Author: c-ville-weekly-writers

Sounds of silence

Hiding from cars and John Ashcroft

In the middle of McIntire Park, there’s a cluster of trees where you can settle into the green grass and lose yourself in the sounds of swishing leaves and chirping birds––provided you can sneak past the watchman who insists that stretch of the green space is for golfers only.

McIntire Park is among the last places in Charlottesville to find refuge from traffic noise, the groan and whine of engines and the hum of rubber on pavement. Given that Americans, on average, spend eight hours a week behind the wheel and a good deal more time absorbing car-related noise, how valuable is a place in the City where you can turn off the automobile?

On Saturday, July 19, Mayor Maurice Cox, Councilor Kevin Lynch, and a handful of local activists met Butch Davies––the local representative on VDOT’s Commonwealth Transportation Board––for a hike along the proposed path of the Meadowcreek Parkway, a road that’s been in planning stages for more than three decades. When (if) built, the Parkway will cut through McIntire Park and link McIntire Road and Route 250 in Charlottesville with Rio Road in Albemarle County.

On that Saturday hike, the Councilors wanted to show Davies how the new thoroughfare will destroy one of the most valuable aspects of McIntire––its peace and quiet. Once the weedy lowlands around Meadowcreek are paved over, the continuous whoosh of traffic will infest all corners of the park.

The County plans to compensate for the lost City parkland by building a narrow green strip along the Parkway. However, after trekking along the presumed path of the roadway, Davies declared the County’s proposed walking trail a poor substitute for the quiet that will disappear when the Parkway is built.

“I didn’t know it was so tight through here,” he said. “It’s not park replacement land. It’s not useable.”

Cox wants to turn a 33-acre farm along Rio Road into a park he hopes would substitute for McIntire’s lost silence. The land currently has three owners, including Clarence Wetsel, and is appraised at $2.9 million. Davies says he will use his position on the CTB to search for grant money from the State and private foundations to turn the Wetsel farm into a park.

Wetsel is anything but quiet on this subject, however, saying he is “not at all” interested in turning his farm, which the County has zoned to accommodate 15 homes per acre, into a park.

Silence can be a blessing when you seek it, but a noose if forced upon you.

During its regular meeting on July 21, Council considered a resolution to oppose the Federal USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act. PATRIOT Acts I and II, passed in the wake of 9/11, give Federal agencies like the FBI and the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Service broad new powers to detain people without charging them with crimes, and to snoop through citizens’ e-mails, library records and education histories without obtaining a warrant.

The City’s resolution affirms that Federal and State agencies working in Charlottesville should comply with local police procedures and not detain people without charges; the resolution also orders public libraries to post signs warning patrons that their reading habits and Internet activity can be legally monitored by the Federal government. Further, the resolution says City schools should notify people if agents use the PATRIOT Act to pry into their records. The resolution does not order anyone to break Federal laws.

The Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice rallied a mixed bag of citizens to speak in favor of Council’s anti-PATRIOT ordinance, from aging baby boomers and religious leaders to teenagers with green-tipped dreadlocks and ragged Converse All-Stars. Carrying signs instructing others to “Speak out while you can,” the activists offered by-now standard critiques of the PATRIOT Acts: Malicious and Orwellian, the Acts blatantly conflict with the American values of free thought and speech (with tiresome hyperbole, one speaker compared the Bush regime to Nazi Germany without presenting evidence that Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft have genocide and promotion of a master race on their agenda).

Councilor Rob Schilling cast the lone vote against the resolution, which passed 4 to 1. “My vote doesn’t necessarily reflect my personal beliefs,” the Republican said. “But it appears this government body is overstepping its charter.”

Other Councilors, however, used the occasion to orate against the USA PATRIOT Act and the Bush administration generally. When the Federal government passes laws that show such obvious contempt for the American republic, the Councilors said, local government has a duty to break the fearful silence currently hanging over Richmond and Washington, D.C.

“What are we supposed to do?” asked Cox. “Are we supposed to say, ‘It’s not our job?’”

After the vote, the crowd cheered and left the building, leaving the Council to tend to the more pedestrian duties of local government––bond ratings, right-of-way debates––in quiet obscurity.––John Borgmeyer

Demolition by neglect

UVA takes a slower approach to razing Blue Ridge Hospital

Last spring, when C-VILLE reported on UVA’s plans to build a research park at the site of the Blue Ridge Hospital on Carter’s Mountain, it looked as if the bulldozers were ready to roll in. But now it seems UVA is employing a slower, but no less effective, means of demolition––time––and the wait has caused its projected construction partner, Monticello, to bail out of the project.

Since 1978, UVA has owned Blue Ridge Hospital, a former tuberculosis sanatorium comprising 45 buildings on 140 serene acres east of Route 20. In 2000, UVA transferred the property to its private development arm, the Real Estate Foundation, and in October of that year signed a “memo of understanding” that would lease a portion of the site to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (which operates Monticello). In turn, Monticello planned a 95,000 square-foot visitors center where the sanatorium’s dairy barns now stand.

C-VILLE’s March 5, 2002 cover story [“Discharged! UVA and Monticello stamp out history”] pecked at the irony of UVA and Monticello, two self-proclaimed stewards of history, bulldozing a local landmark deemed “significant” and worthy of preservation by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Since then, however, UVA has put its research park on the back burner, and Monticello has tired of waiting.

“The Foundation was anxious to move forward aggressively––comma––starting in the summer of 2000––period,” says TJMF director Dan Jordan, who includes punctuation as he dictates his quotes. “We’re looking at other sites already owned by Monticello––period.”

In exchange for a 35-year lease, Monticello had pledged to pay 50 percent of any demolition costs up to $3 million, but now that agreement is off. Monticello had planned to hire an architect to survey the extant dairy barns and figure out what portions of the structures could be incorporated into the visitor’s center. Jordan says that never happened. “We never got that far––period,” he says.

Jordan says UVA still has Monticello’s blessing to build the research park. UVA Vice President Leonard Sandridge says the Real Estate Foundation intends to “develop the entire site consistent with our original plans” and that the terms of the October 2000 memo are still valid, including UVA’s pledge to conduct a pre-construction survey of the site’s historical significance. Also, the memo says there can be no “bars, hotels, motels, free-standing restaurants, retail establishments and amusement centers” on the site for 20 years.

“Maybe that’s what they’re waiting for,” quips Daniel Bluestone, a professor of architectural history at UVA. He believes the Real Estate Foundation, as private owners of historic property, ought to stabilize the Blue Ridge buildings, which have sat vacant for more than two decades.

“It sounds like a strategy of demolition by neglect,” says Bluestone. “They don’t have to deal with the tough challenge of figuring out how to reuse the buildings.”

The State Department of Historic Resources has not surveyed the site since 1989, and Bluestone says that since then some of the hospital’s buildings have passed the 50-year mark that would make them eligible for historic designation.

“Some of the most reusable buildings have passed over that threshold, and the State hasn’t looked at them seriously,” says Bluestone.

But because the Real Estate Foundation is a private entity, the State can’t force UVA to protect the buildings, says Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the State Department of Historic Resources. She says her agency would like to do an updated survey of the Blue Ridge site.

“We’re happy to work with them,” Kilpatrick says. “But once those buildings were transferred to the Real Estate Foundation, they were considered private property and not subject to our review.”––John Borgmeyer

Tree of life

Tracing their roots, blacks can be torn about their master-slave ancestry

Until recently, Julian Burke considered himself the third in a line of Julian Burkes going back to his grandfather. But a few years ago, in the middle of a 10-year project to write his family history, Burke stumbled onto a long-lost family secret––his light-skinned great-grandfather, also named Julian Burke, had renounced his blackness, married a white woman and lived the rest of his life as a white man.

“It was the first time anybody in my family knew there was a fourth Julian Burke. He had to shun his black family, and my grandfather held that against him the rest of his life,” says Burke. “My grandfather never spoke of his father again after that.”

Earlier this month, as the descendants of Monticello slave Sally Hemings gathered at Monticello, the contentious matter of her sexual relationship with Thomas Jefferson again took the stage. The Hemings clan has been in recent years the most visible symbol of the intimate conflict between slavery, racism and family ties. But many blacks of less famous parentage wrestle with identity questions arising from their blood relationships to men who enslaved their ancestors.

“It’s very, very common,” says Burke, who founded the Charlottesville-Albemarle African-American Genealogy Group to help blacks trace their family histories.

In Burke’s own case, for instance, after continued research, he uncovered an 1810 inventory of slaves owned by William Fitzhugh at Chatham Plantation in Stafford. It includes the values of 22-year-old Billy Burke, Julian’s great-great-great-grandfather, who was worth $400; and his 52-year-old father, Lewis, worth $200.

A white man named James Burke owned a nearby plantation, and his son, Silas, became overseer for Lewis’ family. For that reason, Julian Burke believes his family is a branch of the James Burke clan. “I don’t have proof of that, but it’s very likely,” he says.

Tracing black history is very different than tracing white history, says Burke. “Because of record keeping and literacy, white histories can go back ad infinitum. With blacks you have that wall of slavery,” says Burke. If a person’s descendants were kept by a wealthy owner, as Burke’s were, there may be records of their age and values. But since all slaves were given new names, the trail always goes cold.

“You don’t know your African or West Indian ancestors. That name is lost forever,” says Burke, who has recorded the history of both sides of his family in a pair of 400-page volumes called Lest We Forget: A Tribute to My Ancestors.

Josh Rothman, who earned his Ph.D. at UVA and now teaches history at the University of Alabama, has just written a book about interracial sexual relations in slave-era Virginia. While it was technically illegal for blacks and whites to fornicate, it was also exceedingly common, especially between masters and slaves.

“Whites knew it happened all the time,” says Rothman. “If you were genteel, you didn’t joke about it, but it made great gossip.”

Families who discover interracial ancestry react variously, says Rothman. Some blacks are outraged, some whites feel tainted. Other times, both sides are excited by the discovery.

“It changes how they see themselves, and how they see their families,” Rothman says. “It raises some deep psychological issues.”

Back in North Garden, Burke now performs genealogical research for others. He helped Lenora McQueen, who lives in San Antonio, Texas, to trace her family history back to some of Central Viringia’s largest plantations—Redlands, Carter, Hardware. McQueen says her family’s oral tradition connects them to the Hemings-Jefferson bloodline, but her research hasn’t yielded any conclusive proof.

McQueen, the daughter of a black father and German mother, says she has communicated online with some of her white relatives in Albemarle’s Lewis family. “I think I’m related to half the County,” she says. “They’ve all been very accepting…as far as I can tell.”

The master-slave origins of her family provoke mixed feelings, she says. On one hand, she says, it hurts to think of her ancestors kidnapped from their homes and shipped to America like animals. She does not know whether the relationships were consensual, but according to her research the masters sometimes left money and property to their mixed-race children.

“It’s very confusing. It’s hard to know what to think,” McQueen says. “I look at the slave masters as family. There is actual blood between us.” ––John Borgmeyer

Art from the heart

Tim Rollins on the craft of high-octane teaching

In the early 1980s, conceptual artist Tim Rollins, UVA’s Arts Board Resident Artist for 2003, took a public school teaching job in South Bronx, New York. Raised in rural Maine, the experience was one he calls “a real eye-opener”—wild dogs, broken windows, crumbling school building walls and crack use running rampant. After the first day, Rollins promised himself he’d stay only two weeks.

But that’s not how it worked out. More than 20 years later, Rollins still calls South Bronx home, continuing to spread the word with his Art and Knowledge Workshop, appropriately nicknamed K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), around the United States and the world.

With numerous works of K.O.S. art hanging in more than 50 museum collections worldwide, K.O.S. is now recognized as an artistic saving grace among kids who hate school, but long for creativity in their lives.

The rest is art history.

Kathryn E. Goodson talked with Rollins, who was recently appointed Distinguished Professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, on the final day of his three-day multimedia workshop for UVA Art Museum, “Summer Arts @ the Museum 2003.” An edited transcript of that interview follows.

Kathryn E. Goodson: How did you get into this notion of saving kids through art?

Tim Rollins: When you see people with those weird bumper stickers that say “Art works” or “Art saves” or whatever it might be, it’s truly no joke. For children who are academically at risk—art works.

With the K.O.S. kids in South Bronx, they needed this program, and I’m from Maine, where if you need a barn, you build a barn. So we built the program. We raised money, used my salary and got a small seed grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. I was so angry that these kids were just being tossed aside that I got them painting. I used a high-energy teaching method and mixed works of art with the classics of English literature. The kids loved it, sometimes staying until 9 at night and coming in on the weekends.

But the work is no good if I’m the only one doing it. Workshops like this must be everywhere and open to everyone, not solely the kids that can afford it. Arts need to be the core of every curriculum.

You’ve conducted multimedia arts workshops with kids from Lawrence, Kansas, to the Navajo Nation, to Tjorn, Sweden. How would you rate the job we’re doing with Charlottesville kids in relation to the arts?

It feels good to me. I love the idea that the UVA Art Museum makes such a connection with a broad range of kids in this area through the making of art. I also love Southern kids—they’re so much more polite than their Northern counterparts. But they’re also surprisingly open, enthusiastic and eager to try new things.

I have to say that the last time I was visiting in March and April, Charlottesville High School was putting on its version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was really outstanding. If that’s any indication of the level of excellence, then yes, it’s a good job.

Some of your workshops, including the Summer Arts program at UVA, focused on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What’s the reason to interweave an art program with plays?

As far as using A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I love kids’ initial excitement about plays—they immediately detect the magic of the complex plots. I always want to recreate that through art. In this group for instance, the kids watched the play and instantly all of them related to the character of Puck. So I had them find a flower—a magical flower unlike any other—and through drawing and painting they created their flower onto the pages of the play, and all the individual pieces the kids made will be displayed as one large work here at the Museum in the fall.

Someone recently remarked to me that my classroom was like a Pentecostal tent revival. My teaching style involves a lot of drama and energy, certainly. But teaching for me is not only a gift, it’s a calling. I use teaching as a medium.

Making the green grade

Local pols score on environmentalists’ report cards

Call it the age of the report card. Children have to pass a standardized test to graduate from school, Top 10 lists abound for everything from all-time movies to worst hairdos of the past century, and TV shows live and die by the ratings they receive.

If it can’t be quantified…well, it might as well not matter.

It’s the same for elected leaders, who see scores of scorecards issued after their legislative sessions end. Designed like voter guides with a narrow focus, such reports scrutinize all the big issues—business, health care and the environment, to name a few.

Among the most recent of State and local interest is a report card released this month by the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, which for the past four years has rated State lawmakers’ environmental records.

The league, a lobbying arm for nonpartisan environmental groups that can’t make political contributions without losing their non-profit status, looks at key floor and committee votes it perceives as decisive and uses them to issue a score—from 0 percent to 100 percent—for each member of the General Assembly. The results are posted online at www.valcv.org.

Not surprisingly, lawmakers from the Charlottesville area, where sprawl-control and land preservation are hot tickets, faired better than average. Democratic State Delegate Mitchell Van Yahres, an arborist who owns a tree-pruning and -cutting business, got a solid 86 percent, raising his four-year cumulative percentages to 83 from 71. Republican Delegate Robert Bell dropped a notch this year, to 64 percent from 67 percent, but beat out most in his GOP cohort.

And State Senator Creigh Deeds, a Democrat who likes to say he lives "in the country," scored a perfect 100 percent, earning the "Legislative Hero" title from the conservation league. But even he takes the praise with a dose of reserve.

"I’m pleased to have been honored," he says, "but you have to keep this stuff in perspective. The AFL-CIO grades lawmakers. So do Pat Robertson’s people. You can’t think about how you’re going to be scored on votes before you take them."

Political observers say elected officials love to shy away from scorecard results, good or bad, because tooting their own horn on one platform could come back to bite them in the rear on another. But local environmentalists say this report and others like it help voters who yearn for objective data on issues they care about.

"Politicians like to say it doesn’t really count," says Kay Slaughter, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center and former City Councilor. "They all say, ‘I’m for apple pie. I’m for the environment.’ But this gives people something to really talk about. This is their record. You can look at it and get a pretty good sense of where they are."

Slaughter, who stresses her organization doesn’t endorse or support any candidates, was herself the subject of a vote tallied in this year’s environmental report card. The House committee measure effectively preserved her post on the state’s Water Control Board.

It may have sent a message that conservationists can’t be kept out of the Commonwealth’s regulatory loop, but it’s also a good example of the relatively few and nuanced votes from which the scorecard draws its hard-number conclusions.

Another such vote included a successful bill that paves the way for the State to buy land for a future interstate highway, I-73, which the Virginia League of Conservation Voters opposed. It was the only "wrong" vote on Van Yahres’ report card.

He says he supported the bill not because he’s in favor of the new highway, but because he likes to "keep our options open." The fact that the acquisition is also a good investment for the State doesn’t hurt, Van Yahres says.

Lisa Guthrie is director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters and the brains behind the scorecard. She says she has already begun to see legislators use the report as a campaign tool, a good sign of its effectiveness. Still, she acknowledges the shortcomings behind using grade-school tactics to analyze a complex system.

"This is the best we can do in this situation," Guthrie says. "This is just a snapshot."—Robert Armengol

Tree of life

Tracing their roots, blacks can be torn about their master-slave ancestry

Until recently, Julian Burke considered himself the third in a line of Julian Burkes going back to his grandfather. But a few years ago, in the middle of a 10-year project to write his family history, Burke stumbled onto a long-lost family secret––his light-skinned great-grandfather, also named Julian Burke, had renounced his blackness, married a white woman and lived the rest of his life as a white man.

"It was the first time anybody in my family knew there was a fourth Julian Burke. He had to shun his black family, and my grandfather held that against him the rest of his life," says Burke. "My grandfather never spoke of his father again after that."

Earlier this month, as the descendants of Monticello slave Sally Hemings gathered at Monticello, the contentious matter of her sexual relationship with Thomas Jefferson again took the stage. The Hemings clan has been in recent years the most visible symbol of the intimate conflict between slavery, racism and family ties. But many blacks of less famous parentage wrestle with identity questions arising from their blood relationships to men who enslaved their ancestors.

"It’s very, very common," says Burke, who founded the Charlottesville-Albemarle African-American Genealogy Group to help blacks trace their family histories.

In Burke’s own case, for instance, after continued research, he uncovered an 1810 inventory of slaves owned by William Fitzhugh at Chatham Plantation in Stafford. It includes the values of 22-year-old Billy Burke, Julian’s great-great-great-grandfather, who was worth $400; and his 52-year-old father, Lewis, worth $200.

A white man named James Burke owned a nearby plantation, and his son, Silas, became overseer for Lewis’ family. For that reason, Julian Burke believes his family is a branch of the James Burke clan. "I don’t have proof of that, but it’s very likely," he says.

Tracing black history is very different than tracing white history, says Burke. "Because of record keeping and literacy, white histories can go back ad infinitum. With blacks you have that wall of slavery," says Burke. If a person’s descendants were kept by a wealthy owner, as Burke’s were, there may be records of their age and values. But since all slaves were given new names, the trail always goes cold.

"You don’t know your African or West Indian ancestors. That name is lost forever," says Burke, who has recorded the history of both sides of his family in a pair of 400-page volumes called Lest We Forget: A Tribute to My Ancestors.

Josh Rothman, who earned his Ph.D. at UVA and now teaches history at the University of Alabama, has just written a book about interracial sexual relations in slave-era Virginia. While it was technically illegal for blacks and whites to fornicate, it was also exceedingly common, especially between masters and slaves.

"Whites knew it happened all the time," says Rothman. "If you were genteel, you didn’t joke about it, but it made great gossip."

Families who discover interracial ancestry react variously, says Rothman. Some blacks are outraged, some whites feel tainted. Other times, both sides are excited by the discovery.

"It changes how they see themselves, and how they see their families," Rothman says. "It raises some deep psychological issues."

Back in North Garden, Burke now performs genealogical research for others. He helped Lenora McQueen, who lives in San Antonio, Texas, to trace her family history back to some of Central Viringia’s largest plantations—Redlands, Carter, Hardware. McQueen says her family’s oral tradition connects them to the Hemings-Jefferson bloodline, but her research hasn’t yielded any conclusive proof.

McQueen, the daughter of a black father and German mother, says she has communicated online with some of her white relatives in Albemarle’s Lewis family. "I think I’m related to half the County," she says. "They’ve all been very accepting…as far as I can tell."

The master-slave origins of her family provoke mixed feelings, she says. On one hand, she says, it hurts to think of her ancestors kidnapped from their homes and shipped to America like animals. She does not know whether the relationships were consensual, but according to her research the masters sometimes left money and property to their mixed-race children.

"It’s very confusing. It’s hard to know what to think," McQueen says. "I look at the slave masters as family. There is actual blood between us." ––John Borgmeyer

Art from the heart

Tim Rollins on the craft of high-octane teaching  

In the early 1980s, conceptual artist Tim Rollins, UVA’s Arts Board Resident Artist for 2003, took a public school teaching job in South Bronx, New York. Raised in rural Maine, the experience was one he calls "a real eye-opener"—wild dogs, broken windows, crumbling school building walls and crack use running rampant. After the first day, Rollins promised himself he’d stay only two weeks.

But that’s not how it worked out. More than 20 years later, Rollins still calls South Bronx home, continuing to spread the word with his Art and Knowledge Workshop, appropriately nicknamed K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), around the United States and the world.

With numerous works of K.O.S. art hanging in more than 50 museum collections worldwide, K.O.S. is now recognized as an artistic saving grace among kids who hate school, but long for creativity in their lives.

The rest is art history.

Kathryn E. Goodson talked with Rollins, who was recently appointed Distinguished Professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, on the final day of his three-day multimedia workshop for UVA Art Museum, "Summer Arts @ the Museum 2003." An edited transcript of that interview follows.

Kathryn E. Goodson: How did you get into this notion of saving kids through art?

Tim Rollins: When you see people with those weird bumper stickers that say "Art works" or "Art saves" or whatever it might be, it’s truly no joke. For children who are academically at risk—art works.

With the K.O.S. kids in South Bronx, they needed this program, and I’m from Maine, where if you need a barn, you build a barn. So we built the program. We raised money, used my salary and got a small seed grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. I was so angry that these kids were just being tossed aside that I got them painting. I used a high-energy teaching method and mixed works of art with the classics of English literature. The kids loved it, sometimes staying until 9 at night and coming in on the weekends.

But the work is no good if I’m the only one doing it. Workshops like this must be everywhere and open to everyone, not solely the kids that can afford it. Arts need to be the core of every curriculum.

You’ve conducted multimedia arts workshops with kids from Lawrence, Kansas, to the Navajo Nation, to Tjorn, Sweden. How would you rate the job we’re doing with Charlottesville kids in relation to the arts?

It feels good to me. I love the idea that the UVA Art Museum makes such a connection with a broad range of kids in this area through the making of art. I also love Southern kids—they’re so much more polite than their Northern counterparts. But they’re also surprisingly open, enthusiastic and eager to try new things.

I have to say that the last time I was visiting in March and April, Charlottesville High School was putting on its version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was really outstanding. If that’s any indication of the level of excellence, then yes, it’s a good job.

Some of your workshops, including the Summer Arts program at UVA, focused on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What’s the reason to interweave an art program with plays?

As far as using A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I love kids’ initial excitement about plays—they immediately detect the magic of the complex plots. I always want to recreate that through art. In this group for instance, the kids watched the play and instantly all of them related to the character of Puck. So I had them find a flower—a magical flower unlike any other—and through drawing and painting they created their flower onto the pages of the play, and all the individual pieces the kids made will be displayed as one large work here at the Museum in the fall.

Someone recently remarked to me that my classroom was like a Pentecostal tent revival. My teaching style involves a lot of drama and energy, certainly. But teaching for me is not only a gift, it’s a calling. I use teaching as a medium.

Solomon’s choice

Venable dilemma pits two bad ideas against each other

A diluted form of busing—that relic of the desegregated South—apparently continues in the City, and school officials have proposed a solution that could itself engender new problems. On July 17 at 7pm, the City School Board will meet to discuss a redistricting proposal that affects roughly 24 students from the 10th Street/Grady Avenue neighborhood, an area predominantly poor and black. Rather than walking to class at Venable Elementary on 14th Street, these students attend Greenbrier Elementary, distantly located off 29 North, where, it is generally understood, they benefit from smaller teacher-student ratios than obtain at Venable. The children of the 10th Street/Grady Avenue neighborhood, who it is proposed should begin attending Venable in August, have been subject to a lengthy bus ride to Greenbrier since at least the early 1980s, according to Ron Hutchinson, superintendent of City schools.

"I think probably racial and socioeconomic factors were taken into consideration," Hutchinson says of the way district lines were drawn back then. "It would be speculation on my part that those factors were involved."

Speculation also surrounds the timing of the proposed remediation.

"The only reason that I know is what school board members have stated publicly," says Venable Principal Malcolm Jerrell, "that students who live as close to Venable as these students should have the option of attending their neighborhood school."

Off the record, some Venable parents who question the wisdom of the proposed change intimate that School Board members want to urbanize Venable, which consistently outperforms other City schools on standardized tests and has relatively few poor children on its rolls.

But the School Board’s official reasoning for wanting to redistrict the 24 kids has more to do with the students’ convenience than the tangled issues of race and class.

"The reason it came forth is the proximity to the school," says Linda Bowen, chairperson of the City School Board. "It just did not make sense that these kids are being bused right past Venable to Greenbrier."

Still, Venable’s current ratio of students to teachers might most concern all parents involved. The school’s strained human resources, a point made clear by the table at right, is matched by a lack of physical space to accommodate new classes.

"Right now what we would have to do is turn the staff workroom into a classroom if an additional class were added," says Jarrell.

Hutchinson insists that if these new students were to be incorporated into Venable, classes would stay well within Virginia’s standards of quality, the State’s acceptable student-to-teacher ratios for each grade.

None of the officials seemed particularly concerned about either the influx of new students—a number consistently depicted as comparatively small, despite the overhaul of a staff workroom—or the implications of redistributing a group of poor black children into a school where sheer numbers suggest they’ll get less individual attention.

"A lot of people are assuming things," says Dede Smith, the co-chair of the City School Board. "Those who have voiced concerns are overestimating the impact."—Aaron Carico

Lining up the shot

Court Square Ventures brings unwatched college sports to the tube

Chris Holden might have been a rock star. There’s a glimmer in his otherwise sober eyes when he remembers trying to put himself through medical school playing late-night gigs in a piano bar—the name escapes him—somewhere in downtown Richmond.

“I would prop my physiology book up on the piano,” he says. “I was studying nephron functions while playing old standards.”

Then like so many young, starving artists, Holden gave up his music to start a family and make some real money.

But not as a doctor. He bailed out of med school after three months and began working his way up the corporate ladder, first in advertising, then in new media. The Information Age had barely begun at the time. Today Holden finds himself leading a Charlottesville investment firm’s foray into the world of College Sports Television.

One of three partners in Court Square Ventures, a private investment group tucked into an old brick building off Jefferson Street, Holden is playing point guard for the company’s multimillion-dollar stake in CSTV, a new 24-hour cable network dedicated to broadcasting all the college sports you don’t see on ESPN. Court Square aims to make its money back and then some when the network gets bought up or goes public.

Available on DirecTV’s sports package, College Sports TV is backed by as much as $125 million in private investments and has sealed deals with most of the nation’s top college conferences. Major investors include Coca-Cola and big sports stars like Tiki Barber. CSTV’s chief was one of the brains behind ESPN Classic.

So what’s a sleepy outfit like Court Square Ventures, with a portfolio featuring software developers and fiber optic firms, doing getting in on a big enough piece of the action to earn a seat on the network’s board of directors? For Holden and his partners, who typically invest up to $5 million in tech startups, the confluence of good concept, savvy management and strong financial support was irresistible.

“It was just obvious to me what a great idea this was,” Holden says. “There are so many great college sports out there—sports with a passionate following—that don’t get the coverage they deserve.

“Everywhere I go I meet someone who has fallen in love with it,” he continues.

Holden played lacrosse in his days at Davidson College and says it would have been “thrilling” to compete for a national, if niche, audience. And it’s precisely with those sports that have little broadcast exposure, from women’s hoops to wrestling, rowing and soccer, that CSTV hopes to score.

Viewers should expect to find the network on every major cable provider by the end of the year, Holden says. And for all those Wahoos wondering why the Atlantic Coast Conference hasn’t signed a broadcasting agreement yet, have no worries. League officials say CSTV and the ACC are still working on a deal that won’t infringe on the prior TV contracts the conference has to uphold.

College Sports TV debuted in April with post-game analysis of the NCAA men’s basketball championship, but it is largely steering away from the big money-makers that March Madness and Division I football have become.

That isn’t to say its coverage lacks sophistication or depth. Its producers are just looking elsewhere for the heated rivalries and good stories—in early July, the network premiered a documentary on Diane Geppi-Aikens, the women’s lax coach at Loyola who led her players to the Final Four while fighting brain cancer.

Over the weekend you might also have seen a taped broadcast of UVA’s Chris Rotelli receiving the Tewaaraton Trophy, the highest lacrosse honor in the country, at an award ceremony in Washington. Dom Starsia, who just coached the Cavaliers to a national title, says CSTV’s coverage “put a lot more sizzle” into the lax quarterfinals this season.

“I could tell they paid quite a bit of attention to the quality of the production,” Starsia says of the crew from CSTV. “I certainly think it added to the glamour of the weekend. I know our players all enjoyed it.”

What he didn’t know was that a group of guys with deep pockets back home were helping to make it happen. Holden admits CSTV is an unusual venture for Court Square, but he maintains that his own background in media, heading one of Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiaries in the 1990s, has helped bridge the gap.

It doesn’t hurt to know what it takes to please an audience, either. Holden still plays the piano and a little guitar when he can. He also jams with his old band, the Blue Dogs, whenever they come to town.

“There are definitely days when I wake up and say, ‘Boy, would it be fun to be up on that stage,’” he says. But it wasn’t until Holden joined CSTV gurus for opening night at the network’s swanky studios in Manhattan that he realized how bright life could actually be behind the spotlight.

“It was one of those really exciting nights you can only get in New York,” he says. “There were athletes, cheerleaders, celebrities. No glitches, no mistakes. Lots of food. Lots of libations.”

Sort of like being a rock star after all.

—Robert Armengol

Under development

Massive new project will enlarge 10th and Main in the name of Holsinger

If you want to see the future of Charlottesville, keep your eyes on W. Main Street. There, the ever-growing UVA is expanding eastward, as the City figures out how to extend the Downtown Mall’s quaint stroll-and-shop vibe further along West Main. Now a project is in the works that could test how a private developer balances UVA’s thirst for office space and the City’s sense of aesthetics.

Developer Kim Heischman is a key player in a major project planned for W. Main Street, with a footprint that effectively stretches from the corner of West Main and the 10th Street Connector down to the railroad trestle that crosses 10th. Heischman apparently also has purchased the University Station post office on 11th Street, and that land likely will figure into the project, tentatively dubbed “Holsinger Square” in recognition of the famous photographer who chronicled Charlottesville in the early 20th century.

The project’s lead architect, John Matthews of the firm Mitchell/Matthews, says Holsinger Square will be a “major project. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of square feet. We’re talking big dollars,” he says.

As he describes the project, Matthews says all the right things, from the City’s point of view––using hyphenated buzzwords like “mixed-use” and “pedestrian-oriented” that the City’s Board of Architectural Review loves to hear.

“We’re interested in getting more vitality and increasing the foot traffic on W. Main Street,” says Matthews, whose firm also headed the design team for UVA’s North Fork Research Park, a poster child for northward sprawl. “We’ve been a major instigator in putting the individual above the automobile.”

In fact, Matthews has already made his Holsinger Square pitch to the BAR. He brought renderings before the Board in July 2000 for a preliminary hearing––an informal “heads up” that allows developers to gauge BAR reaction before trying to push a big project through the City’s bureaucracy.

At that meeting, Matthews indicated that the brickwork on UVA’s Fayerweather Hall would be the model for the Holsinger façade. According to meeting minutes, the BAR seemed satisfied with Matthews’ design, although BAR member Ken Schwartz commented that he wanted the building set back further from the road. He also encouraged the developer to include more residential apartments in the design.

After the preliminary hearing, Heischman didn’t pursue a formal application. The BAR’s issues about setback “were easy to overcome,” says Matthews, but the developer wanted to wait to see how the City’s new zoning ordinance, which was already being discussed back then, would affect the development options. Also, the delay gave Heischman time to acquire the post office. Matthews says his client likely will take the project to the City within the next three months.

Matthews says the building will feature below-ground parking, with retail space on the ground floor and a mix of offices and residences above.

With UVA rapidly expanding its medical facilities, and with the City encouraging more public-private partnership with UVA, especially in the biotechnology sector, the demand for office space in Holsinger is likely to have lucrative results for Heischman. The City, however, trying to increase its housing supply, will likely continue to press Heischman to include more apartments.

“One thing that concerns us is the glut of new apartments that will be coming online in the next 18 months,” says Matthews on that point, referring specifically to Coran Capshaw’s 225-unit apartment complex near the Amtrak station.

“The market will tell us what combination of residential and office will go there,” Matthews says. “The question is what is best for that street and best for the community that also makes money.”––John Borgmeyer

Dub moon rising

Easy Star’s crazy diamond shines on with Pink Floyd reggae tribute

Perhaps it was fitting that when Lem Oppenheimer decided to stake the fate of his company on a half-baked idea, he was, um…naturally inspired at the time.

That way, when he explained his plan to produce a reggae version of Dark Side of the Moon, and people wondered what the hell he was smoking, Oppenheimer could honestly respond: some good shit, man.

“A lot of people probably had the same idea at some point or another,” says Oppenheimer, who lives in Charlottesville and is one of four partners in Easy Star records. “But nobody else acted on it.”

Last February, almost exactly 30 years after the debut of Pink Floyd’s landmark concept album, Easy Star records released Dub Side of the Moon, which recasts the psychedelic masterpiece in the soulful cloak of vintage reggae. Now, an idea that seemed just crazy enough to work, plus the enduring popularity of the original Dark Side, is providing Oppenheimer’s homespun company with worldwide notice.

As a teenager in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Oppenheimer discovered the languid bliss of Floyd, and spun DSOTM nearly every day before junior high. By the time he moved to Charlottesville in 1997, he had fallen in love with the mellow gold of reggae music. He and three friends–– Eric Smith, Michael Goldwasser and Remy Gerstein––each put together $5,000 of their savings and founded Easy Star records. Easy Star invested in both original recordings and reissues of out-of-print records by Sister Carol and Sugar Minott. The company released 11 CDs in all.

Then, in 1999, Oppenheimer was hustling around Manhattan on task for Easy Star, with DSOTM in his Walkman and THC working its magic in his frontal lobe. He imagined that Floyd’s unhurried soundscape and philosophical depth would fit perfectly with the tight rhythms and Rasta vibe of reggae. Pink Floyd gave Easy Star permission to remake their record.

“The only thing we couldn’t do was knock the cover art,” says Oppenheimer, so the company created original artwork with a red, gold and green beam passing through a lunar eclipse.

With credit cards and loans from family and friends, Easy Star began creating the album with some of New York’s finest studio musicians––and the best from these parts, too. Local bluesman Corey Harris performs guest vocals on “Time.”

Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most popular albums of all time––it spent nearly 14 years in the Top 200 selling records in America. The challenge for Easy Star was to capitalize on Dark Side’s popularity without offending fans with a cheesy rip-off.

“It was definitely a make-or-break moment for us,” Oppenheimer says.

Recording the music took three years, as the musicians strived to re-create every nuance of Dark Side, including snippets of spoken-word and the album’s legendary synchronicity with The Wizard of Oz. Then, Easy Star gambled again by hiring the publicity firm Shore Fire, whose clients include Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Norah Jones.

The risk paid off after the disc was released in February. A marketing blitz from Shore Fire got Dub Side of the Moon favorable reviews in all the right magazines––Entertainment Weekly, VIBE, Playboy, High Times. Rolling Stone panned the record, but called it “bong-tastic,” a phrase that made it into Easy Star’s promotional material.

Then, the National Public Radio program “All Things Considered” aired an extremely favorable review in March. Suddenly, Dub Side hit No. 3 on Amazon.com’s sales chart. Since then, Easy Star has sold 16,000 copies of the record and distributed more than 40,000 throughout America and Europe. Dub Side remains the top-selling reggae album on Amazon.

In July, the musicians who recorded Dub Side will begin touring as the Easy Star All-Stars. The show will include original reggae tunes plus Dub Side in its entirety. The tour kicks off at Starr Hill Music Hall.

So far, Easy Star has not spoken with any members of Pink Floyd, but guitarist Roger Waters sent the company a fax saying that he had received the CD and read the liner notes. Otherwise, Waters remained neutral, saying “it’s not my policy to endorse any covers of my material.”

Like his three label-mates, Oppenheimer, who works at Musictoday, continues to hold down his day job. He hopes the success of Dub Side will turn Easy Star from a hobby into a bill-paying career.

“Bob Marley will always be popular,” Oppenheimer says. “Maybe someday the government will legalize pot, and then we’ll really be in business.”––John Borgmeyer

Dogmatic decisions

Canine trainers match dogs with owners at the SPCA 

Lisa Rodier-Yun bursts through the door wearing a gruesome Halloween mask festooned with wild, straggly black hair. One of the room’s occupants, Shelley, is cautious of the intruder at first, backing away confused. But she warms up, her tail resuming its healthy wag. She’s passed the “visit from a stranger” test, as well as the “food bowl” and the “doll child” tests, indicating that the nutmeg-colored shepherd mix needs a little work, but overall is a good candidate for adoption.

Such is the determination of Sherri Lippman, a 30-year veteran dog trainer who performs temperament testing on new arrivals at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). It’s her job to predict how a dog will behave in an adopted home—after all, a sudden bite over the food bowl could easily send a pooch back to the overcrowded animal shelter.

“The worst thing we can do is to adopt out a dog that will come back the next week,” says SPCA executive director Carolyn Foreman.

That explains in part why the work of Lippman and her partner Rodier-Yun is important: Matching dogs with adopted homes they’re best suited for reduces canine recidivism, and helps to squash misconceptions about pound puppies behaving badly.

Lippman has been performing temperament tests for two years at the shelter, coming in once a week to visit with an average of four to six dogs. She’s also the owner of Citizen Canine, which provides instruction and behavioral counseling to pooches in Central Virginia. She holds degrees in behavioral psychology and counseling, which she put to use in 1970 raising German shepherds as helper dogs for the visually impaired, and since has worked at local obedience clubs and trials.

Lippman and Rodier-Yun receive no money from the SPCA for their temperament testing, opting to volunteer at the Rio Road W facility. They work in the laundry room, occasionally interrupted by shelter workers taking laundry to and from the dryer. In a perfect world, the regularly scheduled tests would have no disruptions, a prospect that may be in the offing at the SPCA’s 27,000-square-foot new building currently being built behind the existing one. If fund-raising goals are met, the new headquarters could open in March 2004.

But for now, the duo’s current case is shepherd mix Shelley, who arrived at the shelter as a stray on June 7 after being picked up by animal control with a choke collar but no identification. Lippman and Rodier-Yun study every move Shelley makes, as even a dog’s slightest motion has meaning.

Shelley makes eye contact with Lippman and Rodier-Yun as she wags her tail in a wide, S-shaped motion—encouraging signs. Lippman strokes Shelley three times, neck to tail. Shelley leans against Lippman’s legs, looking up at her, smiling.

Lippman murmurs and coos to Shelley as she checks her teeth five times in a row, holding Shelley’s upper lip for five seconds each time. This test for dominance aggression is critical to home placement.

“At one point or another,” says Lippman, “owners have to get something out of their dog’s mouth.”

But too much prodding makes the dog uncomfortable—Shelley softly nips Lippman’s hand, tugging on her leash.

“She’s not loving being restrained, and she’s too mouthy, so she can’t be with small children,” says Lippman.

“She’s really smart though, and willing to work,” adds Rodier-Yun.

But there’s no guarantee about whether or not Shelley or any other dog will be perfectly suited to a selected home. “None of this is failsafe,” says Lippman. “But it’s very, very informative.”

“We have a responsibility to deny adoptions that may not be the best match for certain families,” says shelter manager Beth McPhee. “It’s a must.”—Kathryn E. Goodson

Supreme Court ruling will mean local library users can peek no more

If your plans at the public library include reading an e-mail from samantha35@adultfun.com or glancing at www.cumshots.com, you could find your mission thwarted, thanks to the paternalistic justices on the Supreme Court. On June 23, in a 6-3 ruling, the Court upheld the Children’s Internet Protection Act, a Federal law that makes anti-porn filters a condition of Federal subsidies to libraries. The decision will certainly impact older library patrons as much as its younger ones. Locally, the decision likely means that an additional 45 Internet computers will get outfitted with the anti-smut devices.

“About half of our terminals are already filtered, and they have been for years,” says John Halliday, director of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library (JMRL) system, of the library’s 90 Internet computers.

The library, which maintains branches in places as far flung as Greene and Louisa counties, as well as in Charlottesville and Albemarle, currently offers patrons the option of choosing filtered or non-filtered computers, and has for some time. The Supreme Court ruling allows librarians to unblock filters at adult users’ request, but does not require librarians to do so.

“We have a board of trustees, and they decided you’d have a freedom of choice policy,” Halliday says. He hopes that policy passes Federal muster but realizes more might need to be done.

“If it turns out that we have to put filters on all of the computers,” he says, “then the library board has a decision to make: Do they want to go ahead and do that, or do they want to do it their own way?”

That way may lead the library to rely heavily on the bounties of bake and book sales. JMRL’s precarious financial situation (the State cut its budget 22 percent over two years to $650,000) likely will force it to comply with the Feds. And Halliday worries about the filters’ unintended side effects.

“Since we’ve had experience here at the library over the past few years with filters, we know that they do filter out good information, like medical information, and that they do sometimes allow in bad information like pornography,” he says.

Indeed, Halliday pinpoints what critics consider the statute’s greatest flaw, that such a broad net hobbles researchers by blocking legitimate websites. More importantly, they say, it cuts into the First Amendment.

“The court made it clear that you cannot prevent adults from having unfettered access to the Internet,” says Kent Willis, the executive director of the Virginia ACLU. “What we dislike most is that there is a chilling effect, because adults will have to ask for the filter to be turned off.”

Willis also picks up the scent of financial blackmail. “The unfortunate effect is that it’s creating a battle,” he says. “It’s drawing battle lines between public libraries and the Federal government.

“The Federal government with its large income ends up, for all practical purposes, controlling the purse strings of most public libraries.”

On a recent afternoon, patrons at the Central Library on Market Street expressed little similar anxiety, seeming either unruffled or relieved by the Court’s ruling.

“I suppose it’s vaguely worrisome, but at the same time, there are other ways to get the Internet,” said Steve Suetonius. “I understand the desire to protect children from illicit materials.”

Jalis Al-Hindi, a Park Street resident and a mother, agreed with the ruling. “One time I was upstairs with my kids, and somebody hadn’t clicked off of it [pornography], and some lady with big boobs popped up on the screen. I didn’t want my kids seeing that,” she said.—Aaron Carico

Room of her own

Four months later, homeless woman finds shelter—and unexpected compassion

Appearing on the cover of C-VILLE four months ago [“Charlottesville’s new homeless,” March 11] earned Lynn Wiber a dose of local fame. After the working college graduate told her story of going homeless in Charlottesville, she found herself confronted by strangers who recognized her from the article. Some slipped her dollar bills, some chastised her, and others wanted to save her soul. Her conclusion: Most people want to help but don’t know how.

“A lot of people approached me saying they didn’t realize this happened in Charlottesville,” Wiber says. “Homelessness is invisible. People were surprised because everything seems so nice here.”

But Charlottesville fits into a national trend: A souring economy combined with a robust housing market means that more working people, especially those with families, are living on the street.

For example, 36 percent of Charlottesville’s homeless population describe themselves as currently employed, and 51 percent have worked recently, according to a recent survey by the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless. In 2002, the Coalition reported that 36 percent of the City’s homeless were families with children––this year, the number has climbed to 47 percent.

Wiber says she told her story to show people how an unwise decision can combine with bad luck to drive people into homelessness, even those who seem securely on their feet in this affluent town. The response she’s received offers insight into how Charlottesville looks upon its poor.

After the article appeared, Wiber says, “the first thing that happened was the Christians came out. Someone called me and started reading Bible passages over the phone.”

One man, she says, walked into Barnes and Noble, where she works, and confronted her. “He called me a pathetic loser,” says Wiber. “He said that I just want people to give me money and take care of me.

“He was probably a Republican.”

Wiber expected some hostility. What surprised her, she says, was the sympathy.

“A lot of people told me this had happened to them, or somebody they know,” she says. Wiber described a couple that pressed $5 into her hand, telling her they had lived in their car for six months. One woman told Wiber about her brother––a successful stockbroker cleaned out by divorce who was now living in her spare bedroom.

Wiber’s experience after going public seems to support the conclusions of a national survey released on June 13 by Charlottesville’s Pew Partnership. The survey found that the general population tends to underestimate the extent of social problems like hunger, homelessness and illiteracy in their own communities. For example, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says that on any given day more than 3.5 million people––including 1.4 million children––are homeless, and in dozens of cities a minimum-wage worker cannot afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment. Yet the Pew Partnership estimates that only 42 percent of the general public believes affordable housing is a “serious” local problem.

Some public projects currently in the works aim to address homelessness and affordable housing. The Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless, with a three-year, $213,000 grant from HUD, is installing a Homeless Management Information System. Scheduled to be unveiled this fall, the computer database will link regional public assistance providers, enabling them to more easily connect clients with social services and jobs.

Also, the City has formed a Housing Policy Task Force charged with addressing questions of affordable housing. The group has just begun to talk, says Task Force member and Charlottesville Police Sergeant Michael Farruggio. Some advocates have questioned whether the Task Force will look out for poor residents. Farruggio says he will encourage the City not to cluster low-income housing, as it has done previously with public housing projects.

“It does not work to corral people in lower socioeconomic levels into dense pockets,” Farruggio says. “You have increased crime in those areas, and it’s not fair to the children and families that are forced without an option to have to deal with that.”

Wiber is currently living with a disabled woman and is off the streets for the time being. Her homeless experience has been a “learning experience,” she says. One lesson? Social problems will be hard to solve until people get over their fear of the poor.

“A few people said it made them uncomfortable to read about homelessness,” Wiber says. When you’re poor, she says, “people don’t touch you. They don’t know what to do with you. That isolation has been one of the hardest things to deal with.”––John Borgmeyer

Street legal

Balloon artist has law-and-order suggestions

Carl Carter was practicing his violin 15 years ago on a Seattle street when someone threw a coin into his case. Thus began his career as a street musician. These days, his nearly 2-year-old Charlottesville act has evolved a bit—namely in the form of balloon animals, fuzzy slippers, tri-colored wigs and a rubber nose.

Kathryn E. Goodson recently sat down with Carter, the 44-year old man frequently seen on the Downtown Mall singing in falsetto while guiding a mechanical pig. Carter currently rests his head at the On Our Own drop-in center on Fourth Street. His tips average $20-$100 a day, depending on time and location. He spends the bulk of it on Greyhound bus tickets to Alexandria, to restock balloons and toys.

“The prices here are outrageous,” he says. He has a business license and a mission: to spread laughs, wisdom and goofy song lyrics. Oh, yes, and to obtain a cell phone charger.

As a street musician, why did you choose to entertain children?

Kids are pure, fun. Well, until that corrupt point comes. Ages 1 through 9, they love me. There’s a market out here for kids—just look at all the things to do down here. It’s all for adults. Maybe once a week or so, a kid can have a little fun, get their face painted? That’s not enough.

As for the costumes, the balloons, it’s just my form of free expression and fun. I’ve learned to be content with who I am.

How did you learn to play so many instruments?

I grew up in the ghettos of Chicago. I decided in high school I wanted more than the gangs and violence. I got involved in the orchestra and stuck with it all through high school. During the following years I became an honor student. I was the only one in my family to graduate from high school. My mom was an alcoholic so it wasn’t like I was going to get an enormous amount of support.

But times were different then. Kids were not like the cowards of today. Even in the ghettos we never had school shootings—kids still had respect for their parents. The standards for kids have really, really been lowered.

I’m not a huge fan of affirmative action. I am a fan of the welfare-to-work plan. And school vouchers. Trust me, it’s hard to do well in school and learn when you’re worried about being beat up when you come out of the front door.

How has your attitude of “entertaining the Downtown Mall” changed since you were recently robbed by some of the very people you’re trying to please?

The bottom line no one wants to face here is that we are not hard enough on crime, period. That’s one thing Republicans do right—they’re a lot harder on crime. The other thing? No one cares about black crime on blacks.

We desperately need a volunteer crime task force here. I’ve lived in Canada, Mexico, Florida, Alexandria—every other neighborhood and community’s got one. The police say they’ve got a shortage and can’t handle it all, we need to create a volunteer one. But when I say, “Let me volunteer, let me help,” I get no reaction at all. If it’s training I need, then give me some training. I’ve got a cell phone and all I need is a charger. I’ve been trained to use an M-16 but I cannot get a phone cord and charger?

While we were in the midst of war, I heard plenty of people saying they’d love to go defend their country. I say we need to take care of home first. More than 51 percent of these crimes are gang-related. And still, you’ve got neighborhoods that won’t speak up, people that won’t speak up. You’ve got to get to that point when you’re willing to stand up.

All I’m hoping for at this point is a phone for 9-1-1 purposes. I’m always on the Mall, I see everything that goes on down here. If we can stop some of this crime, we’ll have a much better community.

License to ill

City demands fees from failing business

When Jeffery Spinello opened a letter from the City and read that he needed a permit to go out of business, he thought someone was pulling his leg. “In the past 15 years, I’ve opened and closed or sold 12 businesses,” says Spinello, who runs Main Street Gallery, perhaps better known as the Thomas Kinkade store, on the Downtown Mall. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. I came from San Francisco, and I thought California had the craziest laws.”

In early June, Spinello posted signs advertising a going-out-of-business sale at his store, which sells paintings by Kinkade as well as works by other artists. On Tuesday, June 17, Spinello received a letter from Levingston Plumb, a business property inspector for the City.

The letter, which was obtained by C-VILLE, said: “We noted that you have advertised ‘Going out of business’…and at this time we are unable to locate a valid permit for this activity. Please stop by our office ASAP to obtain the permit, and we will need a list of your inventory.”

The letter also demanded a $15 fee for the permit, and threatened Spinello with a Class 1 misdemeanor if he didn’t comply. (Other Class 1 misdemeanors include maliciously maiming someone’s pet, keeping standing water on private property, or hunting on private land without permission.)

Spinello called the City’s department of revenue and discovered the letter was no joke. He paid his $15 fee. In return he obtained a paper saying he had 30 days to close his store. Irate, Spinello, who had planned to take more than a month to close operations, enlarged Plumb’s letter and stuck it in his store’s window, beside a “For Lease” poster.

“It’s ridiculous,” Spinello says. “I find it appalling that the hardworking people who make that tough decision to go out of business have to get one more nail in their coffin.”

Lee Richards, the City’s commissioner of revenue, says his department isn’t trying to kick entrepreneurs when they’re down. The point of the permit, he says, is to prevent businesses from luring customers with phony “going out of business” sales while continuing to stock merchandise on the sly.

“The City has had this ordinance for years,” says Richards. He admits, however, that Charlottesville generally hasn’t had a problem with businesses pretending to fold. “But there was a shoe store on the Mall once that was going out of business for years,” says Richards.

Bob Stroh, co-chair of the Downtown Business Association, says he hadn’t heard of the permit until Spinello told him about it. “It makes sense that the City would want to protect the public,” says Stroh. “But the fee seems like adding insult to injury.”

Albemarle County requires a similar permit, but charges no fee.

Spinello contends the “selective enforcement” of the permit policy is unfair. “When I called the City,” he says, “they told me I wasn’t being singled out, I just happened to get caught.”

Richards says the City “isn’t in the business of catching anyone.

“If they advertise in the newspaper or they have a sign up, we do the best we can with the resources we have to get in touch with them and explain the issue,” he says, adding that the City issues an average of two permits a year.

“They’re not looking at the paper very hard,” Spinello retorts.

After a business closes, the City refunds it the unused portion of its yearlong business license, the cost of which is based on an enterprise’s profits. If owners can’t vacate their buildings within the 30 days required by the permit, they can pay another $15 for another 30 days.

All this is cold comfort to Spinello, who plans to go into real estate and is leaving the gallery business before he incurs debt. “At least I know the City must be even more broke than I am, if they really need to take 15 bucks from a guy who’s going out of business.”––John Borgmeyer

The road less traveled

Hillsdale extension could ease K-Mart’s cut-through burden

Monica Vierna and Kevin Kotlarski deserve some kind of trophy. The pair has not only attended nearly every City Council meeting in recent weeks, but they’ve often stayed to the bitter end, absorbing more public policy discussion than any civilian should.

Vierna and Kotlarski have been fighting VDOT’s plan to widen Fontaine Avenue to three lanes from two, in the process taking a chunk out of their front lawn, including a towering pine tree. In the past, Council hasn’t been able to give the Fontaine activists much good news, given VDOT’s powers to build where and when it wants, regardless of local opinion.

At Council’s regular meeting on Monday, June 16, the Fontaine duo were there again, but this time they got some good news for their trouble. Late in the meeting, Council approved a letter to VDOT Commissioner Philip Schucet––who has promised to make the multi-billion-dollar agency more responsive to local transportation agendas––asking VDOT to shift $1.5 million from the Fontaine project to a different road project on Hillsdale Drive.

Hillsdale Drive runs from Greenbrier Drive north to Rio Road (in keeping with Charlottesville’s annoying double-identification trend, Hillsdale is known as Northfield Road north of Rio). The City wants to extend Hillsdale south from Greenbrier to Hydraulic Road, just east of K-Mart, in an effort to relieve congestion at the Hydraulic/29 intersection.

VDOT has already committed $5 million to the Hillsdale project. If the agency agrees to transfer funds away from Fontaine, Council likely will spend the additional $1.5 million to acquire rights-of-way from property owners—but that figure could fall short. Although no definite route for Hillsdale has been chosen, probably it will cut through the Seminole Square shopping center, which is owned and managed by Great Eastern Management Company.

Because the new Hillsdale will improve access to Seminole Trail, eliminating the “K-Mart cut-through” drivers often use to get to Seminole Square Theater, Councilor Kevin Lynch is hoping landowners will be willing to donate the rights-of-way through their property. “We almost need to do that to make this project feasible,” he says.

Great Eastern CEO Charles Rotgin, Jr., has made no commitments, but he sounded an optimistic note.

“We’re very supportive of the City’s efforts to extend Hillsdale,” he says. “It’s a road that’s been needed for many years. We’ve indicated our willingness to be quite accommodating with respect to right of way.”

K-Mart leases its lot from Brandywine Realty in Jacksonville, Florida. Brett Moore, a property manager there, declined to comment, saying negotiations were still preliminary.

Indeed, very little about the road has been decided. Lynch denies the rumor that the City would build the road on top of Meadow Creek. He also says the road probably would not interfere with the nearby Rivanna Trails. Residents, he says, don’t want Hillsdale to be “a speedway,” and the City favors a two-lane road with bike lanes and sidewalks.

Naturally, no road project can begin without months of preliminary study, making even a summer 2004 start date overly optimistic. This fall, the Maryland engineering firm Johnson, Mirmiran and Thompson will present the City with a study of various alignment schemes.––John Borgmeyer

PATRIOT shames

Local lawmakers shun politics to criticize controversial Act

In a blip of bipartisan synergy, local Democratic and Republican parties have both issued resolutions critical of the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act.

The 342-page Federal Act, enacted after September 11, modifies 15 existing laws. It expands Federal agents’ ability to obtain warrants, set wiretaps, conduct secret searches on civilians, eavesdrop on lawyer/client conversations, monitor the Internet, and gain access to private educational, financial and medical records.

The Republicans’ resolution passed the 57th Virginia House of Delegates District GOP on June 2 by a 2/3 vote. It warns, “Actions recently taken by the Federal government, including the adoption of certain sections of the USA PATRIOT Act and several Executive Orders, now threaten (our) fundamental rights and liberties.”

The resolution requests that local law enforcement preserve residents’ freedoms “even if requested or authorized to infringe upon these rights by Federal law enforcement.”

Republican Rick Sincere, who drafted the resolution, says, “I don’t think we should be giving the Justice Department more powers than they already have.” The GOP version calls for local oversight on Federal investigations. “This is still a democratic republic,” says Sincere. “We’re in charge, not them.”

District GOP chair Bob Hodus insists that the resolution “is not a condemnation of the Act or the Bush Administration,” but rather an “urging of caution” against Federal zeal. “You always have a chance that law enforcement officers will violate constitutional rights,” says Hodus.

The Democrats’ resolution is equally critical, stating that the USA PATRIOT Act “undermines the checks and balances that are at the foundation of protecting and preserving our democracy.” It passed unanimously at the June 17 meeting of the Charlottesville Democratic Committee, although more signatures must be solicited to compose a 2/3 majority (only 42 of 115 CDC members were in attendance).

The CDC resolution categorically singles out provisions of the Act, “that may violate the Constitution and the rights and civil liberties of the residents of Charlottesville.” It supports the independence of local public agencies from Federal control. And, it, too, proposes the establishment of “an independent oversight system to prevent the abuse of the information collected about us by the government and its agents.”

Vice-Mayor Meredith Richards, who penned the resolution, says, “Anyone who has fulfilled a prescription lately will know that their information is being forwarded.… We are about to enter a downward spiral of government secrecy and aggressive spying.”

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department permitted racial profiling for terrorism investigations, while a Federal appeals court upheld the secret detentions of up to 1,200 individuals since September 11. Federal lawmakers are now considering Patriot Act II, which could broaden the definition of terrorism and make it easier to sentence “terrorists” to death.

Both resolutions will be vetted at City Council’s July 7 meeting. Passing a version would add Charlottesville to the 115 other cities and states, including Philadelphia, Denver, Hawaii and Alaska, that have enacted legislation contrary to the USA PATRIOT Act.

“I applaud the local Republicans for having a resolution,” says City Councilman and Democrat Kevin Lynch. “I’m glad that we can do this in a bi-partisan way.” Of course, that will depend on the wording. Lynch adds, “I’d like to word it as strongly as possible.”

But regardless of the wording, Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo says a resolution would be moot. “I don’t think it’s any local government’s responsibility to decide on the constitutionality of a law,” says Longo. “If Congress passes a law, it becomes a duty of the Supreme Court to decide its constitutionality…I yield to their wisdom.”—Brian Wimer

Artists to Zion: Deliver us

Will performance come to the house of God?

In the year of the building’s 119th anniversary, Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street stands vacant, and what fills it will likely stir conversation in the coming months. The Mt. Zion congregation held its final service in the building on May 25, pursuant to its occupation of new South First Street facilities. Developer Gabe Silverman purchased the church in February 2002 and takes possession of the property later this month.

Sometimes it helps to have the Federal government on your side. At least that’s the hope of some City officials as they prepare on Thursday, June 19, to share with the public two competing plans for a Downtown courthouse redesign. Federal guidelines specifying how new courthouses should look unequivocally favor contemporary architecture, and Washington’s imprimatur is among the things Mayor Maurice Cox hopes will persuade the public to go modern on Court Square. While merely a single building’s façade is under discussion in the current debate, the choice between faux historical design and up-to-date design will have wider-reaching implications for Charlottesville.

“It will be a real test of whether the City and County can jointly conceive and fund a public project,” Cox says about the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court, which is located at 411 E. High St. and is operated by Charlottesville and Albemarle. “I think it can be an example of good City-County relations.”

Indeed, in the three years that the courthouse’s slated redesign has been under review, City-County discussions have been mostly harmonious. Matters of how to site the new building to respect a truly historical jail structure behind it, along with questions of financing, underground parking and easements from Park Street, have been largely settled. But relations are chillier on the question of the building’s proposed facelift. Albemarle Supervisor Charles Martin, who sits on the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court Design Committee, says he speaks for all the County Supervisors when he expresses the view that “all along the Board has been operating with the view that the [courthouse would have] a more traditional façade.

“The old-fashioned style is more of what you normally think of when you think of a courthouse,” Martin says.

But the General Services Administration, which administers all Federal court buildings for the U.S. Department of the Interior, couldn’t disagree more. Among its standards for rehabilitation, the GSA states “changes that create a false sense of historical development…shall not be undertaken.”

Moreover, the GSA dictates, “the new work shall be differentiated from the old.”

Martin says he is unfamiliar with the Federal design mandates.

The code is well known, however, to the City’s Board of Architectural Review, which will have to vet the High Street court’s redesign once the City-County committee signs off on a single proposal. Architect and UVA professor Kenneth Schwartz, who until recently served on the BAR, says his former colleagues “know very well the Department of Interior standards for adaptive reuse indicate that if you replicate the past, you trivialize history.

“That’s a mainstream position for guidelines in the United States,” Schwartz says, “and those guidelines are important to the BAR.”

BAR Chair Joan Fenton concurs. While the BAR has not formally reviewed the competing courthouse plans, in keeping with national standards, she says, “the new building should not look like it’s an old building. You should be able to distinguish what is new and old.”

That task is especially crucial in the Court Square area, says Schwartz, where a very important historical structure should, by rights, hold center stage. That’s the Albemarle Circuit Court building whose white columns, broad portico and red bricks truly derive from the 18th century. Given that the Albemarle courthouse has been witness to the law practices of three U.S. presidents—Jefferson, Madison and Monroe—“it is the most important building in Court Square from a historical point of view.

“The last thing you want to do is trivialize it,” says Schwartz.

And while Martin characterizes the modern design of architects Wallace, Roberts & Todd as “futuristic,” Schwartz says that across the nation “there are many examples of contemporary designs that are sympathetic to a historic setting.

“It has to do with issues of scale and proportions and the way the doors and windows are handled.”

In Charlottesville, Schwartz continues, design need not be “Jeffersonian or classical to honor the historical context.”

On Thursday, June 19, at 7pm, the public will have its chance to discuss the question when the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court Design Committee presents two designs, seen above, from the team of Wallace, Roberts & Todd, and Moseley Architects. The meeting will take place in the court building at 411 E. High St.

Cox, who is the lone architect on the design committee, says he’s prepared to accept the outcome of this public process—whatever it may be. It’s been his experience with public discussion, says Cox, that when people are given information “inevitably they have the miraculous ability to make the right decision.”

—Cathryn Harding

Phat city

Hip hop shops serve a broad market

West Main Street may resemble an illustration of gentrification-in-progress, where diners sip chardonnay while overlooking construction of upscale apartment buildings that will eventually hide the lower-income neighborhood behind them. But you can still buy a throwback NBA jersey, or a baseball cap meant to be worn sideways, at Charlottesville Players, an unassuming storefront next door to Continental Divide. Owner Quinton Harrell has been selling urban and hip-hop fashion from the same location since August 1997, and despite the ongoing yuppification of his block, he has no plans to move.

Charlottesville’s reputation as a garden of literary greatness has long been nurtured by the prize-winning pens at UVA. Since 1996, however, the Charlottesville Writing Center has provided budding scribblers a place to find community outside of ‘Hooville.

Yes. Can you teach any random person to be Shakespeare or Jane Austen? No, probably not. But everyone can be taught to learn the craft of expressing themselves more compellingly in their own words. The idea that writing is some mystical power that God handed out to you at birth is not helpful to anybody.

—John Borgmeyer

The Nature of the business

As gallery closes, Water Street loses original art draw

On June 6, the usual First Fridays crowd was swirling in and out of the oversized green front doors of Nature Gallery on Water Street—greeted, as always, by gallery director John Lancaster. But for those who noticed it, the small sign at the entrance put a damper on the normally upbeat mood: “Yard Sale, June 21. Nature is Closing.”

During its gradual evolution from studio space to Warhol-worthy gallery during the four years that Lancaster has been a tenant, Nature has earned a reputation as the edgiest venue in town, not to mention the one with the best parties. The decision to leave, Lancaster says, occurred when discussions with the building’s owner, Hawes Spencer, failed to yield an agreement about renovations (including improvements to the precarious entranceway) in the atmospheric but dilapidated space behind the Jefferson Theater.

Lancaster and co-director Laurel Hausler say they were surprised by the talks’ outcome. But, Lancaster says, “It was mutual in that both sides had qualms about continuing on,” adding that the timing of the move was “totally” his decision.

Spencer, who is a newspaper editor, says that while the space’s “highest and best use is as a gallery,” he’ll be concentrating on improvements before seeking a new tenant.

Many art watchers see the change as a loss to the local scene. Leah Stoddard, director of Second Street Gallery, had anticipated rubbing shoulders with Nature when SSG moves into its new home, the City Center for Contemporary Arts, later this year. “I was very disappointed to learn it because I was looking forward to [the Water Street] corridor being diverse,” she says, adding that without Nature the area will lack “unexpected, scrappy” programming. Nicole Truxell, whose paintings are Nature’s current and final exhibition, concurs that losing the gallery is bad news. “John’s given a showcase to a lot of people who probably wouldn’t have tried to get into other galleries,” she says.

But Lancaster and Hausler aren’t throwing in the towel. After leaving the current space July 1, they’ll spend the summer gearing up to open a new gallery, called Nature Visionary Art, in a to-be-determined Downtown location. The new space, which they aim to open in September, will feature “outsider, visionary and folk art,” according to Hausler. Lancaster calls it a “voodoo hodgepodge.” For the first time, they say, the gallery will be a full-time job for both of them.

While the new space will, in theory, be “a little glossier,” according to Lancaster, the pair say they hope to continue Nature’s role as an adventurous, experimental art venue. Still, the old location will be hard to replace, with its soaring ceiling and rich history of Vaudeville performances. Acts like Harry Houdini and the Three Stooges performed on the very floor that Nature-goers now tread. “It’s an amazing location,” Lancaster says. “It definitely adds to the experience” of looking at art.

The gallery will host a yard sale in its Water Street home on June 21, Lancaster says, to “say goodbye with a bang.” Nature lovers are invited to browse a selection of objects collected from the gallery’s many nooks and crannies: “furniture, eclectica, construction material, more books than you can shake a stick at, art supplies and Donald Duck figurines.”

According to Lancaster, “Everything must go.”—Erika Howsare