A soulful folk pop artist from Northern California, Brett Dennen began his musical journey as a youth at Camp Jack Hazard. He now shares his passion for song and conservation during his own outdoor weekend retreat (Camp Dennen), among other initiatives. Inspired by ’70s icons Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Paul Simon for their melodic tunes and activism, Dennen dives deep into social issues through lyrics and storytelling that turn the personal political. Throughout the solitude of the pandemic, opener Langhorne Slim combated anxiety by composing music, breaking through his writer’s block to pen a series of songs that launched him onto a road of recovery and now a cross-country tour.
Friday 8/2. $35–65, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
DMR Adventures, a performing arts center for kids, has been making magic since 2009. This summer’s production of Beauty and the Beast JR. features 80 children performing in a downsized adaptation of the fan favorite Disney Princess movie. Join the French soirée to sing “Be Our Guest” along with lively Lumiere and timely Cogsworth, and learn the importance of inner beauty through this tale as old as time.
Saturday 8/3. $15–25, 2pm and 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
Tomas Rahal, who favored an underpass instead of a bridge, took over the former Spudnuts building in 2017 after the donut shop shuttered in 2016. Photo by Eze Amos.
Both Project Gait-Way and the Belmont Vortex created ways for planners to dream up ideas for the urban landscape around Avon Street. Since 2011, there have been many transformations while the new bridge and street layout awaited construction.
In December 2014, what had previously been used as a hair salon and then a small grocery store became one of the area’s most sought-after restaurants: Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria. The previous June, the owners of Lampo had used a crane to lower a three-ton oven from Naples into their space at 205 Monticello Rd.
At least one exhibition on potential options was held next door in the space formerly occupied by the Bridge Performing Arts Initiative. The creative center moved to the Downtown Mall last year after Lightning Properties, the real estate umbrella of Lampo and Bar Baleno, bought both properties for $800,000 in April 2022 to allow for expansion.
Lampo reopened after the pandemic in August 2022 while construction of the bridge was underway.
“Finally feels like things are back to normal,” says Lampo co-owner Loren Mendosa. “The bridge was certainly a pain, but now that it’s done we’ve noticed a bit of an uptick.”
In 2016, Charlottesville said goodbye to Spudnuts, a beloved purveyor of potato-flour donuts at 309 Avon St. that had been in business since 1969. Tomas Rahal, a former chef at Mas Tapas, took over the space in 2017 with Quality Pie. During construction of the bridge, Rahal took the city to task for not doing enough to support local businesses in the face of the disruption. He preferred the underpass option.
“The roadway, not a bridge at all, serves as a visual scar across our viewscape, instead of healing the rift between north Downtown and Belmont,” Rahal says. “They have cleaned up most of their mess, [but] the damage to us was deep, persistent, long-lasting.”
Located one block to the north at 403 Avon St., Fox’s Cafe closed during the pandemic, and the building and two adjacent lots were purchased for $1.4 million in February 2023. There are currently no plans filed to redevelop the site except for an application for a building permit for a new alcove. Daddy Mack’s Grub Shack food truck currently operates from the site.
Across the street at 405 Avon St. and 405 Levy Ave., the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority continues to operate its maintenance division on 1.1 acres now owned by the City of Charlottesville. The CRHA adopted a master plan in the summer of 2010 that called for the former auto service station to become a new apartment building with affordable units. That never happened—in part because of opposition from Belmont residents. The nonprofit Community Bikes occupied the site for many years before the CRHA began to use the property.
Earlier this year, several Belmont residents also opposed the notion of the city purchasing the property for a potential homeless shelter, while others welcomed that possibility. In January, City Manager Sam Sanders recommended that $4 million in leftover federal COVID-relief funds be used to buy the land and to allow CRHA to remain as a tenant while determining the property’s potential future. Afton Schneider, the city’s communications director, said there are no plans that can be shared with the public at this time.
There are also no redevelopment plans filed for 310 Avon St., a property under the single ownership of Avon Court LLC, which formerly housed the original location of Better Living and an old lumber supply warehouse. That building was demolished in late 2009, leaving other commercial properties on the site. One of them was the original home of Champion Brewing Company, which opened in the fall of 2012 and closed at the end of June 2023.
The construction of the bridge created new ways to get to 100 and 110 Avon St. just to the south of Lampo. The building at 100 Avon St. changed hands in December 2020 for $4.5 million, and the new owner renovated the existing structure to add several apartments. A site plan for an additional four-story building has been approved, but the units have not yet been built.
Participants at the July 29 input session advocated for the reinvigoration of Market Street Park as a gathering space.
Staff photo.
The Charlottesville Department of Parks & Recreation is currently gathering community feedback and input as it develops a master plan for the future of the city’s public spaces. As part of the master plan—which will guide the department for at least the next 10 years—the city is examining current and emerging community needs through a closer look at four parks: Court Square Park, Market Street Park, Tonsler Park, and Washington Park.
Since last November, the city has been collecting public comment through consultant groups Kimley-Horn and PROS Consulting. Online engagement with the project has been promising, with 973 surveys completed on the project website and 545 comments made through the interactive map feature as of July 29.
Each park-specific survey asks respondents to share how often they visit the park and their thoughts on the park’s cleanliness, safety, and potential amenities. Specific features mentioned in the form include food carts, art exhibits, vendors, public art, historic markers and displays, public games, water features, and native plants. There is also a space for more in-depth comment on both the surveys and the map feature.
According to Will Bassett, Parks & Rec business manager and one of the project managers for the master plan, the most filled-out park-specific survey so far is for Booker T. Washington Park, with 121 submissions.
While the city and consultants anticipated significant public engagement at city council’s input session on Market Street Park and Court Square Park on July 15, extremely low turnout prompted a second event to be held at CitySpace on July 29. The parks are the former sites of the Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson statues, respectively, and gathered national attention during A12. Both sites were originally segregated.
Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, was the only participant in the city council session who commented on the parks, updating council on the Swords Into Plowshares project. (Another woman mistakenly attended believing the comment session was for Parks & Rec more broadly, asking for shades for the pickleball courts at Carver and Keys recreation centers.)
Despite the lack of public participation at the council meeting, councilors gave their thoughts on the parks and the broader master plan.
“Two paths for these two parks [Market Street Park and Court Square Park]: One is these could be parks that are pretty standard and could be [parks] that [exist] in most any city in the country. Or two, they could be defining public spaces that engage thoughtfully with local history,” said Councilor Michael Payne.
“Both of these parks have a lot of pain associated with them,” said Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston. “How we honor that history and how we honor the events of a few years ago and do so in a way that’s honest and authentic to who Charlottesville is—particularly since there will be a lot of other people who want to write narratives about what happened in those parks—I think it’s going to be really important.”
The meeting about Market Street Park and Court Square Park on July 29 garnered more participants than that on July 15, but attendance of the in-person input session was still sparse. Six constituents were in attendance, with one member of the Parks & Rec advisory board also speaking in his capacity as a city resident.
Attendees largely agreed that the master plan should aim to bring people together in the parks, though there were some differing opinions on what design choices best facilitate gatherings. Topics of discussion included the history of the parks, safety improvements, tree cover, accessibility, and potential community engagement.
Frank Bechter, a local musician, floated the idea of Market Street Park as a living monument, focusing on the potential community engagement brought through plantings and rotating events. “Various kinds of plants, flowers—all kinds of people are interested in that and are gardeners,” he said. “There could be community engagement between the city and interested lovers of green.”
Alex Joyner, pastor at Charlottesville First United Methodist, spoke about acknowledging the parks’ histories and driving engagement in the spaces. “I think some kind of historical recognition is probably good,” he said. “I’d just like to see events that bring the community together happen in that space.”
“I’m going to take issue with ‘that park has a lot of history,’” said Genevieve Keller, a current member of Charlottesville’s Historic Resource Committee. “I’d say that park only has a recent history. The most significant thing that ever happened at that park happened in 2017 and before that, it was a very passive park … I mean, [the Lee statue] was there, people knew, and people reacted to it in their own ways. … It really was a successful event space.”
“I’m sure there were people who did not feel welcome there for a variety of reasons, but it really did serve as that kind of informal community gathering place,” said Keller.
Public surveys for the Parks & Rec master plan are open until August 25. For more information about the project or to participate in the survey, visit charlottesville.gov/1742/Parks-Recreation.
On a warm morning in late June, City Manager Sam Sanders presided over the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Belmont Bridge, a $38 million project that for a time served as another chapter in Charlottesville’s resistance to infrastructure for motorized vehicles.
“There are many who didn’t believe that this would actually happen,” Sanders said to a crowd assembled at the top of a new staircase that leads from bridge-level to Water Street. The western side of the bridge features the city’s first protected bike lane and the new bridge is much shorter at 236 linear feet.
None of those features would likely be present if not for pushback from those in the community who felt Charlottesville deserved more than just a standard replacement.
“We tend to get stuck on things and I want to get unstuck on things,” Sanders said.
Now that vehicles are rolling across the bridge and people are able to use sidewalks on both sides, reviews are mixed for the project, which still has remaining items waiting to be completed.
“It’s a vast improvement, but for all the time, angst, and money that went into getting it built, it’s a bit of a let-down,” says Carl Schwarz, a city planning commissioner who was on the Board of Architectural Review when that body approved the bridge design.
The story of the Belmont Bridge is one of what might happen when public expectations are raised much higher than what the constraints of a local government can provide.
Almost 21 years and several city managers before the ribbon was cut, the Charlottesville City Council learned of the need for $1.6 million in repairs to a 440-foot-long bridge built in 1962 that carried Virginia Route 20 across the railroad tracks. This section of the roadway, also known as Avon Street, is considered a primary road by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The minutes of the September 15, 2003, council meeting indicate the direction the city would eventually take. The mayor at the time was Maurice Cox, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and a vehement opponent of what became known as the John W. Warner Parkway.
“Mr. Cox said the Belmont Bridge is not very friendly and the best solution may not be just to replace what is there,” reads the official record of the meeting. “He asked if there is a margin to make it more attractive and pedestrian friendly.”
Cox’s desire for a replacement did not immediately take hold, and Council held a public hearing in May 2005 for an appropriation of $1.46 million in funds for bridge repairs. Jim Tolbert, Charlottesville’s planning director at the time, said VDOT asked the city to consider a replacement due to quickly deteriorating conditions, but the official plan was still to repair.
A year later, crews installed plywood underneath the bridge deck to prevent concrete chunks from falling on vehicles in the city-owned parking lots below.
In April 2009, Tolbert told Council that VDOT estimated a replacement would cost $9.2 million and construction would not happen until 2014 at the earliest. The now-shuttered architecture and design firm MMM Design was selected to develop construction documents in part because of its work in overseeing the controversial reconstruction of the Downtown Mall that was underway that year.
To pay for the replacement project, the city set aside a portion of funding received each year from VDOT and had $4.4 million reserved by May 2010. Unless the city decided to use more of its own funding, construction of the replacement wouldn’t begin until 2018.
MMM Design formally kicked off the public phase of the project in November 2010 with a presentation in CitySpace, and by this time, the city had saved up $5.3 million. Around the same time, the city had closed the eastern sidewalk to foot traffic due to a deteriorating sidewalk.
The presentation was intended to gather feedback from the community about what it wanted to see in a bridge design. Joe Schinstock, MMM’s project manager, even suggested there might be room for a pocket park on the bridge itself.
Two months later, the city was forced to transfer some of the funding it had saved up for the Belmont Bridge to replace another deteriorating railroad bridge that carried Jefferson Park Avenue Extended over a different set of railroad tracks.
Council voted 3-2 in April 2011 to spend $14,000 on permanent fencing on the Belmont Bridge’s eastern sidewalk, with two councilors asking for repairs to open the walkway to pedestrians as soon as possible. Those repairs were not made and the black fence stood until the eastern span of the bridge was replaced.
Over the course of 2011, MMM Design held many meetings with various stakeholders. The now-defunct Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville wanted an easy way for people from Belmont to access the Downtown Mall and prioritized pedestrian connectivity over bike lanes. The cyclists and walkability activists wanted vehicular activity to be secondary to non-motorized transport.
An initial design shown to Council in September 2011 showed sidewalks on both sides of the bridge, three lanes for vehicular traffic, and bike lanes on each side.
At the same time, VDOT’s cost estimate for the bridge replacement went up again from $9.2 million to $14.5 million due to a variety of inflationary factors. All estimates assumed the city would stay within the footprint of the existing bridge to avoid purchasing additional land. Studying the environmental effects on more rights of way could result in further delay.
Before the design process was over, several Belmont residents approached the Board of Architectural Review in September to critique the process. That included filmmaker Brian Wimer, who launched a contest outside official channels that challenged the very need to build a bridge at all. Wimer described this process as “creative protest.”
“Community members aren’t just waiting for results,” reads a press release from Wimer in late November 2011. “They hope to get the results themselves, even if it means finding a new design team. The solution: Project Gait-Way—an unsanctioned $1,000 design competition for the Belmont Bridge to create ‘an iconic, pedestrian-centric, bike & auto friendly gateway bringing Charlottesville into the next era of world-class cities and communities.’”
Such design contests were not unheard of during this era. In 2006, City Council funded a competition to reimagine two surface parking lots on Water Street. Both remain undeveloped with no plans on the horizon.
Court of public opinion
In January 2012, Wimer asked Council for $2,000 for the contest he was launching—Project Gait-Way—that would prioritize how the bridge improved the experience for humans rather than vehicles. Wimer’s advocacy led to the project being put on hold, and Council agreed to pay Wimer the funds to help cover the cash prize.
“Ultimately, we didn’t get an artful or very imaginative bridge,” says Wimer, who now splits his time between Charlottesville and Costa Rica. “But I think we nudged the process to try harder.”
UVA’s School of Architecture got involved in February 2012, with 29 teams of students entering the Project Gait-Way contest in what became known as the “Belmont Vortex.” In front of a crowd of students assembled in Culbreth Theatre, Wimer suggested the railway tracks would no longer be necessary as the country moved away from coal.
Those tracks are now owned by the Virginia Passenger Railway Authority and are seen as part of a future east-west service between Richmond and Charlottesville.
A design called “Belmont Unabridged” swept the competition. It envisioned no bridge at all in favor of an at-grade railway crossing. One of the team’s faculty advisors was Daniel Bluestone, a former architecture professor at UVA, who urged students to push back on automotive culture.
By this time, Cox had left Charlottesville to work as design director for the National Endowment for the Arts. He suggested to Council that the city apply for a $150,000 grant from a program he helped create called “Our Town.” The funding would pay for a study of how a new connection tied to arts and culture could transform the surrounding area.
The new Belmont Bridge features a staircase that leads from bridge-level to Water Street, as well as the city’s first protected bike lane on the western side of the structure. The replacement is also much shorter at 236 linear feet.
A divided Council rejected the idea in part due to timing and the unlikelihood of either VDOT or CSX Transportation accepting the idea of no bridge. Instead, the idea was floated to spend $150,000 on further planning of the area around the bridge, while MMM continued to work on a new design with input from the contests. That funding would end up being used for a different project known as the Strategic Investment Area. (Despite winning an award from the Congress for New Urbanism in 2018, none of the SIA’s signature ideas would be implemented.)
Mo’ money, mo’ problems
By May 2012, Sean Connaughton, Virginia’s secretary of transportation, had arranged to fully fund the $14.5 million price tag for the bridge alongside funding for the Western Bypass, another controversial road project that would ultimately remain unbuilt. The Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the funding for the Belmont Bridge, but Council remained divided about how to proceed.
By that summer, Siteworks Studios had been hired as a subcontractor who would work on its own set of designs parallel to MMM. In December, the Siteworks team, including architect Jim Rounsevell, unveiled a proposal for Avon Street to go 25′ under the railroad tracks in an underpass rather than a bridge in order to allow the surrounding area to be developed. Siteworks hired a construction firm to produce a cost estimate of $17.3 million—higher than the $14.5 million the city had reserved for a bridge replacement.
In January 2013, the now-defunct Place Design Task Force, which had been created to provide advice to Council on how to proceed with urban infrastructure, recommended the underpass option, though they also acknowledged it would be prone to flooding and may be unwelcoming to pedestrians. In a memo, they also declared what kind of a bridge they wanted.
“Attention to appropriate lighting, pedestrian walkway design, railings, and bike travel lanes will ensure that the bridge scheme serves the community as safely and appropriately as possible,” reads the memo.
In September 2013, a firm hired by the city put the cost estimate for the bridge at just under $15 million and the estimate for the underpass at $27.3 million. That same month, Council directed staff to pursue an “enhanced bridge” but did not eliminate the option of an underpass. Rounsevell launched a crowd-funding campaign to further develop the concept, which he said would build “on the success of the Downtown Mall.”
“We are hoping to also develop a market study of the immediate area similar to what was done for the [High Line] in New York,” reads the campaign’s description. “We suspect that removing a 34-foot high bridge is a superior economic alternative.”
Reviews for the completed $38 million Belmont Bridge project, which still has remaining items waiting to be finished.
Three bridge options developed by MMM Design were shown side-by-side with Rounsevell’s underpass at meetings in the spring of 2014. Finally, on July 21, 2014, Council voted 4-1 to proceed with the “enhanced” option presented by MMM. Council member and architect Kathy Galvin voted against the motion and said instead the city should hire a new firm from scratch.
Three months later, Galvin would get her way when MMM Design went out of business and could not complete their work. By this time, Bob Fenwick had been elected to Council after running a campaign in which he insisted the bridge could be repaired rather than replaced. Fenwick said he was not interested in any of the amenities associated with the enhanced bridge and tried to get Council to follow along.
Tolbert left city government and Charlottesville in February 2015 before finalizing the process to begin the bridge design all over again. That would fall to his successor, Alex Ikefuna. By the time a request for proposals was issued, the bridge’s sufficiency rating as measured by the Federal Highway Administration had dropped to 40.8 in 2015 from 47.6 out of 100 in 2012.
At that time, VDOT’s cost estimate for the bridge remained at $14.5 million but would soon increase to $23 million due to inflation. To fill the gap, Council voted to seek revenue-sharing funds from VDOT that required a dollar-to-dollar match from the city government.
The firm Kimley-Horn was hired for $1.98 million in late 2016 to resume the design work after a long period of negotiations. Its task was to complete construction documents by March 2018, which would include a plan for how to redesign the street network around the bridge. Design specifications included one lane of vehicular traffic in each direction and a 25 mile per hour speed limit.
Meanwhile, the western sidewalk was closed in early 2017 after it, too, had deteriorated. One of the existing southbound lanes was converted for bike and pedestrian use.
When Kimley-Horn took over, project manager Sal Musarra said the process would build off of what had come before but would not seek to build consensus.
To pay for their share, Council began setting aside local money in the capital improvement program, beginning with an allocation of $4.5 million in Fiscal Year 2018. There was another $5 million in FY21, even with the budget uncertainties introduced by the pandemic that year. Another $2.5 million was set aside in FY22. These allocations totaled $12 million in local funds toward the project—almost a third of its projected cost.
By the time Council approved a design in July 2018, the cost estimate had risen to $24.8 million. Council held a final public hearing on spending money on the project in August 2020; the cost estimate had grown to $31.1 million. The amount would rise slightly due to supply-chain issues that increased the cost of materials.
Caton Construction won the award to build the bridge, which contains many of the elements of the enhanced design from MMM. At the ribbon-cutting, Steven Hicks, the city’s public works director, said the final product accomplished many of the city’s goals.
“We created an innovative and architectural design and the bridge has separated pedestrian, vehicle, and bicycle lanes,” said Hicks. “Two 11-foot travel lanes, one in each direction. Seven-foot bike lanes and 10-foot pedestrian lanes. And we preserved the views to the mountains and of the railroad tracks.”
Former Councilor Galvin says she felt the process and design overseen by Kimley-Horn were good and said the work of the Belmont Vortex introduced ideas that would never have been considered otherwise.
“Some of the ideas were just too expensive and not practical from an engineering standpoint,” Galvin says, adding she is glad the project was completed, unlike a new streetscape on West Main Street that Council canceled in 2022 to free up money for the expansion of Buford Middle School.
As this is Charlottesville, the Belmont Bridge and so many others will continue to be debated.
Wimer calls the creative protest from a dozen years ago “future-bending” in that it helped create a “slight improvement” over what he had seen.
“For what it’s worth, I still favor an at-grade solution,” Wimer says. “The ‘no-bridge’ design that won the juried and the public vote.”
Schwarz said the design concept was executed in a poor manner, but he admits the bridge is now safer for pedestrians.
“But is it the gateway to downtown that we should be proud of? Let’s give it a few years and see how it ages.”
The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle may have published several novels, served on the board of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL), hosted a podcast about his music, and acted in an episode of “Poker Face,” but none of these achievements compare to his stature as a singer-songwriter.
The New Yorker called Darnielle music’s “best non hip-hop lyricist,” and he’s proven it time and again with a dizzying array of songs. Past Mountain Goats albums have themes that range from pro wrestling to Dungeons & Dragons. The band’s latest, Jenny from Thebes, is a rock opera and a sequel to its 2002 album, All Hail West Texas.
“If we’re going to do a sequel to a record that was recorded almost entirely on a boombox, why not do the opposite and make it as big as possible?” Darnielle asks in the band’s publicity bio.
Darnielle formed the band as a solo project in 1991 in Claremont, California, but the lineup has changed a number of times over the years. Now based in Durham, North Carolina, The Mountain Goats have released 22 albums in addition to several EP releases and compilations.
The Mountain Goats’ setlists are known to differ at every show, opening with unique songs each night—maybe one from 1994 or something recently composed, with few songs overlapping from night to night. There’s no shortage of back catalog for the band to pull from, yet it commits to reinventing old songs, even going back to early lo-fi cassette-only releases.
The band’s 2024 tour features Darnielle at the piano, then moving to the guitar, intermingling rockers and stripped-down songs from different eras.
“This Year,” with its painfully timely refrain, promises “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” (Look up The Mountain Goats’ performance of the song on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” where Colbert himself joins the band.) The evening typically ends in a rousing singalong of “No Children,” with fans singing “I hope you die / I hope we both die” together in jubilation.
The camaraderie is part of the joy of a Mountain Goats live show, where you’ll find endless clever turns of phrase, a few history lessons, and a gutting vulnerability where you expect to find it least.
Despite losing her previous bid for Albemarle County School Board, Meg Bryce nabbed an appointment to the Virginia Board of Education on July 24.
Supplied photo.
Former Albemarle County School Board candidate Meg Bryce was appointed to the Virginia Board of Education by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on July 24.
As a member of the VBOE, Bryce is now one of the top education officials in the state despite losing her previous bid for public office. In addition to her appointment to the state board of education, she is also a part-time psychology instructor at the University of Virginia.
While it was officially a nonpartisan race, Bryce ran on a conservative platform in her campaign for the Albemarle County Public Schools at-large seat last fall. Beyond her platform—centered on improving academic standards and strengthening parental rights—the newly appointed board member also caught media attention as the daughter of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Bryce received significant criticism for running for the school board despite having pulled all of her children from public school during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After one of the most expensive school board elections in history, Bryce ultimately lost the election to opponent Allison Spillman, receiving only 37.56 percent of the vote. Spillman won the seat, but with her appointment to the VBOE, Bryce is now the one with greater influence over local and state education policy.
“The governor’s office reached out to ask if I would be interested in serving, and I gladly accepted. The Board of Education has been focused on the issues that matter so much to me and to other [Virginia] families—accountability, transparency, and excellence in education,” Bryce told C-VILLE in a comment via text. “It is a privilege to be a part of those efforts.”
For Spillman, Bryce’s appointment comes as a disappointment, but not a surprise.
“The voters of Albemarle County overwhelmingly voiced their support of public education this past November when they elected me to the school board,” said Spillman via email. “In spite of the Youngkin administration’s continued efforts to weaken public education in the Commonwealth, I will continue to fight for all the students and teachers of Albemarle County.”
Other local representatives have also publicly expressed concern over Bryce’s appointment, including Dels. Amy Laufer and Katrina Callsen.
“You know what’s easier to win than an Albemarle County School Board seat? An unearned appointment to the State Board of Education from Gov. Youngkin,” posted Callsen on X/Twitter on July 24.
Both Laufer and Callsen have indicated they will oppose Bryce’s appointment when it comes before the General Assembly in 2025. In the interim, Bryce has started her term on the board, attending her first meeting shortly after her appointment.
In her first meeting with the VBOE, Bryce indicated her support for changing the state’s accreditation regulations.
“One policy that I believe will be instrumental moving forward is the School Performance and Support Framework,” Bryce said. “The Framework will be a powerful tool to identify the schools that are excelling so that we may learn from their best practices, but also the schools that are struggling so that we may get them the support that they need. I believe it will go a long way in providing the best possible education to every student in [Virginia].”
The VBOE will reconvene for a special meeting on August 28.
Jan Griffiths at Kluge-Rhue Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA.
The Center at Belvedere 540 Belvedere Blvd. Photographs by Ray Mishler, mixed-media works by Renee Blue O’Connell, and oil paintings by Barbara Trovillo. Through August 30.
Renee Blue O’Connell at The Center at Belvedere.
Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “Bellair: Making Visible the Invisible,” plein air landscape paintings of a local farm over the course of a year by Raymond Berry. Through August.
Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Celebrating the Ordinary,” explorations of the everyday by photographer and encaustic artist Gail Haile. Through August. Meet the artist event August 17th, 11am-1pm. “Romancing the Mud,” stoneware and terracotta works by self-taught ceramicist Mary Hadden. Through August.
Gail Haile at Crozet Artisan Depot.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Illuminating the Path,” a solo exhibit exploring the symbolic power of light and the artist’s personal journey of purpose by sculptor and painter Flame Bilyue. August 2-September 4. First Fridays opening reception at 5pm.
The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies” features an immersive multichannel video installation. Through January 26, 2025. “Celebration” features works by five African American artists highlighting the ways these artists honor history, culture, and heritage through various media. Through January 5, 2025. The museum will be closed through August 2 for exhibition changeover. Second floor galleries remain closed through August 30.
Ix Art Park 522 2nd St. SE. “The Looking Glass,” an immersive art space featuring a whimsical enchanted forest and kaleidoscopic cave. Ongoing. “Art Mix at Ix,” a fun night of painting, live music, and cocktails at the outdoor art park. Paint and Sip with guest artist Blue Ridge Brushes. First Fridays, 6pm.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA 400 Worrell Dr. “Shifting Ground: Prints by Indigenous Australian Artists from the Basil Hall Editions Workshop Proofs Collection,” curated by Jessyca Hutchens, featuring work by 22 Indigenous Australian artists. Through October 6. “Our Unbroken Line: The Griffiths Family,” screenprints on textiles, ceramic works, and paintings curated by Dora Griffths. Through December 8.
Gulumbu Yunupingu at Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 4th St. NW. “Haiti Across the Water,” recent works that critically consider history, migration, white supremacy, and the lives of Black males by Nic(o) Brierre Aziz. Through August.
Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Influence + Conversation,” interdisciplinary works by Barbara Campbell Thomas and Isabelle Abbot. Through August 25. Luncheon and artist talks with Barbara Campbell Thomas and Isabelle Abbot on Sunday, August 4 at 12:30pm.
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the First and Second Floor Galleries, the annual “All Members Summer Show” featuring current work from renting and associate members. In the Smith Gallery, “In A Different Light,” photographs by Russell Hart. Through August 18.
The Paramount Theater 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. The Third Street Box Office Project. “Shadows of the Past,” a mixed-media exhibition by Tobiah Mundt. Through August 20. Opening reception August 6 at 5:30pm. “Ascending Light,” an exhibition by Nick Brinen. August 27-September 17.
The PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. The 2024 Student Art Exhibition, celebrating the accomplishments of student artists from the latest academic year. Through September 7.
Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “Funny Money,” an exhibition of Stacey Lee Webber’s found-object based works that are haunting celebrations of liberty and labor, curated by Diana Nelson. August 2-September 29. First Fridays opening reception at 5pm.
Random Row Brewing Co. 608 Preston Ave. “Inside/Outside: Flowers in the Window,” recent paintings by Randy Baskerville. Through August.
Ruffin Gallery UVA Grounds, Ruffin Hall, 179 Culbreth Rd. “The Threat, The ,” installation, sculpture, and performance works by Conrad Cheung and The Institute for Improvisational Infrastructures. August 30-October 4. Opening reception August 30, 5-7pm.
Studio Ix 969 2nd St. SE. “More Echo,” featuring new works by Thomas Dean including screenprints on paper and wood and collage images. Through September 1.
The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. “Landscapes of Peace,” paintings by Kathleen Hutter. Through August.
Kathleen Hutter at The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville.
Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Amigxs Gringxs,” a group exhibition featuring artists of many diasporas looking at their complex relationships with immigration/migration, colonization, cultural heritage, and trans border/cultural identities. Through August 2.
An anonymous buyer has offered $7 million for the Carlton Mobile Home Park site, putting into motion a 60-day window in which the owners must consider counter offers.
Photo by Eze Amos.
Moving forward
After meeting with current residents of Carlton Mobile Home Park, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville announced it is working to secure financing to place an offer for the property in a July 26 press release. Habitat has until August 6 to make an offer on the park, or the sale of the land on which it is sited to an unknown, third-party buyer for $7 million can proceed.
Opened in the 1970s, Carlton Mobile Home Park houses approximately 60 families. If the sale of the property goes through and tenants are served eviction notices, displaced residents will be faced with the extremely difficult task of finding comparably priced affordable housing.
According to Habitat, lot rates at CMHP currently range between $375 and $450 per month. There are currently no units available at or near that rate in the Charlottesville area in any online listings.
Habitat, Piedmont Housing Alliance, and the Legal Aid Justice Center began pursuing a potential partnership with residents immediately after tenants received notice of the anonymous offer on June 7. More than 40 percent of residents signed a petition indicating their support for Habitat placing an offer on CMHP, exceeding the 25 percent margin legally required.
Residents confirmed their interest in Habitat purchasing the park in a meeting with all three nonprofits. Based on the community conversation, Habitat and partners agreed to keep CMHP a mobile home park for at least three years while considering future plans and to cap annual rent increases at either five percent or $15 monthly, whichever is less.
Under Virginia law, manufactured home park owners must provide tenants with notice of a purchase offer at least 60 days before the potential closing date. The owner must consider any additional offers to purchase made by “an entity that provides documentation that it represents at least 25 percent of the tenants with a valid lease.”
Park owners do not have to consider offers made after the 60-day window.
It is currently unclear if the owners of CMHP were intending to sell the park when they received the anonymous offer. However, Virginia law requires park owners to provide tenants with a 90-day notice of any potential listings or sale. The 60-day window provided to residents indicates the anonymous offer was made without a listing or prior intent to sell.
As the August 6 deadline for Habitat to make an offer quickly approaches, the group and its partners are focused on financing.
“This is, admittedly, one of the most challenging efforts we’ve ever been involved in given the timeline imposed upon the process,” said Habitat President and CEO Dan Rosensweig in the release. “We and our partners feel deeply that, given the enormous stakes for the families, we have a moral and ethical imperative to do everything we can to prevent displacement.”
In a comment via email, Habitat Communications Manager Angela Guzman shared that PHA has taken the lead on procuring funds for the offer. “They have narrowed conversations down to a couple of lenders,” she says. “Funding seems to be lining up.”
COVID outbreak
Four residents and one employee of the Charlottesville Salvation Army, the city’s only year-round homeless shelter, have tested positive for COVID in the past week. Arrangements have been made for COVID-positive residents to quarantine in hotel rooms. If the spread continues, the shelter’s soup kitchen may have to switch to only providing take-out meals. Luckily, no further cases of the virus have been identified following consistent testing of residents and staff. Last year alone, the Salvation Army served more than 60,000 meals and provided accommodations for 15,000 guests.
Swimming in silver
University of Virginia swimmers Gretchen Walsh and Kate Douglass helped lead Team USA to an Olympic silver medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay on July 27, setting a new American record of 3:30.20. After achieving an Olympic record in the 100-meter butterfly during semifinals, Walsh took home silver in the event on July 28, with teammate Torri Huske winning gold. As of press time, Walsh will compete in the 100-meter freestyle on July 30, with the event final set for July 31. Two-time Olympian Douglass will dive back into the pool for the 200-meter breaststroke on July 31.
Swimmer Gretchen Walsh helped Team USA earn the silver on July 27. Photo via UVA Athletics Communications.
Shooting at Holly’s
CPD seeks assistance locating suspects and a vehicle (believed to be a mid-2000s Honda Accord) involved in a shooting that occurred at Holly’s Diner on July 23 around 11:22pm. Holly’s Diner hosts karaoke every Tuesday night, an event that draws consistent crowds. One person was shot but is expected to recover with minimal injuries.
Charlottesville’s Henry Alexander Wiencek, pictured with his parents, captures an ephemeral period of historical significance in his debut "Oil Cities: The Making of North Louisiana’s Boomtowns, 1901-1930."
Supplied photo.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—or, in this case, the trees. Henry Alexander Wiencek has followed in the footsteps of his parents, Charlottesville writers and historians Donna Lucey and Henry Wiencek, with his own book, Oil Cities: The Making of North Louisiana’s Boomtowns, 1901-1930, published by the University of Texas Press in May.
The younger Wiencek, 38, was more interested in fiction than nonfiction while in high school at Tandem Friends. “In fact, I found history boring, but as I got older, I realized I have the same bug for it as my folks,” he says in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he lives.
Among his father’s books are The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White and Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. Lucey’s books include Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas and Archie and Amélie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age.
Wiencek was doing research for his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin when he ran across documents about how Standard Oil was building pipelines “through the swamp” in segregated northern Louisiana in the early decades of the 20th century.
Caddo Parish, known as “Bloody Caddo,” was part of the boom. During the Jim Crow era, it ranked second nationally in the number of lynchings, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. “That was an intersection of the old South and the new industrial economy,” Wiencek says. “I was really interested in how those two forces collided.”
He found photographs of boomtowns that have entirely vanished and wanted to know why they were so ephemeral. “It’s important to understand that people made a huge amount of money,” he says. “If it didn’t create permanent communities, where did it go?” Hint: Nearby Shreveport was a major beneficiary, while many Black residents were shut out of the boom.
White immigrants flocked to Louisiana to work. “I was really amazed that a small corner of Louisiana that had nothing going on before 1904 managed to attract people from all over the world,” he says.
Contemporary accounts made the area seem like a “weird, scary, bad place to live,” Wiencek explains, a “landscape devastated” by oil drilling, with fires burning and oil running into creeks. He didn’t expect the fond memories found in oral histories from those who lived in the boomtowns. One remembered emerging from a lake covered in oil. “They had the attitude, ‘It’s fine, I still ate the fish in the lake,’” he recounts.
In the ensuing 100 years, it seems to Wiencek that northern Louisiana, with its large percentage of Black citizens, has reverted to what it was like in 1900: poor, sparsely populated farmlands.
In a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering in Louisiana, Wiencek’s research played a role. “The Louisiana state house created voting districts to dilute the power of Black voters in northern Louisiana,” he says. His dissertation was used to argue that the former oil fields held an important Black community that shouldn’t be broken up. The court ruled for a second Black-majority district.
Lucey didn’t really expect her son to become a writer, especially after he saw “the crazy lives we’ve had” as writers, she says. She credits a teacher at Tandem for sparking his interest in history, and he credits an adviser at UT for her guidance and for pushing the publication of his dissertation.
Young Wiencek appreciates the advice he got from his parents, although he says he didn’t send them pages to edit. “I didn’t want to have a situation where there were too many cooks in the kitchen,” he says. But for research and tracking down resources, they were experts.
And of course they’re “bursting with pride,” says Lucey, “knowing how hard it is to write a book.”
