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Madison House gets a new master

Who says you can’t go home again? After seven years with Habitat for Humanity (www.avenue.org/habitat) and another three with the AIDS/HIV Services Group, Kelly Eplee is returning to Madison House (www.scs.student.virginia.edu/~madison) where he worked as the assistant director from 1992 to 1996. He will fill the position of executive director and says he is “excited to go back and be part of the leadership.” Founded in 1970, Madison House exists to train UVA students to volunteer in the community. “Many thousands of lives are touched by the students who volunteer,” says Eplee. It was the opportunity to work hands-on with students who are “the best and brightest of UVA,” he says, that lured him back to Madison. “It takes an exceptional student to do the course work and volunteer once a week for three hours,” Eplee says.

Local nonprofit notable Kelly Eplee wants to help change the world, one UVA student at a time.

Eplee is exceptional in his own right. Just two of his accomplishments at Habitat have been the creation of the Habitat Store (which sells new and salvaged building materials to the public at discounted prices) and the raising of funds to purchase trailer parks to redevelop as higher density mixed-income neighborhoods. “My career has always been in community-based organizations that are making huge differences in the life of the area,” Eplee says. And that entire career has been based in Charlottesville, a city he calls a “great hub of energy to do outreach.” The University community, in particular, “brings amazing brainpower and energy into a rural Southern state,” he says.

Still, his focus remains on the students who, he says, have great enthusiasm and spirit and are willing to learn. Eventually, he sees the students who come through Madison House becoming tomorrow’s leaders. “They will make a huge difference in the world when they leave here.”

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Lone citizen tears down parking deck

The Albemarle County Planning Commission meeting on December 5 was a testament to the power of the individual—or at least a persuasive argument for citizen vigilance.

On the docket for a work session were two matters concerning additions to the Hollymead Town Center, which includes Target off Route 29 in northern Albemarle. The commission was first asked to address the nature of the buildings that will line “Meeting Street,” conceived as the main street for the new “village.” Project Director J.P. Williamson proposed four-storey condominiums along Meeting Street, but the commission thought the street should resemble famous mixed-use areas like Georgetown in Washington, D.C.

“I like the idea of main street as the center of commerce with residential units within walking distance,” said Commissioner Eric Strucko. The Hollymead addition is scheduled to include 1,014 new residential units and 450,000 square feet of retail, office and hotel space.

The focus then shifted to a proposal to alter the plan for an area located behind Meeting Street on what will be known as Lockwood Drive, originally zoned for 14 townhouses with some surface parking. The owner of the parcel instead wanted a three-level parking deck with 202 parking spaces. Katurah Roell, representing the Post Office Land Trust, even raised the possibility of more than three levels.

Staff recommended approval, and the commission appeared in favor when the matter was put before the public. Ellen Newberry explained that she owns one of the prospective townhomes that will line Lockwood, opposite the proposed parking deck.

“Now instead of residential across from us there will be a massive parking garage,” she said, incredulously. “You’re talking about blocking our mountain view or our view of the sky. It will be like living across from a factory.”

Newberry also wanted to know the effects of increased traffic and closed with the argument: “It’s kind of misleading when you buy property and you’re told something that you rely on [that is altered]. …It’s just not right.”

The commission was obviously moved. “Is the proposed use appropriate for the site?” asked Chair Marcia Joseph and Strucko was immediate with his response: “In light of Mrs. Newberry, no.” Though Roell tried to persuade the commission, his request was ultimately denied. With the last “no” ringing in his ears, Roell gave a perfunctory “Let’s go,” and he and his cohorts stormed out.

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County planners get royal treatment

“I never thought we’d say this…” Planning Commission Chair Marcia Joseph paused and a smile pursed her lips. “…but can we turn up the volume on Mr. Cox?” Laughs scattered throughout Lane Auditorium. The subject of Joseph’s jab was architect Frank Cox, who came to represent the New Era Properties investment group (rumored to include Coran Capshaw and Biscuit Run developer Hunter Craig). Last time he came before the commission for this project, he and attorney Steven Blaine were berated for its lack of detail. This time, Cox played along: “Do you mind if I bend over?”

Many on the southern side of Charlottesville have clamored for retail space of their own—this is what they might get, just north of I-64.

The work session concerned a rezoning of an 87 acre land parcel for use as a shopping center, located just south of the Charlottesville city limits. The only structure currently on the parcel, which once contained the City dump, is the former Grand Piano warehouse building.

Cox walked the commission through a slide presentation of the project that includes approximately 474,341 square feet of commercial space, principally for a home improvement store, a grocery store and a “major retail store.” Cox emphasized the need for a connector road that would link Fifth and Avon streets. “Despite the landfill, the road is buildable,” he said.

Cox also pointed to planned trail systems—including a connection to the Rivanna Trail—as well as sidewalks that would offer already developed neighborhoods opportunities for pedestrian travel. “What is the concept you’d like to see with the Greenway Trail and Stream Valley Park?” he asked, before offering to work on the erosion that already exists along Moores Creek.

“I’ve heard from several people eager for retail space,” Commissioner Eric Strucko responded. “But I’ve also heard requests for active recreation space. Is it possible for [something] like a soccer field?” Cox assured him it was.

The commissioners—Bill Edgerton in particular—wanted to know what would happen to all the existing trees. “It’s not going to be possible to preserve the trees within the primary development zone,” Cox replied.

After taking in their comments, Cox thanked the commission. “I look forward to seeing you on January 23,” he said, referring to the next work session on the project.

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Hardware River unsafe for humans

On the last night of November, a smattering of locals gathered in the Scottsville Town Council Chambers to discuss a messy topic: water quality problems in the Hardware and North Fork Hardware Rivers. Set in between Charlottesville and Scottsville, the rivers flow into the James and are on the State’s impaired waters list for fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria. That means they are contaminated by human or animal waste at levels unsafe for human contact. The purpose of the night’s meeting was to kick off a study, the first step in the process of cleaning up a polluted water body (a similar project is underway for the Rivanna). And the first step in the study is the identification of all sources of fecal bacteria in the watershed.

“E. coli naturally lives in the gut of warm blooded animals,” explained Robert Brent of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and both it and fecal coliform are only found in animal and human waste. Sources include livestock, pets, wildlife, water treatment centers, septic systems, fertilizers and pesticides. In a rural area such as the Hardware River watershed, contamination can come from septic systems (if they are not pumped every three-five years), but the most significant threat is from livestock. Of 12 samples taken last year, only one violated the safe rate for human contact, though by a wide margin. The source? Cattle. One cow produces the same amount of bacteria as 16 people or 100 deer. “Tell your friends that trivia,” Brent joked. “Show them what a nerd you are.”

How to combat the cows? Brent said that the most effective countermeasures include planting trees along rivers, as well as stream fencing. “The most important place to protect is the small streams that run into a river,” he said.

Will the study result in more regulation? wondered the audience. While only the State legislature can pass such regulations, the DEQ can target certain areas for State and federal money to help with the enforcement of an implementation plan, which is the next step after a study is completed. According to Brent, the Hardware River study should be completed by the end of April.

For more information on the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, go to:

www.deq.virginia.org

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Developing the final Fontaine frontier

At 69.5 acres, the Granger Property is the last major undeveloped tract of land in the southern Albemarle growth area surrounding UVA, officially known as Area B. On Tuesday night, the Albemarle County Planning Commission wanted to know why.

“It looks like leftover land,” Commissioner Duane Zobrist said, “that we’re forcing ourselves to use.”

“We’re not trying to force anything,” Commission Chair Marcia Joseph interjected, “just developing in a growth area.”

The back and forth followed almost two hours of discussion of the property that sits neatly between Sunset and Fontaine avenues. Previous owners have tried to develop it as strictly residential, but current owner Stribling Holdings LLC (reportedly led by Coran Capshaw) are seeking to have the tract rezoned as mixed-use with an emphasis on office space.


Who’s behind the 70 acre Granger property development near Fontaine Research Park? Coran Capshaw, that ever-industrious Dave Matthews Band manager, Musictoday founder and Charlottesville developer.

As with most properties on the Biscuit Run side of town, traffic concerns led the list. The property is currently accessible only by Sunset Avenue Extended and Stribling Avenue. Five alternatives for a new road were before the commission, with a staff recommendation to build a connector road that would link Sunset to Fontaine. Initially, Commissioner Eric Strucko questioned the effects 500,000 new square feet of office space would have. “I work in the Fontaine Research Park and I get stuck in traffic now,” he said.

Jeanne Chase, a resident of the Fry’s Spring neighborhood in the city, made her way to the lectern. “Just on my way over here, I waited for 27 cars just to get out of my driveway on Old Lynchburg Road,” she said, adding that “the reality is we’re heading toward gridlock.”

After Bill Edgerton made a proposal for a spur to be built, creating additional access to the connector from Fontaine Research Park, focus shifted to whether the 500,000 square feet of office space is appropriate. Some commissioners suggested it was, considering the Granger tract is surrounded by a number of residential communities along Sunset Avenue and Old Lynchburg Road.

Commissioners likely will address the issue next in late December. As the 10pm hour neared, project planner Frank Cox punctuated the meeting: “We’ve spent six years trying to figure out how to make this project work, and we’re still not there.”


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Drug court offers felons an alternative

“How are you doing?” Rarely does a judge speak in such a convivial manner to a perpetrator, but that’s exactly what happens every Thursday morning in Charlottesville-Albemarle Drug Court, a treatment and rehabilitation program for nonviolent felons who are also addicts.


Jeff Gould administers the local "drug court," an alternative to jail time for convicted illegal drug addicts that includes drug testing, addiction treatment and weekly check-ins with a judge.

As an alternative to incarceration, addicts can pay a fee and undergo a rigorous 12-24 month program. The first phase requires drug testing five days a week and treatment from Region Ten up to four times weekly. Subjects must also report to Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire once a week.

“What are you doing for the holidays?” Hogshire asked almost every client who came before him Wednesday, November 22 (court was held a day early because of Thanksgiving). “Are you staying clean and sober? Are you staying away from people, places and things?” If felons fail a urine test or miss an appointment, they can end up in jail. Three Drug Court participants are currently serving time. The program places particular stress on finding gainful employment—failure to do so merits community service.

“Every minute of the day is accounted for,” explains Jeff Gould, the Drug Court administrator for the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. There are currently 47 people in the local program, with 31 on the docket last week.

Virginia has 12 such programs across the state, a fraction of the approximately 1,700 nationwide. “The program was started 16 years ago in Florida because judges were seeing the same faces over and over again,” says Gould. At 9 years old, the local drug court is the second oldest in Virginia.

“We save lives, we save money and we bring people back as contributing members of society,” Gould says, offering as proof a 11.5 percent recidivism rate, compared to 29 percent in the state as a whole, as well as the $5,000 annual cost per person in contrast to the $30,000 per person cost for prison.

Back in court, Judge Hogshire listened to one of the Drug Court’s two officers give a female participant a glowing assessment. “Good report. Keep it up,” he urged her and then smiled. “See you next time.”

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Gay marriage advocates march on

Virginia voters just passed an amendment to the State Constitution restricting marriage to the “union between one man and one woman” and banning civil unions. It’s a defeat for gay marriage advocates, but some choose to see a silver lining.

“We always knew the work needed to continue,” says Dyana Mason, executive director of Equality Virginia and field director for The Commonwealth Coalition, which was created to fight the marriage amendment. “Even if we had won, we would have had to face another amendment in the next election.”

Mason says the next step is to try and overhaul the make-up of the General Assembly because, as she says, “Virginia doesn’t have activist judges.”

The Virginia American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken a more direct tack by focusing on a provision of the amendment that restricts the State from recognizing “a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.”

“This is causing anxiety for a lot of couples” of every variety, says Rebecca Glenberg, legal director for the ACLU’s state chapter. Terming it “broad and vague,” the Virginia ACLU charges that the provision will lead to third-party challenges of existing agreements between unmarried couples. Although the section has yet to be challenged, the ACLU has offered to represent plaintiffs in a test case.

Until then, people like Dyana Mason lead the effort to repeal Virginia’s gay marriage ban. While she allows that some gay couples may leave the state, she hopes most will reconsider. From her vantage point, important headway was made.

“We earned the good will of Virginians across the state, which is not insignificant as we continue to build support,” Mason says. She also cites better than expected turnouts in Henrico County and even rural, usually red Nelson County. Lynchburg was especially reassuring: 60 percent of the population voted in defiance of neighbor Jerry Falwell. “And [the state] had the third-highest percentage of ‘no’ voters in the nation,” she adds. “Virginia is much more mainstream than people realize.”

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Jefferson School delays irk locals

Standing at a podium facing City Council, Charlottesville resident Ida Lewis unfurled a neatly folded set of papers and began to read. “I am here again to voice my concern for the progress of historic Jefferson School,” said Lewis early in the November 20 council meeting.

She was far from the only one to express frustration over the nearly dormant structure, located on Fourth Street in the Starr Hill neighborhood. A black school from 1894 to 1964, the Jefferson School made an uneasy transition following integration. At times it served as a junior high, a preschool and as storage and office space, but was put on ice in 2003. The school was granted both national and State historic landmark status in 2005
after strenuous community
efforts, thus making it eligible for grant funding. The City followed suit, allocating $5 million for its restoration.

Yet as the building’s brick façade continues to crumble, concern mounts. “The appointment of the ‘general partners’ was delayed yet again from last month to this meeting,” Lewis said. “This process seems to be an endless movement of delays and little or no action on the part of the City Council.”

Councilors were quick to share in her frustration, yet as the City’s tax-credit consultant Dan Gecker explained, the selection of the “general partners”—the next step in restoring the school—is tricky. In order to take advantage of $8 million in tax credits, the City must be divorced from the actual appointment of “general partners.” That decision is left to Gecker, who will refine a candidate pool of 15-20 applicants to seven and then form the general partnership that will take over ownership of the building.

“What about community involvement in the process?” asked Councilor Dave Norris.

Outside the chambers, Ann Carter—who along with Lewis is among those calling for the school’s general partners to largely comprise African Americans—echoed Norris’ concern. “You have to remember those are politicians in there, and they are supposed to represent the interests of the people but sometimes they have their own agendas,” she said. “This is all about control.”

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Pantops master planning gets underway

Of any area in Charlottesville, Pantops—with its many car dealerships and strip malls lining Route 250 East—would seem an unlikely candidate for the planning stage (at least, at this point). Yet, on Tuesday, August 23, the Albemarle County Planning Commission undertook the first of three work sessions to discuss the preliminary draft of the Pantops Master Plan. At approximately 9pm, County planner Rebecca Ragsdale prepared to launch a PowerPoint presentation, but first explained that the night’s session was intended as a “reminder of where we’ve been with this, where it’s at right now and where we’d like to go with it.”
For the next 30 minutes, Ragsdale took the commission through a broad overview that featured a number of colored maps and covered an array of issues like land use, green infrastructure and transportation. Seemingly drained by the already long night, the commission was largely content to wait until the following week’s session to delve into the details of the plan but did have a few comments. Had Martha Jefferson Hospital, whose new site will be in Peter Jefferson Place in Pantops, been included in any of the discussion? asked Commissioner Jo Higgins. “They were the first stakeholder contacted,” Ragsdale replied.
How much had the public been involved, other commissioners wanted to know. Commissioner Calvin Morris, whose Rivanna District encompasses the Pantops development area, estimated that at least 75 to 80 Pantops residents had attended the most recent meeting, held in June. As the 10 o’clock hour neared, Commissioner Bill Edgerton expressed a simpler concern. “Can we print these maps on 11" x 17" paper?” he asked. “My eyes…” Ragsdale answered in the affirmative and also explained that they were available on the website in PDF form where they could be zoomed in on. “O.K.,” Edgerton said yawning. When no more questions were forthcoming, Ragsdale wrapped up. “See you next week,” she said, “hopefully earlier in the evening.”—Jayson Whitehead

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Punishment delayed for Goode donor

Last February, Mitchell Wade, the former head of defense contractor MZM, pleaded guilty to paying California Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes in exchange for government contracts. Cunningham is currently serving eight years in prison for his part in the scandal and on Monday, August 21, Wade appeared in Federal Court where the judge agreed to delay sentencing proceedings until next March so that Wade, who has been cooperating with federal prosecutors, can continue to aid in the bribery investigation, which still has several unresolved pieces.
One of those unresolved pieces, at least as far as Virginia voters are concerned, is the involvement of Republican Congressman Virgil Goode, who Wade identified as one of two other members of Congress to whom he fed illegal contributions (the other was beleaguered Florida Representative Katherine Harris). Wade testified that he gave Goode, whose Virginia district includes Charlottesville, $46,000 in disguised contributions in 2003 and 2005, part of about $90,000 MZM eventually contributed to Goode. Goode subsequently used his seat on the House Appropriations Committee to seek $3.6 million for a Foreign Supplier Assessment Center that went to MZM, and was soon thereafter established in Martinsville. Once Wade’s involvement was announced, Goode donated the $90,000 to charity.
In his plea, Wade stated that he never informed Goode that the contributions were illegal and the five-term incumbent, proclaiming innocence, has maintained that his motivation in dealing with MZM was to bring jobs to an economically deprived region. Last month, Richard Berglund, the man who ran the Foreign Supplier Assessment Center in Martinsville, also pleaded guilty to feeding Goode illegal contributions.
While Goode was mum on Wade’s sentence delay, Curt Gleeson, communications director for Al Weed, Goode’s Democratic challenger in November, was not. “I’m sure the sentencing was delayed because Wade has a lot to say, and I’m sure when it all comes out Virgil will have a lot to answer for,” Gleeson says. “Look at the list of people involved in this,” he says, calling attention to Wade, Berglund and Harris. “Every one else is a mess. It’s the company you keep.”—Jayson Whitehead