Month: September 2006

In a drastic move to confront speeding, Charlottesville City Council has considered making a uniform 25 mph speed limit throughout the city, an area covering 10.4 miles. At their September 5 meeting, Council heard from a traffic consultant, Bill Wuensch, who reviewed how speed limits are set and strategies to enforce those speeds.
Wuensch first reviewed communities in Colorado and Oregon that considered—but ultimately didn’t institute—a uniform 25 mph speed limit. He then noted that it is more dangerous when motorists travel at varying speeds, as opposed to higher speeds, and that when collector and arterial roads become clogged, drivers start taking neighborhood cut-throughs.
What is to be done about speeding? Education tops the list, the Council was told, in the form of a public service campaign (a la water conservation campaigns during droughts), to let people know why speeding is bad. The consultant also brought up the possibility of raising speed limits on certain streets where speeding is constant, and that increasing fines can also work.
For the most part, Council liked the education idea. “The thing that made a difference for me was getting caught by an officer who just said to me, ‘Ma’am, if you don’t slow down, somebody is going to get hurt,’” said Councilor Kendra Hamilton. “What helped me was having somebody just make me think about what I was doing.”
Police Chief Tim Longo warned that he didn’t want to set up false expectations for citizens, and that with his current staff, he couldn’t enforce a citywide 25 mph speed limit. He said that he would be interested in increased fines. “If there is a way to take a portion of those moneys to fund additional enforcement officers,” said Longo, “we’d be happy to accept those responsibilities.”
Councilor Kevin Lynch, however, had hard words for the report. “What I hear coming back from staff is a great excuse for doing nothing,” said Lynch. “We ought to extend to the streets in the south side of the city, and elsewhere, the same consideration we already extend to the north side of the city,” where speed limits are predominately 25 mph.
Hamilton responded that policy should be driven by data, prompting the council to ask for more numbers on neighborhood roads such as Old Lynchburg.

For every second of media coverage devoted to high-profile women’s issues like emergency contraception (and Senator Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions), Geraldine Ferraro is partly responsible. And Charlottesville citizens may have the opportunity to thank, commend, or disagree with her in person next week, when the woman with even more historical hype than Hillary comes to town.
On September 13, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics (CFP) will co-sponsor a speech by Ferraro, the first woman to run for vice president on a national party ticket.
“As it is 2006, and we haven’t had a woman on a national ticket since 1984, Geraldine Ferraro was an appropriate choice for speaker,” says Holly Hatcher, Assistant Director of Programs at CFP.
The event will feature an introduction by Mary Sue Terry, former attorney general of Virginia, who was elected one year after Ferraro’s national campaign.
“I’m thrilled that she’s coming to town, and am looking forward to hearing her,” says another contemporary of Ferraro’s, former Vice Mayor of Charlottesville Meredith Richards. “But I’m a little sad, as well, because I feel that she represents a promise unfulfilled.  Women are still grossly underrepresented in elected office.”
With “Plan B” recently cleared for over-the-counter distribution, Richards—who is also president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia—expressed interest in hearing Ferraro’s thoughts on reproductive rights.
“At the time that Ferraro was nominated, we never could’ve imagined the erosion of reproductive rights that has happened since then,” says Richards.
Many of Democrat Ferraro’s most promising steps for women in politics came after her unsuccessful campaign with Walter Mondale in 1984. A former congresswoman, Ferraro worked as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and served as a co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.” In 2003, Ferraro was a signatory on the National Democratic Institute’s “Win with Women” global forum.
Ferraro’s speech will be held at the Newcomb Hall Ballroom at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public.

The developers of Hollymead Town Center, otherwise known as the Target shopping center on Route 29, have failed to deliver a promised connector road, and the Albemarle County Planning Commission showed no mercy at their September 5 meeting, unanimously denying a developers’ request for a two-year extension.
In order to curry favor with planning officials, development projects applying for rezoning or special permits usually make “proffers”—pledges of cash, road construction, affordable housing or other such sweeteners to entice local governments to approve the project. Part of the trick is that proffers must be voluntary—legally, a planning commission can’t come out and demand that developers offer a certain concession.
To win Hollymead approval, developer Wendell Wood included proffers to build part of a road, now called “Meeting Street,” as well as other road segments that would provide a more extensive grid for future residential and commercial development around the shopping center. But three years and one new owner later, the Meeting Street portion, as well as part of Town Center Drive, have not been built, despite summer deadlines.
What power do governments have when developers don’t fulfill these proffers? The County last month began denying occupancy permits for new Hollymead businesses (which does not affect those already open, like Target and Harris Teeter) because of the Town Center Drive segment, though that moratorium will cease as soon as the road is bonded. In the case of Meeting Street, the County could decide not to renew the bond, and either force the road to be built or “call the bond,” taking money from Wood to build the road themselves.
At the meeting, local attorney Steven Blaine asked for two more years on behalf of Hollymead Town Center LLC, which is comprised of the Target Corporation and a Florida-based realty group. Blaine argued that his clients, who bought the property from Wood, have little control over the road’s construction, and have given Wood $400,000 for their portion of Meeting Street. Because Wood owns the land, Blaine says they can’t build the road without a drawn-out court battle.
“We are being penalized for a remedy that, as a practical matter, we cannot bring about,” said Blaine. “I think we’re being held to a standard that is not just.”
Commissioners took issue with Blaine’s characterizations.
“We did not decide to build those businesses without knowing about that road,” said Chairwoman Marcia Joseph. “You know what the requirement was.”
“I’m not trying to get out of it,” says Wood, who didn’t attend the meeting. “I have to build it, I intend to build it. If there’s a discrepancy, you know who wins that one—[the County has] my money” says Wood, referring to the bond. If the County threatened to call the bond, Wood says he’ll build the road.
“One of the problems is that the County has been one of the biggest holdups in approving the road plans, and the County has changed the design of the road about three times,” he says. The proposed road has changed from the two-lane connector Wood originally proffered to a four-lane road with a median strip.
Mark Graham, director of community development, says that the real hold-up is getting Wood to decide to go ahead and build the road.
The two-lane road originally proffered lacks only blacktop and a curb, says Wood—but he insists that it makes no sense to complete it now.
“The road today goes nowhere,” he points out. “The buildings it’s going to serve are not there.” Those buildings include 380 town homes he’s currently constructing. If he completed the road now, Wood says, the curb would only be cracked later by supply trucks for the town homes.
The Board of Supervisors will make the final determination on extending the deadline at their October 11 meeting.

The City planning commission, along with the city public, will get the chance to offer concerns and recommendations about plans for UVA’s much-anticipated South Lawn Project at their September 13 meeting. While the City staff report is generally positive, it raises issues of sidewalks on and access from Jefferson Park Avenue (JPA).
The South Lawn project, which architects started drawing in 2004, will add an 110,000 square foot College of Arts and Sciences building that contains classrooms, offices, a café and a 250-seat lecture hall. UVA will construct a bridge across JPA, and a second Lawn will stretch from New Cabell Hall to the planned Arts and Science Building.
Per order of the so-called three party agreement between Charlottesville, Albemarle and the University, UVA “voluntarily” submits preliminary project plans to the City and the County for comment and review. However, the City and County play only an advisory role—in most instances, they cannot force changes to a design.
Planning Commissioner Cheri Lewis, who at press time didn’t wish to comment on the South Lawn plans, thinks UVA had a sound process in producing the design. “They went and got support from the neighborhood, they went and got support from their alumni, and now they’re coming to us,” says Lewis. “So we’re not seeing it at the fresh new end of it. There strategy was a good one, probably.”
In the City staff report to the commissioners, they recommend that the plans include a sidewalk on the north side of JPA, and also include access to Old Cabell Hall and the Lawn from that street. Per request from the Jefferson Park Avenue Neighborhood Association, the plans call for Valley Road to be cul-de-saced in order to prevent bothersome through traffic. The neighborhood association, which currently looks onto a parking lot where the new building is planned, included a letter of support for “all the major issues involved with the project” in the staff report.
Somewhat mimicking the Thomas Jefferson-designed Lawn, the South Lawn Project has generated controversy among the architectural community, raising questions of what being “Jeffersonian” means when applied to buildings. Critics, most notably in a New York Times Magazine piece, found earlier South Lawn designs to be too imitative, rather than truly innovative.