will give way to almost 900 residences that will stretch all the way to the Rivanna River.
    The people at the 14-year-old Southern States Cooperative nursery know it’s coming. Their manager, Carol Church, has been active at North Pointe meetings, but she’s away and can’t comment. I should check at 84 Lumber, they tell me, when I go looking for a reaction. “They’ve got an opinion on everything.”
    But apparently, they don’t. The store manager tells me he’s aware of the impending development, but they have no comment, either. 84 Lumber’s corporate office bounces me back and forth to several different spokespeople. No one knows about the Charlottesville location—the guy who does is on vacation.
    Whatever’s happening at the North Pointe site has happened to other 29N spots already. The nearby residents live in North Pointe-like houses, shop at North Pointe-like stores. The main drag reminds me of the main commercial lanes of Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, Northern Virginia, anywhere. At 10am on a workday, cars line up 12 or 15 deep to get through intersections.
    Though planners and neighbors worry that North Pointe will bring more people, more cars, more strain on infrastructure, I can’t help but wonder—will it even matter? Joining the multitudes, I turn my car onto Route 29’s four lanes and battle my way back towards the city.

Louis Antonio Bryant was sentenced to life in prison during an August 18 hearing in U.S. District Court, following last-minute arguments by his attorney Jonathan Katz trying to convince the judge that the jury verdict was flawed. Judge Norman K. Moon, however, upheld the verdict and imposed the mandatory sentence of life in prison—with no chance for parole.
    Bryant, dressed in a black and white striped prison jumpsuit, chose not to speak before the sentencing. He took the verdict without noticeable emotion, though before being re-handcuffed and led away, he acknowledged several members of the audience and blew a kiss to one.
    The most serious of Bryant’s multiple counts concerned racketeering and attempted murder. As the ringleader of the Westside Crew (also known as Project Crud), Bryant was involved in selling marijuana and cocaine in the 10th and Page neighborhood for the better part of the 1990s. Nearly 30 other Project Crud members have entered plea deals—several testified against Bryant during his trial—in what has been the largest drug distribution bust in the area.
    Katz asked that Bryant, 30, at least be imprisoned as close to home as possible to allow his family to visit, listing federal prisons in Cumberland, Petersburg and Fort Dix as options. “This is not a wealthy family,” said Katz. Moon acquiesced and requested those prisons as preferences in his sentence.
        Bryant will appeal the ruling, according to Katz.

Already six years in the making, Albemarle Place jumped one of only a few remaining hurdles on the path to becoming a 65-acre assortment of 700 residential units and roughly 40 new stores, along with a stadium-seating movie theater, a hotel and a relocated Whole Foods. The County Planning Commission approved the preliminary site plan, with conditions, at their August 15 session before a sparse audience.
    Most of the meeting was spent mired in the details of road connections, retaining wall height and storm water drainage, but in the end commissioners trusted the judgment of Community Development staff and unanimously gave their approval.
    “I want to thank the applicant for your patience because this was a complex issue—it’s huge,” said Planning Commission Chair Marcia Joseph. “It’s going to make a big impact on this community and it is going to be important in the future to make sure all of these roads connect and this is successful.”
    “We’re obviously very pleased,” says Steve Lucas, senior vice president of Landonomics, the primary developer. “We’re anxious to move forward.” Lucas says they hope to win final site plan approval in the next few months and to start mass grading as well this fall. “We’ll probably go vertical next year.”
    “The County has been very helpful,” says Frank Cox, Albemarle Place master planner. “This is new to everyone who’s involved with the New Urbanism process in Albemarle County and we’ve been learning along the way.”
    One sticky issue that has yet to be addressed is the intersection between Route 29 and Hydraulic Road. Despite a study completed in 2004 that recommended a grade-separated interchange, Virginia Department of Transportation has neither a final plan nor funding for construction. Albemarle Place designers have reserved land in the event that such improvements are made in the future.

An Albemarle teen’s appeal to circuit court proved fruitful on Wednesday, August 16, when a jury acquitted him of threatening to blow up two Albemarle high schools on the seventh anniversary of the Columbine shootings. The school system subsequently voided his expulsion and he will start as a freshman at Albemarle High School on Monday, August 21.
    In court, the 13-year-old boy sat near his parents and lawyer, looking small compared to the courtroom full of adults. His parents supported bringing the child’s case to circuit court, a rare move for juvenile defendants.
    The jury deliberated for four hours before turning over a “not guilty” verdict.
    The boy was convicted in juvenile court in April of conspiring with two older boys and another 13-year-old to plant bombs at Albemarle and Western Albemarle high schools. Fireworks and guns were confiscated from the homes of the older boys, who are 16 and 17. The defendant was convicted of communicating with co-conspirators over the Internet, which defense attorneys denied.
    Local police have been criticized in the case for questioning the youth prior to his February arrest. He was interrogated without his parents for about 40 minutes, and investigator Sgt. Linda Jenkins joked with the boy about being arrested.
    “The way [the interrogation] was handled by the police involved over-reaching and inappropriate sensitivity to juvenile defendants and witnesses,” defense attorney David L. Heilberg says. “…So I hope the Albemarle County police will handle juvenile cases differently from now on.”
    The boy’s parents appealed his expulsion so he can attend Albemarle High School. They had little luck getting local private schools to accept their son.
    Heilberg says, “We scheduled the trial in hopes of getting him a full school year.” Heilberg doesn’t anticipate the boy will have any trouble from administrators or other students.

While UVA students were away interning, working, taking summer classes or laying on the couch eating Fla-vor-ice and playing X-box, there were some changes made ’round TJ’s university. Now it’s fall, and for all you UVA news slackers, it’s time to get schooled. So, in case you’ve been asleep, here’s your clue-in to all the new hirings, firings, places, faces and more at UVA.

Rick Turner’s demise
The Dean of African American Affairs since 1988 is now the former dean, since he admitted on July 14 about lying to the Feds about his knowledge of “the activities of a known drug dealer.” Everyone’s remained mum on what exactly he knew about whom, and Turner tactfully retired before UVA could fire him, leaving us with a mystery of Rotunda-sized proportions. UVA replaced Turner with interim dean Maurice Apprey, former medical school dean for diversity and a man known for being less, er, controversial. Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer Patricia Lampkin noted his “gentle personal touch.”

John seating for all
The John Paul Jones Area—the state’s largest sports and concert venue—opened its doors August 1 with a Cirque du Soleil performance—giving the interior view of UVA’s $129 million investment. Though the upper sections are closed off for more intimate entertainment—like WWE wrestling—the arena allows 15,000+ to pack in for basketball games. If you choose to shell out, you can also see Kenny Chesney, Dave Matthews Band and Larry the Cable Guy grace the pergola-happpy venue this fall.

Identity protection improves, ISIS still sucks
UVA is finally working to remedy the long-noted (and long-sketchy) problem of students’ Social Security numbers being used for everything from the dining hall to class registration. Within three to four years, says the director of the Student System Project Charles Grisham, each student will be assigned a seven-digit number that’s effective for University matters but isn’t connected to your U.S. citizenship, financial future and, um, life itself. As part of the Student System Project, new software will revamp the antiquated Integrated Student Information System (ISIS) which students use to register for classes, making it more user-friendly, with faster adding and dropping. For this year, though, the 16-year-old ISIS will still have the power to turn polite groups of students into fighting cats over the last slot in MUSI 212.

Devaluing your education
UVA drops a spot, to 24 from 23, in the most recent U.S. News and World Report college rankings unveiled last week. The new rankings have UVA tied for 24 with University of Michigan, overall, and for the No. 2 public university—still trailing University of California-Berkeley. It’s the third slip in three years for a school raising $3 billion to position itself with Duke and Cornell.

Welcome back…it’s more expensive!
Tuition for four-year colleges in Virginia went up by more than double the rate of inflation this year, according to a study released in early August by the State Council of Higher Education. Tuition went up an average of 9.3 percent, or an additional $567 per student. Affordable education advocates say the increase means the General Assembly ought to allocate more funds to public education. All this while UVA gains more autonomy through the Capital Campaign. Its “silent phase” raised $933 million this year and aims to rake in $3 billion by 2012. UVA gained the ultimate in public school autonomy July 1 when “restructuring” went into effect. UVA now gets only 8 percent of its budget from the State, and they’re passing the savings on to you!

Corner commerce
Tuition’s not the only thing growing dearer. The Corner Outlet, the last bastion of affordable shopping among the Corner’s boutiques, became Finch in February. This summer has seen fru-fru dresses and the advent of the three-digit price tag in that space. In other Corner retail news, Eljo’s, the storied, traditional menswear store had a moving sale—25-75 percent off!—in anticipation of its planned relocation to the Millmont shops at Barracks Road.

Football: At least we’re not Duke
Goodbye Marques Hagans, D’Brickashaw Fergusan, Wali Lundy, Ahmad Brooks. Those guys—all currently working in NFL preseason camps—have passed the mantle to a relatively inexperienced squad that media pick for the bottom tier of the ACC. The situation got worse recently when top wide receiver Deyon Williams suffered a stress fracture that will keep him out for at least the first part of the season. Fifth year senior quarterback Christian Olsen, a Notre Dame transfer, will run the offense, while cornerback Marcus Hamilton is defensive captain. In other news, UVA admissions delivered the incoming recruiting class a major blow by turning down eight of 24 recruits because they didn’t meet academic standards.

Basketball: Too bad we’re still not Duke
Head coach Dave Leitao’s first recruiting class rounded out well in the off-season, and the Cavaliers welcome top recruits Jamil Tucker, Will Harris and Solomon Tat—a Nigerian who went through serious visa problems before marrying his high school sweetheart. Along with last minute recruit Jerome Meyinsse and U. Penn transfer Ryan Pettinella, the recruiting class, all forwards, adds much needed height to the squad. All-ACC point guard Sean Singletary underwent hip surgery but is expected to return in top form. NCAA berth? It’s possible—hopefully the shiny new John Paul Jones Arena will at least help with the home games.

—Will Goldsmith and Meg McEvoy