Charlottesville’s gargantuan downtown eyesore, the half-finished and abandoned Dewberry Hotel, got a face-lift last week—the front and back of the building have been sheathed in a colorful nine-story vinyl wrap showing an abstract pattern of musical instruments.
The art installation was funded by Friends of Cville Downtown, a new nonprofit working on “an array of projects that can invigorate the downtown environment with lights, art, paintings, seating, events, banners, sanitation,” and more, said Michael Caplin, co-chair of the group, at a Monday press conference in front of the artwork.
The wrap, which leaves the building’s sides exposed, “demonstrates the power and the glory and the value of art,” Caplin continued. “We thank the Dewberries for allowing us to use their giant easel.”
Those hoping for answers on the long-term future of the building left the press conference disappointed. The owners of the property, Atlanta-based developer John Dewberry and his wife Jaimie, were scheduled to attend the event but did not appear. Caplin said the couple had been exposed to a positive COVID case over the weekend and were in quarantine.
The building bearing the Dewberry name has stood dormant since 2009. The project was initially conceived as the Landmark Hotel by developers Lee Danielson and Halsey Minor, but financial difficulties and litigation ground progress on the building to a halt. Dewberry purchased the half-finished building skeleton at auction for $6.25 million in 2012, and no construction has taken place since then.
The Dewberry Group’s website says the building “is poised to become the city’s premier luxury mixed-use retail, office, and residential property,” and will be called Dewberry Living.
Caplin said the idea for the art installation came from local businesspeople, and when he presented the idea to the Dewberries, they enthusiastically green-lit the project. Two paintings from artist Eric Waugh were enlarged and printed on 13-foot-wide vinyl mesh rolls, which were carried to the top of the building and then affixed to its exterior by workers rappelling down the side of the tower. The wrap is scheduled to remain in place for 14 to 16 months.
Mayor Lloyd Snook was in attendance to pull a tarp off the sign on the front of the building. “It is really exciting for me to know that we have such commitment from the private sector to match the kind of commitment we’ve been trying to display from the public sector,” Snook said.
The mayor admitted he doesn’t have any “inside information” about the future of the building, but “the fact that we’re here with the Dewberries’ support” makes him hopeful that more news could follow.
The installation is comprised of 12 banners and a 130-foot wrap around the building’s base, and cost $45,000 in total.
The project’s “anchor donors” include major Charlottesville developers Ludwig Kuttner, Hunter Craig, Keith Woodard, and others. Many of those donors sit on the executive committee of Friends of Cville Downtown, along with other local entrepreneurs like Joan Fenton, owner of J. Fenton Gifts, and Alex Bryant, executive director of IX Art Park. The group absorbed the former Downtown Business Association, a collection of merchants and restaurateurs with a similar mission to the new organization.
Caplin says the group plans to unveil more murals near the Dewberry in the coming days, and is also financing a new coat of paint for the chipped-up exterior of Oyster House Antiques.
The Dewberry Foundation, the charitable component of Dewberry’s business, has made a $10,000 donation to the nonprofit, says Caplin, and is listed on the building’s exterior as a sponsor of the project.
As a percentage of its annual budget, $10,000 is a major outlay for the Dewberry Foundation. According to the company’s 990 IRS returns, the only contributor to the foundation in 2019 was John Dewberry, who put in $100,000. The only employee listed is Dewberry, who apparently devotes five hours per week to the position. The foundation’s donations totaled $106,323, with the largest chunks headed for Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theater ($25,000) and the Children’s Museum of Atlanta ($16,000). The 2018 return tells a similar story, listing Dewberry as the sole contributor to the foundation, having given $125,000.
(For comparison’s sake, we glanced at the 990s of a few other local big shots—John Grisham’s Oakwood Foundation gave $5,041,440 to charitable organizations in 2018, and the Chris Long Foundation dished out $1,852,376 in 2019.)
Kuttner was also in attendance at the event on Monday. (Caplin introduced the fedora-wearing developer as “the true mayor of Main Street,” which got a chuckle out of Lloyd Snook, the elected mayor.) “We, the citizens of Charlottesville, want to get the mall back,” said Kuttner. He expressed optimism about the state of affairs, and praised Dewberry’s work on a recently completed hotel in Charleston.
Caplin says he hopes Dewberry will see his plan through to the end—“The energy at the Quirk [on West Main] shows you what a cool boutique hotel can generate.” In the meantime, a steel and concrete shell half-wrapped in vinyl will have to do.