Author: Scott Weaver

After smacking bottom at the end of 2006, the Charlottesville-area real estate market has leveled off, despite a 17 percent drop in sales from this time last year. That’s according to the Mid-Year Market Report [PDF version of the report available here] from the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors (CAAR), which says now that we’ve lived through two years of "insanity," the market is beginning a gradual upswing.

Dave Phillips, CEO of the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors, sees the current market, which shows a decline in home sales and longer days on the market compared to this time last year, as a return to rationality.

Mid-year sales in Charlottesville, Albemarle and surrounding counties decreased to 1,882 from 2,267 homes sold at this time last year. That means we’re still in a buyer’s market, but according to CAAR, the real estate pendulum is ever so gently swinging back towards the center.

Yet realtor and real estate blogger Jim Duncan isn’t ready to buy into CAAR’s assessment. "We’re firmly entrenched in a buyer’s market," says Duncan. "We’re going to know in nine or 12 months where we are today. The market is changing so rapidly that sellers, buyers and realtors, we’re all adjusting."

Speaking of adjustments, Charlottesville saw a $43,000 jump (18 percent) in mid-year median sales prices to $280,000, its biggest in five years after a $3,500 drop last year. Impressive, sure—until you factor in the spike of lower-priced condo sales in 2006 that helped keep the median price low. Nowadays, condos are sort of a sore subject, what with a glut of them sitting all empty and un-yuppied. "That segment of the market’s getting hammered right now," says Duncan.

As Charlottesville jumped, median prices in Albemarle, which saw a small decline in townhome and condo sales, dropped $15,000 to $310,500. That gets you three bedrooms, two baths and 2,200 square feet of county bliss.

Outside the city core lay pools of relative real estate calm. Median prices increased incrementally in Fluvanna (4.7 percent), Greene (6.7 percent) and Louisa (1.3 percent). Along with Albemarle, Nelson County dropped 3.8 percent.

Outer counties are "becoming more distinct markets," says Duncan. "They’re differentiating themselves…becoming more markets unto themselves."

So what will a little under $300,000 get you in downtown Charlottesville? According to Duncan, three bedrooms and 1,600 square feet. Plus, thanks to a few acts by boys in baggy white t-shirts, extra police presence.

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Jane Andrews walks into the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program’s (AHIP) conference room and sits down at an already-crowded table. She has good news. James Wilson and his wife, Heidi, sitting to her right, are living in an AHIP-owned house the organization has supplied them for 30 days. She turns to them. “We have that 30 days extended out a little longer,” she says. Heidi’s smile and relief is obvious. James sits slouched down in his chair, wearing Army camouflage and an Iraq veteran ball cap. His response is muted.

Spc. James Wilson and his wife, Heidi, have battled military and government bureaucracy in their fight for health care after James sustained a head injury in Iraq. That fight has left them in debt and without a home.

Andrews begins to ask about the Wilsons’ future housing preferences. Do they like living in the city, out in the county? “As long as it’s not on the side of road or standing up in a Humvee,” says Wilson, who was a member of the Army’s Special Forces, “I don’t care.”

Three weeks ago, Debbie and John Taylor contacted AHIP to see if they could rehab a trailer for the Wilsons, who had been homeless before living with them. They had just been offered an old trailer (though the Wilsons still would have had to rent the land), which James had already begun working on. After doing an assessment, AHIP discovered it would take at least $20,000 to make the trailer habitable. “It’s basically an old meth lab,” says James. Andrews thought the money to rehab the 1970s trailer could be used to buy a new trailer.

But days after the initial request, the Taylors called back with an urgent problem. Their landlord had said the Wilsons could no longer stay in their condo. AHIP immediately found the Wilsons the house they’re currently in to avoid James and Heidi becoming homeless again.

“This situation is a little bit challenging because it doesn’t fit the definition for a lot of our resources,” says Andrews. AHIP helps low- to moderate-income folks find or repair housing. But what Andrews wants to do is get the Wilsons into their own house. Going outside of her organization’s parameters will require extra funding. “We want to raise awareness,” says Andrews, “that we might be calling on the community for some help in this situation.”

To call James’s journey from Sadr City in Iraq (where he was injured when a bomb or bombs exploded under his Humvee) to Charlottesville (where he was sent to receive treatment at UVA’s Neuro-Oncology Center) Kafkaesque is both banal and accurate. His fight to get proper treatment that placed Heidi and him in a financially precarious situation has been documented on Salon.com, as was his stay at the now-notorious Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Initially accused of “malingering,” military speak for faking an injury, James was forced to pay for medical tests himself to prove his injury was real. “You come back wounded and in pain, you expect the military to take care of you,” he says in a deep voice that is still a little slurred and slow because of his injury. “But you have to go and bust down doors. You’re pretty much talking to walls.”

Next week C-VILLE will look at James Wilson’s story in depth, how the Wilsons ended up in Charlottesville, why it is so difficult for wounded Iraq veterans to get the treatment and help they desperately need, and what role local communities have in actually supporting the troops.

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

Dedicated UVA football fans experienced a moment of deja vu this January when they looked down the list of incoming recruits on national signing day and saw the name Ras-I Dowling. Dowling was also on the list in 2006, but he didn’t make the grade for UVA. So he opted to “prep,” spend a post-grad year at Hargrave Military Academy to improve his SAT score and become eligible.

Like many college coaches across the country, UVA football Head Coach Al Groh will have to do without recruits who have to prep a year to boost grades and test scores.

That’s no longer allowed under a new NCAA rule regarding academic eligibility, which could have a large impact on major college athletics, including UVA. In a move to lessen the influence of post-high school prep schools, the NCAA will limit incoming freshmen to only one additional core course after he or she graduates high school. The new rule, which also ups the required core courses to 16 from 14, will make it harder for athletes to become academically eligible after graduation and could have a major effect on UVA football.

Of the 24 incoming football recruits, one spent a year at Fork Union Military Academy and two at Hargrave, both Virginia prep schools that regularly funnel players to major college football programs. It will now be much more difficult to prep for improved scores and impossible to take more than one core class in a post-secondary year.

Fork Union’s post-graduate football Coach John Shuman says that while the rule won’t have a major effect on his school, it will have a significant impact on UVA’s football program. “The biggest thing is the loss of a year,” Shuman says about the post-graduate year some players spend at prep schools to either boost test scores or GPAs.

The rule change comes on the heels of reports by The New York Times and The Washington Post that exposed less-than-rigorous schools, essentially operated as one-stop diploma mills for blue-chip athletes without the grades to play in the NCAA. Shuman acknowledged there are schools with little to no academic mission simply shuttling kids on to college programs. “Basement prep schools,” he says, “are giving us a bad name.”

But Shuman takes issue with the way the NCAA handled its prep school problems. “We’re letting the NCAA do this without a reaction from us,” he says. “That’s sad.” He says legit prep schools should sit down with the NCAA. “I don’t think they understand what we do.”

Without a year to prep, getting into UVA now becomes harder for athletes with borderline grades. They still have the option to attend junior colleges, though students must earn a two-year degree before they’re NCAA eligible. UVA, however, rarely if ever takes football players from junior colleges, according to Shuman.

Al Groh, head coach of UVA’s football team, was unavailable for comment.

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

Plans for a new YMCA at McIntire Park gained momentum at the July 9 City Council work session thanks in part to a figure that rolled onto Parks and Recreations Director Mike Svetz’s deck that day: $565,000 to renovate just the locker rooms at the Smith and Crow city pools. Even councilors that weren’t wild about the proposed $14 million YMCA facility acknowledged that, faced with the cost of renovating the city’s indoor pools, a YMCA would be a practical business decision.

McIntire Park would be the location of a city YMCA, to include among other amenities two pools, a running track, two basketball courts and a fitness room.

That’s not to say there aren’t sticking points. One is the $2 million the city would contribute to the YMCA’s construction. Councilor Kendra Hamilton pointed out that it was the same amount Albemarle County would pay, even though the city would provide land and public transportation. The other is the location. Hamilton and Councilor Kevin Lynch both bristled at the four to six acres of parkland the city would lease to the YMCA for a nominal fee (though Council seems not to have a problem with the parkland acreage the Meadowcreek Parkway would eat up).

Council directed Svetz to begin drafting a sample lease for the YMCA facility and will discuss it further at the end of August. Notably absent from the discussion was the issue of who the YMCA would serve, previously a contentious issue. It turns out, it is an issue raised almost everywhere a new YMCA is proposed, with the help of a national organization that makes it a policy to oppose them.

The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IRSHA) is a trade association representing for-profit health clubs. One of its stated missions is to oppose “tax-exempt competition.” Into this category falls the YMCA. IHRSA argues that YMCAs are essentially government-subsidized competitors that pose unfair competition to for-profit clubs.

If IHRSA’s argument against YMCA’s is the same as ACAC owner Phil Wendel’s opposition to a Charlottesville YMCA, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Wendel sits on IHRSA’s Board of Directors and has given more than $20,000 to its Industry Leadership Council, a group of club owners that, according to IHRSA 2005 Public Policy Honor Roll, work “to advance the industry’s public policy agenda and protect the industry from harmful regulatory and legislative proposals.” Wendel was unavailable for comment for this story.

Kelly Kennai of the YMCA of USA says the national YMCA is aware of IHRSA’s lobbying against it. Kennai says the national YMCA hasn’t seen too much impact from IHRSA, but that “there have definitely been lawsuits we’ve faced at the state level.” The website www.ymove.org, a grassroots organization that opposed a now-approved YMCA building in West Chester, Pennsylvania—a town that also features an ACAC facility—linked to an IHRSA paper titled “The Case for Fair Competition.” Both the site and paper have been taken down in the last week.

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

On June 20, anti-war activist and perennial pain-in-POTUS’-ass, Cindy Sheehan, will lead a rally on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. Sheehan—who in May quit her anti-war activism in disgust only to return recently—is traveling to Washington, D.C., to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. She’s also announced that she’ll run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if Pelosi doesn’t back impeachment by July 23. Here’s some of Sheehan’s conversation with C-VILLE while she was on the road to Montgomery, Alabama.

Cindy Sheehan gave C-VILLE an exclusive interview in advance of her Charlottesville anti-war protest on July 20.

C-VILLE: What prompted your return to activism?

Cindy Sheehan: I always planned on coming back in a humanitarian group called People for Humanity. But when George Bush commuted “Scooter” Libby’s sentence, that really pulled me back in. While I was away, George’s “surge” had been disastrous. Then Dick Cheney says he’s not in the executive branch and doesn’t have to turn over his papers to the National Archives. That was just another flagrant abuse of executive power. It was just the last straw. I had to get back in earlier. I have been deeply disappointed with the Democratic leadership since they took over office. I had no illusions they were going to make much of a difference. Even before they were elected, Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was off the table.

You started your journey in Texas. Where else have you been?

Yesterday we were in New Orleans. We went to a couple of grassroots organizations to see the progress that’s being made—by these organizations, not by the federal government or FEMA. It’s always uplifting to go there, to see mostly young people from all over the country flocking there to feed the people, clothe them, shelter them. You know, they’re my heroes.

In the lower Ninth Ward most of the rubble is gone. But now there are weeds growing, and they told me if the city comes out and mows your weeds and you don’t pay your bill, then they just confiscate your property. It’s just a big gentrification program.

Did the criticism from the left surprise you?

The criticism isn’t coming from the left. It’s coming from the middle. And what I’m saying is pretty radical. That there’s not much difference between the Democratic and Republican parties when you get right down to it. I’m saying the two-party system is failing us.

I never got any heat from that faction until I started speaking out against the Democrats. It seems like if you’re a Democrat, you become untouchable. I just don’t agree with that. When I threatened to run against Pelosi, her response was, “I don’t have time. I’m focusing on ending the war.” How can she say that when just six weeks ago they gave Bush another hundred billion to wage it?

But the Democrats didn’t actually have the votes to override Bush’s veto, did they?

Then don’t give him the money! They can withhold it. Look what the Senate’s trying to do to Cheney. That’s what the Congress is for. Instead of giving Bush a nonbinding resolution or a bill with timelines he’s going to veto, just don’t give him any money. We’ve seen generals and Republicans say that region is not going to be stable with the U.S. military in there. Our presence there destabilizes it every day further, so that there’s less chance of us coming home.

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Try to pin down Scottsville’s Mayor R. Stephen Phipps on the era the town’s shooting for in its downtown streetscape redesign, and he won’t get specific. “It’s not a certain era, per se,” he says, “just a time when we didn’t have power lines.”

Scottsville is just one of the towns across Virginia that’s returning its downtown to a more quaint, tourist-friendly look. Gordonsville has plans to begin its own $392,285 project in the next 12 to 18 months, one that will bury power lines, replace sidewalks, lay bricks in crosswalks, install retro street lights and generally turn back the clock in an attempt to improve downtown aesthetics and attract tourists.

The power lines will go underground on Valley Road in Scottsville, an effort to make the main drag more attractive to locals and tourists alike. “I’m trying to be positive and think about the end result,” says local business owner Billy Milstead.

“A lot of folks are interested in history, especially with the James River,” says Phipps. “It’s a way to escape, if you will.” Scottsville is at the tail end of its seven-year project on Valley Street, its main business strip. Phipps says Scottsville is retro-ing Valley to boost tourism, to attract new businesses and to make it more appealing and safe for residents. Right now, though, it’s still a muddle of black power lines overhead and gravel underfoot. “It’s been messy,” Phipps says. “We’re ready for it to be finished.”

According to Clark Draper, the town administrator, the Valley Street project costs roughly $1 million, paid for by five Federal Highway Administration grants. And while the project’s messy—Valley Street was just paved two weeks ago—businesses have stayed open, though some have taken a hit.

“Oh yeah, it’s been slower, especially during the day,” says Billy Milstead, the owner of the “World Famous” Dew Drop Inn, a restaurant and bar. “It’s kind of been a long thing. Whatever. I’m trying to be positive and think about the end result.” Milstead says that while people might have been staying away as construction equipment littered the dug-up sidewalks, the project will be worth it. “Our history is what makes the tourists come and see things.”

Not all businesses have been adversely affected. As Lori Roberts begins to close up for the day at Pee Wee’s Pit Barbecue, just across Valley from the Inn, she says business has actually picked up from construction workers coming in on breaks and during lunch. “Since they’ve been doing the work on the street,” she says, “we stay slammed.

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

It started small in Baltimore in 1996, just 16 black-and-white cameras bolted to light poles and buildings, staring straight down on a single spot, unblinking. But after a 2005 trip to London—a city 200,000-cameras strong—then-Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley implemented City Watch. It’s a city-wide network of full-color closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras that pan, zoom, tilt and are actively monitored by police.

Baltimore’s new system is a far cry from its surveillance roots, a past that might look an awful lot like Charlottesville’s future.

Baltimore’s redeveloped inner harbour was the site of the city’s first cameras in 1996. Since then, the program has expanded throughout the city.

Last month Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo proposed a surveillance system of about 30 cameras overlooking the Downtown Mall. Longo, a former colonel in the Baltimore Police Department (BPD), says the system wouldn’t be monitored like Baltimore’s, but used to identify law-breakers retroactively. Right now, he says, his department just doesn’t have the personnel to monitor the cameras in real time. That’s the same reason Larry Lewis, the director of Baltimore’s Downtown Safety Coalition, says BPD wasn’t able to actively monitor its first 16 cameras.

“The budget was tight initially,” Lewis says. Cameras were first installed to fight property crime and car theft, but even though no one was actually watching, crime dropped 10 to 15 percent.

That drop stands in stark contrast to a 2005 study by the British government. The study discovered that out of 14 areas of London where cameras had been installed, only one saw a reduced crime rate. In a 2007 paper, the associate director of Electronic Privacy Information Center, Lillie Coney, cited the study when questioning the role of cameras, arguing that cities can’t justify investing in CCTV technology by saying it helps prevent crime.

But in the wake of 9/11 and the Virginia Tech shootings, support for government-sponsored surveillance is growing, even in left-leaning Charlottesville. “It makes me uneasy,” says City Councilor Kendra Hamilton about the proposed Downtown cameras. “But I’ve heard from people who I expected to be chief civil-liberty defenders, and they’re in favor of them. They don’t see it as any further intrusion.”

With most large U.S. cities using some form of CCTV surveillance, the constitutionality of those systems is virtually moot. Longo is among the majority who believe cameras don’t violate the Fourth Amendment because a person in public does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Mayor David Brown says that while he has some privacy-issue concerns, he’s “still in the realm of wanting to get more facts. Are [cameras] used to address problems, and are they effective?”

Answers depend on the cameras’ purpose. While evidence is shaky at best that cameras actually prevent crime, even Coney doesn’t dispute their worth in post-crime investigations. On July 29, after defusing two car bombs, London police immediately turned to the late-night footage captured by cameras near the theater district.

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

As of June 7, Starr Hill is officially defunct after eight years in business, and the word from owner Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management is that the W. Main Street building’s next commercial reincarnation is still undecided. But neighborhood folks seem to know a little more. Even speaking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he’s away for a tattoo convention, Ben Miller of Ben Around Tattoos, an adjoining business on W. Main Street, says he knows what’s coming next.

For the last eight years, the recently closed Starr Hill restaurant and music hall was a business anchor on W. Main Street.

“It’s going to be a sports bar,” he says. “I’ve heard it from Starr Hill employees. I’ve heard it enough times from enough people to believe that’s what’s happening.” Miller’s not alone. Laura Galgano, one of four owners of the Blue Moon Diner, says she’s also heard that a sports bar’s going in the old Starr Hill space, though she says it doesn’t make much sense with Wild Wing Café across the street, a sentiment Miller shares.

While local business owners speculate on the newest neighborhood addition, Jamie Sisley of Red Light Management says no decisions have been made about what will replace Starr Hill. “I’ve heard 12 different rumors,” he says. “None of them are true. There’s nothing pressuring them to make a decision.”

According to the owner of the building, Jessie T. Hook, the lease is still current and gives Red Light Management the option to renew. As for the sports bar, Hook says there’s no truth to the rumor, but adds she’s not intimately involved with the business side. “They send their rent check,” she says, “and that’s the end of that.”

With Starr Hill shutting its doors, will W. Main continue its revitalization? Michael Osteen of the city Planning Commission says “big things are happening there. [The closing] might be a step back, but not a long-term setback.”

Even without the draw from Starr Hill shows, neighborhood businesses don’t seem worried. “I don’t see where it’s going to have much impact on the neighborhood,” says Miller. “With restaurants like Maya and Horse & Hound opening here, it’s bringing people to the area.”

Horse & Hound co-owner Luther Fedora agrees. “The Starr Hill crowd doesn’t really come here,” he says. “I don’t even know if they realize we’re open yet.”

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

With City Council’s 4-1 vote to move forward with two designs for the 250 Interchange, the ethereal Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP) lurched one more step closer to existence. Yet the city has a lot of work to do if it plans to break ground in the fall of 2008.

Here are the steps standing between the city and its fabled Parkway. Keep in mind that the MCP, while one idea, is actually three separate projects (interchange, roadway in city, roadway in county). The county process should be similar to the city’s.

When will this consultant’s rendering of the Meadowcreek Parkway interchange with Route 250 exist in real life? Maybe in a few years, maybe never.

McIntire Street Extended (a.k.a. MCP in city)

1. Council, VDOT complete temporary construction easements: Once formally approved by Council, easements grant Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) access to the land necessary to begin construction.

2. VDOT completes storm water design: This VDOT design is being reviewed by a committee of city and county staff.

3. VDOT relocates utilities: Once the right-of-way acquisition process is complete, VDOT will work with local utility companies to relocate water, gas and sewer lines.

4. VDOT solicits construction bids: On June 10, 2008, the city hopes to start the public process of soliciting bids from private contractors for the road’s construction.

5. VDOT selects contractor: Once selected, the central VDOT office issues a “Notice to Proceed,” basically a ticket to break ground and the last bureaucratic step in one hell of a 40-plus-year process.

250 Interchange

1. Consultants refine designs: Working with Rummel, Klepper & Kahl (RK&K), the firm designing the interchange, the Steering Committee will refine designs for both interchange options, designing each to 60-percent completion, leaving enough wiggle room for revision.

2. City, VDOT complete national environmental impact study: This is the project’s largest hurdle. Because the interchange is being built with federal funds, the city staff and VDOT must study and disclose the environmental impact on the surrounding land and suggest alternatives.

3. City Council gives final approval: Council won’t have a complete design to approve, but that hasn’t stopped it before. This is the last chance Council will have to view the interchange design before passing a resolution to build the damn thing.

4. VDOT approves final design: After Council has approved the interchange, the engineers at RK&K will finalize its design, then send it to VDOT for its approval.

5. City obtains right of way: City Council must iron out right-of-way issues. This should be a fairly smooth discussion: Most, if not all, of the land for the interchange is park land belonging to the city.

6. See process for MCP: The interchange must go through all five previous steps before any shovel touches dirt.

For more information: Charlottesville Tomorrow has a podcast of the July 2 City Council meeting and the 4-1 vote on the 250 Interchange designs.

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

Seeing the squad car’s blues and reds in your rearview is going to cost a lot more come September. City Council approved a $200 minimum fine for speeding on three roads: Old Lynchburg Road, Avon Street and Altavista Avenue.

At its July 2 meeting, Council temporarily increased minimum fines after a survey showed 15 percent of the cars speeding on the three roads were doing 20 mph over the posted limit, which is considered reckless driving. After a six-month trial period, Council will review the fine-hike’s effectiveness.

City Councilor Kevin Lynch managed to offend the police chief by admonishing him for not catching more speeders.

That effectiveness depends on police enforcement, something Councilor Kevin Lynch questioned at the meeting. After looking at the number of 2006 speeding tickets (2,381) and the 15 percent of reckless-driving speeders on the three roads, he told police Chief Timothy J. Longo: “Catching speeders in Charlottesville ought to be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Council soon discovered what a police chief looks like when he bristles. Longo pointed out he only has three full-time officers doing traffic enforcement, saying, “I think they’re doing a pretty remarkable job,” and that implying anything less was an “insult” to his department. From there Mayor David Brown jumped in as peacemaker, steering the discussion back to the fine. Council cooed over the fairness of raising the penalty while not setting a potentially bankrupting fine (though the state has set such a fine for reckless driving: Those going 20 or over face a $1,050 fee on top of the city’s $200).

But Lynch hadn’t yet tapped his aphorismic reserve. Musing on draconian punishments, he said, “In Saudi Arabia you can be stoned for adultery, but people still do it.” To which Brown shook his head and replied, “Kevin, we’re going to miss you on Council.”

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