Month: December 2006

A grand jury indicted Jonathan Spivey, choir director at Charlottesville High School, on seven felony counts of indecent liberties with a minor on Thursday, November 30. The charges came after a months-long investigation by Charlottesville Police prompted by reports from school personnel.

Charlottesville High School’s choir director of 15 years, Jonathan Spivey, appears in court this week on seven felony counts of indecent liberties with a minor.

Three charges involve verbal propositioning and four counts involve sexual contact. There are allegedly multiple victims over whom Spivey had a supervisory role.

Spivey has been the choir director at CHS for 15 years. During that time, he’s grown the choral program to more than 100 students from 30 and the choir has won numerous first place choral awards, according to the CHS choral department website.

Spivey is a married father of three sons. He is also music director at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church, and became an ordained pastor there in 1995. Alvin Edwards, City School Board chair, is the church’s pastor.

Spivey has not yet been arrested and remains a free man until a hearing on Tuesday, December 5. He has had an attorney since the investigation began September 21. If found guilty on all counts, Spivey could face up to 35 years in prison.

The U.S. Senate race between George Allen and Jim Webb may have come to its official conclusion, but some campaign incidents have yet to die—like the October 31 confrontation at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel between liberal blogger (and UVA law student) Mike Stark and George Allen supporters. Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman tried to put the issue to rest last week, releasing a statement that his office “does not recommend that charges be brought against any participant.”

Liberal blogger Mike Stark is still considering legal action for the widely circulated Omni Hotel Charlottesville incident during which George Allen supporters tumbled him to the floor. Stark was asking Allen if he had spit on his first wife.

Stark, however, has yet to decide whether Chapman’s will be the last word: He is scheduled to discuss this week with his attorney the options of asking a magistrate for criminal charges or bringing a civil suit. “I’m obviously disappointed, I feel I was wronged, and wish the prosecutor had seen things my way as well,” says Stark.

What was to have been another in a series of Michael Moore-style confrontations with Allen, during which Stark asked Allen loaded questions about his past, turned into a brief scuffle broadcast on national TV. Stark appeared the aggrieved party in the widely distributed video clip, yet Chapman says an earlier recorded sequence suggests that Stark might have assaulted a staffer.

“I think it’s really two people coming together and both have a conception of what they want to achieve and there is physical contact,” says Chapman. In his press release, he notes “it is apparent from the evidence that no participant sought to strike or injure another person.” While intent is not absolutely necessary for an assault charge, “far more often than not, that’s really what we’re looking for when we think about whether an assault is merited.”

Chapman admits it’s less common (though not rare) for an investigation to take place for this level of charge. “Where there is thought to be a complex and significant event, events involving prominent people, there is probably a greater likelihood for steps to be taken that an investigation takes place that proceeds charges.”

The Virginia General Assembly will have an open judge’s seat to fill next year, given the recently announced retirement of Albemarle Circuit Court Judge Paul M. Peatross. Though lawmakers have called for an open and fair appointment, local lawyers expect the process to reflect increasing partisanship in judicial appointments in the state.

Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos has had his cap set for a local judgeship for a long time. Will Peatross’ retirement be his golden opportunity?

Apparently, there’s no uniformity for selecting judges. State legislators will decide how the process will be handled, says State Delegate David Toscano, a Democrat who represents Charlottesville. After that, a nominee will surface through the House and Senate Courts of Justice Committees. Both Toscano and Rob Bell, a Republican delegate who represents much of Albemarle County, sit on that committee in the House.

The General Assembly will also take the recommendation of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association’s Judicial Endorsements Committee, which accepted applications for its support through November 29. That committee of local lawyers will deem worthy candidates “qualified” or “highly qualified.”

“I would like to think that the delegates would put a lot of confidence in the recommendation of the Bar,” Toscano says. “They have a lot of experience with each of these candidates’ understanding of the law and their judicial temperament,” he adds.

But, according to local lawyer (and Peatross’ friend) Ron Tweel, the influence of the Bar’s judicial endorsements committee “has significantly declined.” “I regret that this has turned into a political issue, whereas for the first 25 years of my practice it was a quality issue,” Tweel says. “The vast majority of the Bar is distressed by that.”

Local lawyers agree that the process has become more politicized. But local political parties say they have no formal plans to intervene in the process.

“It’s not a primary focus of ours,” Keith Drake, chairman of the Albemarle Republicans says. Drake says he’ll encourage individual party members to voice their opinions on candidates to Delegate Rob Bell.

Potential candidates include Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos and Charlottesville General District Court Judge Robert Downer. Camblos could not be reached for comment, but Downer says he’s written a letter to the Bar seeking its support. “I do believe that [the General Assembly gives] a great deal of credence to the endorsement,” says Downer.

That may or may not be the case this year. In selecting a judge, Toscano says, “the challenge is always the extent to which politics intervenes.”

“It’s a mess up there, I’ll admit that,” said Russell Mooney, a 75-year-old man who once ran an Oldsmobile dealership with his father on the corner of W. Main Street and McIntire Road. An equipment rental company stands there now. “That’s why for 10 years I’ve been trying to find a decent tenant that would go in there and dress up the place a little bit, make it look better.”

What he found was the Rebkee Company, which develops CVS pharmacies throughout Virginia. But the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review didn’t think a 13,000-square-foot CVS would dress the site up—after a third hearing on the project November 28, they unanimously rejected the design.

“I apologize it’s not up to Charlottesville standards, we’ve done the best we can,” Rob Hargett of Rebkee Co. told the BAR. Frustrated by the process, he forced a vote to know: Did they have issues that he could fix or did they fundamentally dislike his big box coming to the corner near the Downtown Mall (and replacing the CVS currently on the Mall)?

Specific BAR complaints about the building ranged from the materials used to the faux windows designed for the exterior. Several board members brought up the fact that it was designed to be two storeys tall while containing only one floor. But at the core was a distaste for the big-box retail. “I think we’ve changed the wrapping of the box and not the box itself,” said board member Syd Knight.

Some members of the BAR had grown frustrated as well. “We have spent an immense amount of time on this project, and I don’t know when we’ve had an applicant who has been less responsive to some very basic elements in the guidelines that couldn’t be any clearer,” said an animated Lynne Heetderks, a board member. “I’m just concerned by a lack of sensitivity by the applicant to get what we’re trying to do here.”

In its initial draft, the project was more than a box: It had mixed-use elements and was a definite step away from your typical strip-mall CVS. But Hargett ultimately determined that adding office or residential space isn’t economically feasible, largely because of the limited parking on the site.

“It’s a serious invasion of property rights,” Hargett says of the BAR. “We’re going to take another week or so and evaluate our options. If I were the landowner, I’d be in court. If I lived there, I’d be pushing for change.” He says CVS might just give up on the site.

At 69.5 acres, the Granger Property is the last major undeveloped tract of land in the southern Albemarle growth area surrounding UVA, officially known as Area B. On Tuesday night, the Albemarle County Planning Commission wanted to know why.

“It looks like leftover land,” Commissioner Duane Zobrist said, “that we’re forcing ourselves to use.”

“We’re not trying to force anything,” Commission Chair Marcia Joseph interjected, “just developing in a growth area.”

The back and forth followed almost two hours of discussion of the property that sits neatly between Sunset and Fontaine avenues. Previous owners have tried to develop it as strictly residential, but current owner Stribling Holdings LLC (reportedly led by Coran Capshaw) are seeking to have the tract rezoned as mixed-use with an emphasis on office space.

Who’s behind the 70 acre Granger property development near Fontaine Research Park? Coran Capshaw, that ever-industrious Dave Matthews Band manager, Musictoday founder and Charlottesville developer.

As with most properties on the Biscuit Run side of town, traffic concerns led the list. The property is currently accessible only by Sunset Avenue Extended and Stribling Avenue. Five alternatives for a new road were before the commission, with a staff recommendation to build a connector road that would link Sunset to Fontaine. Initially, Commissioner Eric Strucko questioned the effects 500,000 new square feet of office space would have. “I work in the Fontaine Research Park and I get stuck in traffic now,” he said.

Jeanne Chase, a resident of the Fry’s Spring neighborhood in the city, made her way to the lectern. “Just on my way over here, I waited for 27 cars just to get out of my driveway on Old Lynchburg Road,” she said, adding that “the reality is we’re heading toward gridlock.”

After Bill Edgerton made a proposal for a spur to be built, creating additional access to the connector from Fontaine Research Park, focus shifted to whether the 500,000 square feet of office space is appropriate. Some commissioners suggested it was, considering the Granger tract is surrounded by a number of residential communities along Sunset Avenue and Old Lynchburg Road.

Commissioners likely will address the issue next in late December. As the 10pm hour neared, project planner Frank Cox punctuated the meeting: “We’ve spent six years trying to figure out how to make this project work, and we’re still not there.”

The inexorable march to fill all empty city lots continues at the southern edge of Belmont. Dozers are grading in preparation for 29 residential units in the Carter’s View development—single-family detached housing with three-four bedrooms. Southern Development Homes, which bought the completed subdivision plan from Legend Development, expects it to be complete by the end of 2007. It’s not the only new development going into the unpretentious neighborhood: Just a street away, 29 townhouses and 31 single detached are nearing completion near Brookwood, also by Southern Development. They’re priced at $339,000 for the townhomes and $359,000 for the detached.

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