Month: February 2010

The ACC first-place Duke Blue Devils continued their mastery of Virginia tonight at the John Paul Jones Arena 67-49. Duke led at the half 35-21 and really never looked back. Virginia’s brightest star Sylven Landesberg did not even take off the warm-up sweats as he was unable to go for the Hoos because of a deep thigh bruise. The Blue Devils started the game off with a 20-4 run.

It was the first sell-out of the year in Charlottesville, but the home crowd never really got the chance to get fired up. Virginia’s Jerome Meyinsse (21 points) had an excellent game on both ends of the court, but no one for the Hoos was able to step-in and add a second and third scoring option. Mike Scott continued his poor play as did not score for the second straight contest. No other Hoo scored in double figures tonight.

Duke was led by Jon Scheyer who was 8-15 with 20 points, and Kyle Singler who scored 21 on 6-10 shooting. The #5 Blue Devils (31), amazingly, did not out rebound the Hoos (33). Duke, lately, had been just hammering their opponents on the boards. Virginia attempted one more free throw attempt, also. Virginia was 15 of 18 at the line tonight.

Virginia lost their seventh straight game in a row. The Hoos return to action on Wednesday as they travel to BC, and then finish the regular season at home against Maryland. Go Hoos!
 

The much dreaded and fifth-ranked Duke University Blue Devils travel to Charlottesville Sunday for a regionally-televised (RSN) game that will begin at 7:45 p.m. The Wahoos did not play Duke in Charlottesville last season, and have not beaten them in the JPJ since 2/1/07 when they got 27 from J.R. Reynolds. It’s been so long since the Hoos won in Cameron that its not worth thinking about.

Duke (24-4,11-2) is coming off its seventh straight win. Last time out, Duke beat Tulsa 70-52 in a game where the Blue Devils grabbed 18 offensive rebounds. Incredibly, Duke has had 17 or more offensive rebounds in five straight games.

Virginia (14-12,5-8) is in the midst of a six-game losing streak and has seen it’s NCAA Tournament chance end up flushed into the Rivanna. The Hoos have been getting blown out in the last several games, and have looked really out of sorts. In the last outing against Miami, Virginia’s Mike Scott finished 0-7 from the field, and Sammy Zeglinski has only averaged 4.7 points over the losing streak.

Duke is not only playing for a #1 seed in the ACC Tournament, they are playing for an outright #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. This game could get ugly early as Duke is better at every single position, but not as dominant as in the past. If the Hoos have a snowball’s chance in Hell, they must get double-digit scoring from at least three Wahoos Sunday. And can someone explain why Calvin Baker still plays at all on this team? Captain or no Captain, let’s play for the future and try Evans and Spurlock out! Where was Farrakhan against Miami?

The University of New Jersey at Durham (as I like to call them) averages almost 80 points per contest, and Virginia only scores 67. Duke could hammer the Hoos with threes, but can also pound it inside to 7-1 Brian Zoubek. Duke’s guard Nolan Smith has been playing very well, and could come up huge against the Hoos Sunday.

This game is the only sold-out contest this year at the JPJ. I think Duke prolongs Virginia’s heinous losing streak and wins 83-63.
 

Attorneys for Frank Hardy, Inc., the luxury real estate agency, and Vineyard Estates LLC, the would-be luxury real estate development company headed by Patricia Kluge and her husband, William Moses, argued in Albemarle County Circuit Court this morning about what constitutes a contract and whether one had been broken between the parties. Judge Thomas H. Wood concluded that Hardy and Vineyard Estates did not, in fact, have a termination agreement—the subject of Hardy’s $1,867,200 suit—thereby paving the way for an April 2 trial date.

At heart are two agreements between Hardy and VE dating to August 29 and September 9, 2007, and set to expire by March, 2009. Hardy would serve as the exclusive listing agent for the turn-key luxury estates that VE envisioned for a portion of Kluge’s expansive Southern Albemarle property. By April 2008, with the real estate market coming to screeching halt, things weren’t going as planned, and VE wanted out. VE’s attorneys from Michie Hamlett say that a series of late April emails constitute an agreement to release Hardy from his role in exchange for $25,000. Hardy’s attorney, Brock Green of Charlottesville litigation team Jones & Green, says terms were not agreed to. Both sides agree that no money—neither a $25,000 termination fee nor the $1.9 million that Hardy now seeks—exchanged hands.

Judge Wood listened to about 40 minutes of argument and then agreed with Hardy’s side.

Attorney Ronald Tweel, upon leaving the courtroom, said that his client would be "open to all possibilities," as far as out-of-court settlement goes.  That option may be of interest to Kluge, in the name of financial discretion, as Green promises that if the case proceeds to trial he will bring "many witnesses" to testify.

Well, bless our biceps! Saturday’s Washington Post includes a feature on the ferocious (and much missed) Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers, as well as a photo gallery featuring quite a few shots from local CLAW bouts. Revisit C-VILLE’s coverage of CLAW, then take a lesson in safe wrasslin’ from CLAW co-founder Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell below:

Starr Hill Presents announced some nice upcoming shows, and all I have to say is this: April 30 is going to be a tough night for 14-year-old girls who also happen to be blues afficianados. That’s right—Parachute will bring their saccharine, Maroon 5-tinged pop to the Jefferson Theater on the same night that globe-trotting blues legend Taj Mahal will tear down to the Paramount Theater.

Go see UVA grads in ‘Chute, né Flaw, and request "She=Love," the song that launched a thousand cases of skin cream. More after the videos

Or this bandwagon-hopper who named himself after that building in Slumdog Millionaire.

 Of Montreal will play May 31 at the Jefferson; Robert Earl Keen’s there on April 1. Check out the website for full details on ticket sales, etc.

I’ve been slowly plugging away on a feature story for this paper about why Bob  McDonnell wants to grow Virginia’s movie industry by offering grants or tax credits. So I checked in with some local filmmakers at the new Virginia Production Alliance office, on the Elliott Ave. side of the Ix Building. Inside was like a microcosm of Los Angeles, or how I imagine certain parts of it. People were running around with clipboards, screaming into their iPhones—there was even a handbag dog with crimped hair, yelping at a bleached blond. All of the excitement was on account of a film that’s going into production early next month, called House Hunting, written and directed by local Eric Hurt. You may recall that Hurt won the National Health Care Reform Video Challenge with this video:

Health care policy can be grim, but House Hunting looks like a darker affair. More after this.

Locals have apparently been cast in the minor roles, but they’re flying in the leads from Tinseltown—it’s too early to announce them. (I don’t even know!) You’ll be hearing more about this on this blog. And don’t forget that the production alliance is having a party this weekend.

I’ve been doing a lot of Dominion-related reading lately, as I finished up the story we printed last week and absorbed the reaction to it. There have been some noteworthy headlines about everyone’s favorite big utility. For one thing, the Smartgrid program— I referenced it only briefly, but it was a big deal when it came to Charlottesville last summer—seems to have hit some snags.

One of those hurdles is criticism from the State Corporation Commission, which is interesting because on the day my story was published, a major source—Cale Jaffe at the Southern Environmental Law Center—was in Richmond to speak before the SCC about Dominion’s proposal for a slate of 12 energy-efficiency programs. Smartgrid is one of those. From this account of the day, it sounds like Dominion had less than smooth sailing.

Meanwhile, the coal industry (via its government mouthpieces) is freaking out because the EPA might declare coal ash to be hazardous waste. It’s not clear to me how such a designation might affect operations at Dominion’s new Virginia City coal plant, but it would be a big change for the industry.

Zooming out from the local for a sec, here’s Grist’s take on what Bill Gates is saying about climate change.

And now back home. Here’s a nice review of a deer hunting class that happened locally last fall. And here’s ol’ Tom Perriello being written up as one of the 10 political races to watch this year, environmentally speaking. (Hint: View that story as a single page.)

Finally, I had no idea that the Blue Ridge Parkway gets more visitors than any other unit in the National Park system. Huzzah! (Except boo for all that car exhaust making it an even bluer ridge.)

After Albemarle County executive Bob Tucker finished his hour-long budget presentation for Fiscal Year 2010-2011—the proposed grand total is $293.85 million, for you eager readers—he asked members of the Board of Supervisors if they had any "general questions." Board chairman Ann Mallek responded first: "Sobering news."

The first public hearing on the recommended county budget is scheduled for March 3. What facts and figures do you need to sober up for the occasion? Read the recommendations below:

• The recommended budget is $10.3 million less than last year’s adopted budget, and $40 million less than the adopted budget for Fiscal Year ’08-’09.
• Twenty-three local government staff positions to be eliminated/frozen/offset—totaling 78 position reductions since 2007, on par with staffing levels circa 2002.
• County schools could see 61 percent of recommended expenditures, which translates to $179 million. Of course, there’s still that matter of the composite index…
• The recommended budget also devotes 0.3 percent of expenditures—about $800,000—to a "revenue shortfall contingency" fund.
• Both Tucker and Assistant County Executive Bryan Elliott addressed concerns over funds for the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. Elliott stated that it was "not the staff’s desire or intent" to close branches in Scottsville or Crozet; the budget, however, recommends 5-percent cuts to each branch, and minimal cuts of 5 percent to other regional and Charlottesville/Albemarle branches to offset.
• Five county police officer positions remain frozen, and the county’s Community Policing program would be effectively discontinued, leaving the agency "reactive rather than proactive," according to Elliott.

You can read the entire 240-page recommended budget here, along with a summary of reductions and more. Let us know what concerns you most below.

(From left) Albemarle County Supervisors Duane Snow, Ann Mallek and Dennis Rooker speak prior to county executive Bob Tucker’s budget proposal.

As it was in 2006, so it is in 2010. On Tuesday afternoon, Thomas Fitzgerald of Wiley Wilson design firm presented the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority Board of Directors with his firm’s 41-page review of plans for a South Fork-to-Ragged Mountain reservoir pipeline. The conclusion? That Wiley Wilson’s 2009 review, commissioned by the RWSA last February, shows that the pipeline "is sound and can be developed based on reasonable application of inflationary indices."

Inflation ups the estimated total cost to $62.95 million, an increase of $6 million. An estimate of easement acquisition costs jumped from $454,800 to $1.33 million, an increase "primarily related to accounting for potential loss of the U.S. 29 bypass corridor programmed west of Charlottesville." However, the project notes that a finalized route for the pipeline could reduce the number of easements required.

Kluge-related news just keeps coming. In October, the Wall Street Journal reported that Patricia Kluge’s local estate, Albemarle House, was put on the market for a nearly record-breaking $100 million. (For a comparison, the Journal notes that Aaron Spelling’s Los Angeles mansion was for sale for $150 million.)

The same property is now on the market for $48 million, more than half off the original price. The Georgian style, 300-acre estate, listed by Sotheby’s International Realty, includes a barn, a guest house, eight bedrooms and 13 bathrooms.

The drop in price accompanies news that a foreclosure sale for Lot 5 of Meadows Estates, developed by Vineyard Estates, LLC (Kluge and husband William Moses), will be held in front of the County Circuit Court on March 1 at 9:30am.

"The referenced foreclosure is on only one of the 24 lots and will reduce the debt overhang for purposes of reconfiguring and restructuring the full project for Kluge’s future development interests," said Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard spokeswoman Kristin Moses Murray in a prepared statement.

And that’s not all. On Friday, a judge will consider evidence in a breach of contract case against Vineyard Estates brought forth by Frank Hardy.

For more information on the suit and foreclosure sale, click here.