Author: scott-weaver-2

Hours before the breathless news stories appeared with Sean Singletary’s decision, TheSabre.com, a UVA sports message board, began to roil. Singletary, who averaged 19 points a game last year and is the ACC’s top returning scorer, had spent the spring considering a jump to the NBA and forgoing his senior season. So when he announced June 18 that he’ll return for his senior year, UVA fans geeked out in that special, message-board way.

Hoops fans will get to see another season of Sean Singletary heroics—the rising senior withdrew his name from the NBA draft last week.

“Already doused myself in gasoline. Got the matches sitting next to me. I’m ready,” read a post at 1:21pm. “Yeah He’s Staying!! I need booze!!!” read another at 3:31pm.

Singletary’s return is seen by many as the Cavaliers’ only hope to continue last season’s success. After spending five seasons as an ACC punching bag, UVA tied powerhouse University of North Carolina for the conference title last season and won its first-round game in the 2007 NCAA tournament. Singletary, an All-ACC point guard, will get help from four incoming freshmen this fall as the Cavs prepare to make another tournament run.

Incoming freshman point guard Sam Zeglinski, who graduated from Singletary’s Philadelphia high school and will most likely serve as his UVA backup, will benefit from a year of watching Singletary do his thing. Three other recruits join Zeglinski: Mustapha Farrakhan, a shooting guard; Jeff Jones, a combo guard; and Mike Scott, the Cavs’ lone incoming post player.

UVA assistant coach Bill Courtney says that while all four will contribute, Singletary’s return helps that. “You don’t want to have to depend on freshmen,” Courtney says. The Cavs need help inside though, and Courtney says the 6’8" Scott, who played a postgraduate year at Hargrave Military Academy, will provide it. “He may be the most athletic front-court player this year,” Courtney says.

Although Farrakhan doesn’t necessarily come in with a famous basketball name, it’s a famous name nonetheless. The 6’4" guard is the grandson of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader. Cavs fans might notice if his grandfather shows up at John Paul Jones Arena. Last year, the minister came to three of his grandson’s games escorted by his 30-person entourage.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

The sun’s out, it’s past noon, and the Downtown Mall swells with pedestrians. A grey Acura Integra sits at Fourth Street, blocked by the ebb and flow of humanity. A man clutches the wheel with both hands. He looks for an opening. And waits. Lurching across the Mall, it takes him almost half a minute to reach the other side. It’s not the easiest way through Downtown, and it isn’t supposed to be.

A majority of vehicle-drivers like the Fourth Street crossing while a majority of pedestrians dislike it—and foot traffic is down from last year. Council is deciding whether to keep the crossing now that a one-year trial is over.

After opening the Fourth Street crossing last May, City Council must now decide whether to keep it open. Its one-year trial is up, and on June 18, Council heard the results of a pedestrian survey conducted by Neighborhood and Development Services: Out of 532 people surveyed, 369 want to keep the crossing. Almost as many, 359, say they don’t see any safety issues, though the survey, which cost the city $17,300, also showed a combined 28-percent drop in pedestrian traffic at both crossings. But if businesses around the intersection of Fourth and E. Main are any indication, support for the crossing won’t be a problem.

“For the good of Downtown, they should probably keep it,” says Sandy McAdams, the owner of Daedalus Bookshop. “It does make it easier to get around Downtown.”

John Plantz at Timberland Drugs agrees: “I think people like it. The good points outweigh the bad. We need a cut-through here.”

While Council allowed southbound traffic to cross the Mall, one block away it made Fourth Street a northbound one-way between Garrett and Water streets, discouraging its use as a city thoroughfare.

Last year’s City Council decision revolved around access to the Mall for the larger Charlottesville community. Not everyone was buying that: Kevin Lynch, the lone vote against the crossing, argued that Council approved the crossing simply to pacify complaints from area businesses.

Both McAdams and Plantz say they haven’t noticed any changes in business in the year the crossing has been there. Back at Daedalus, tucked away in what feels like a book-made cavern, McAdams says, “Nobody knows I’m here anyway.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Even in the middle of a wet, grey Thursday, as shoppers hurry across the Albemarle Square parking lot, a group of t-shirted guys chuck up jumpshots in ACAC’s indoor basketball courts. Just around the corner in Legacy Management’s offices sits Phil Wendel, founder and president of ACAC. By Wendel’s own figures, he’s invested about $20 million in local ACAC facilities, so it’s no surprise he’s got some strong ideas about Charlottesville’s proposed YMCA. In an April 30 letter that he sent to Mayor David Brown and City Council, Wendel said he “strongly” objected to the use of city funds and property for a YMCA fitness facility.

Phil Wendel, founder and president of ACAC, wrote a letter to City Council about the proposal for a city YMCA that read, “It is difficult to characterize this as anything other than a tax-exempt, taxpayer supported commercial fitness club.”

But now Wendel says ACAC has “accepted that it’s going to happen.” A YMCA that sticks to its mission, says Wendel, will serve some of the community’s unmet needs. “We favor it,” he says, adding “There are some caveats.” Wendel’s caveats cut to the heart of the YCMA debate.

While the location of the proposed YMCA is the debate’s focal point, it’s something of a stand-in for a larger question: Whom exactly would the YMCA serve? Councilor Kevin Lynch say its current proposed location in McIntire Park shows whom the YMCA is interested in serving. “You can’t tell me you’re targeting inner-city youths and then put it in McIntire Park,” Lynch says.

In his letter, Wendel pointed out that a 75,000-square-foot YMCA would offer “virtually every amenity that our taxpaying facilities offer. It is difficult to characterize this as anything other than a tax-exempt, taxpayer supported commercial fitness club.” In an interview, he points to YMCAs in Richmond and Lynchburg, built in more affluent parts of town, that he says consequently serve a more affluent population. In his view, those facilities drifted from the YMCA mission and have become government- subsidized competitors to local gyms.

Councilor Dave Norris, a proponent of a McIntire Park YMCA, says that other YMCAs have “strayed into becoming more for-profit ventures,” but is confident that a Charlottesville YMCA serves all people, especially kids and teens. “From the beginning, the Y has said their primary motivation is to be an asset to our youth,” he says. “If you look at what the Y does now, it’s almost an exclusively youth-oriented program.”

Kurt Krueger, president of the Piedmont YMCA Board of Directors, points out that the last four years the YMCA gave away 20 percent of its $1 million budget. “We want to have a facility where all economic groups can mix, and the Y in McIntire Park would do just that,” he says. While Krueger says the YMCA and ACAC demographics would overlap, there’s a difference. A YMCA’s start-up and monthly fees are roughly half that of ACAC’s. “ACAC does not serve people who can’t afford to pay its membership rate,” says Krueger.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.