When presented with a petition signed by more than 250 aggrieved residents calling for the closure of the West Main Street ABC store, City Council passed a resolution December 1 in support of the petition. Now that nearly 500 citizens have signed a petition urging that the store be kept in its current location, councilors are backtracking, acknowledging they acted too hastily in what some people are calling a race and gentrification issue.
“We feel like we didn’t have the whole picture,” said Vice Mayor Dede Smith at the January 20 City Council meeting.
“I agree,” said Councilor Kristin Szakos. “It was a complete breakdown on the ABC store. It was brought to us, and we took a position.”
City Council has a history of making resolutions on issues normally out of the scope of local government, such as the war in Iraq and drones. Said Szakos of the resolution to move the ABC store, “We didn’t think it was binding.”
Raymond Mason, a lifelong resident of Charlottesville, led the counter-petition effort. “You made a rash decision, a hasty decision,” he told councilors when he presented his petition.
The original petition to end the ABC’s lease at the West Main location was powered by Fifeville Neighborhood Association president Mike Signer and included graphic testimonials of fear, litter and urination inflicted upon those living and working around the liquor store. Delegate David Toscano, Mayor Satyendra Huja, City Councilor Bob Fenwick and a number of business owners signed a letter to the ABC demanding the store be moved.
Currently a Rose Hill neighborhood resident, Mason said he used to live in Fifeville, and a lot of residents there said they weren’t approached to sign the first petition.
“I talked to people who say they never have a problem with the store,” said Mason. “One couple said they see liquor bottles. That’s not the ABC’s problem.” He compared the littering to someone finding an empty McDonald’s bag in his yard and trying to close McDonald’s.
For Mason, who is African-American, the issue is not the ABC store but “the influx of white people moving into the neighborhood. What they have to remember is that they moved into the neighborhood with these problems,” he said. “That’s an area on Main Street where you can see black people travel in numbers.”
Added Mason, “How a black person sees things and how a white person sees them is different.”
Cyndi Richardson has lived in the historically black neighborhood for more than 40 years and is a member of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association. She told city councilors her view differed from the first petition signers. “I feel like we are being asked to accommodate the new look of my neighborhood and not accept that this is the neighborhood and this is what it looks like.”
The loiterers in the neighborhood help shovel out her car when it snows or help her 85-year-old father get up when he falls in the front yard, she said. “I feel more comfortable walking by those loiterers than I do Blue Moon Diner.”
It was Fenwick who brought up the G-word: gentrification. “We have to have that conversation because across the country, never has that process been stopped. If we’re going to do something for Charlottesville to maintain its charm and character, we’ve got to talk about that and find a way to handle it.”
Housing activist and Hardy Drive resident Joy Johnson decried the targeting of alcoholics. “They’re the fabric of my neighborhood,” she said. “When you’re talking about gentrification, you’re talking about removing a certain fabric or thread from the fabric.”
“Is this city comfortable with having no ABC?” Dede Smith asked, noting the city’s goals of urban walkability. “I’m not comfortable with that and I don’t even frequent it.”
Despite the second thoughts on the resolution, councilors seemed reluctant to change it. “If we did a do-over,” said Szakos, “we open ourselves up any time people don’t like the way we voted to do it again.”
Signer, the Fifeville Neighborhood Association president who brought the first petition, declined to follow up by phone, but issued this statement after the City Council meeting.“This began with hundreds of residents’ serious concerns about public safety and litter around the ABC store, which the neighborhood association brought to City Council,” he wrote. “Now hundreds of our neighbors are expressing equally valid concerns about the inclusiveness of the West Main corridor. City Council and the ABC should listen to all of these folks and work to find a compromise solution.”
A decision on whether to renew the lease on West Main has not been made, according to ABC spokesperson Becky Gettings. “We are taking everyone’s input into full account,” she said. “In making a final decision on the lease, we remain committed to providing service to all our customers and neighbors while maintaining an emphasis on public safety and the community’s varied interests.”
Correction January 29: Raymond Mason lives off Rose Hill Drive, not on it as previously reported.