Author: will-goldsmith

An employment crisis is brewing eight years down the line: As the baby boomers retire and smaller generations come to working maturity, demand for employees will far outstrip supply. Will the gum-popping youths of today be ready to fill those retiring shoes?
    Such was the picture painted by Darah Bonham, the new director of Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center (CATEC) at an event for local business leaders July 20. With the idea of enlisting support from the business community, Bonham outlined strategies for his institute, which partners with local school systems to provide “vocational” classes on barbering, firefighting and information technology, among other subjects.
    Unfortunately, not many were there to get the message: Only three business people turned out for the event. “We have stiff competition tonight,” said Darah Bonham, referencing events by the Chamber of Commerce and a tour at UVA’s new John Paul Jones Arena. Bonham will try again July 27 with a similar event for the business community.
    City Council has paid lip-service to workforce education, and funding—which comes from school budgets—has increased in recent years, up to $500,000 from the City and $1.5 million from the County for more than 400 students who attend on a part-time basis. But the business component will be crucial. As Bonham says, only with business buy-in can students truly be convinced that CATEC classes will directly lead to employment.
    “In the end, are they prepared to be what an employer wants them to be?” asks Bonham. “That’s the true judge.”

Revitalization or gentrification? Whatever you want to call it, the Charlottesville Planning Commission wasn’t approving it at their July 11 meeting, putting the brakes on two projects that would increase density in the Fifeville neighborhood around Cherry Avenue.
    In an uncharacteristically divided decision, the commission voted 4-2 to deny a rezoning request by Mark Saunders and V.G. Sullivan, developers looking to turn 1000 and 1002 Grove St. into six homes.
    Developers brought a plan that earned general approval from the commission and City staff, a plan designed by the Boston-based urban architecture firm Utile (which is also working on Habitat for Humanity’s Sunrise Court project). But the location proved to be the issue, and neighborhood opposition helped lead the commission to deny the rezoning request. City Planner Brian Haluska recommended rejecting the preliminary plan, based on the City’s comprehensive plan to keep the area a single-family residential neighborhood.
    “It would be nice, if it were elsewhere in the city,” said Cheri Lewis, a commissioner who voted against the proposal. “It’s a tough call.”
    After the vote, both Sullivan and Saunders say they will take the current proposal to City Council, which has the final say. “We feel that we had a deeply flawed review process on the City’s side, and we hope that City Council recognizes the substance behind the split vote and is able to see the bigger picture,” says Saunders in an e-mail. Only one resident appeared at the meeting to speak against the plan.
    On another Fifeville project, the commission deferred a vote on a development at 850 Estes St. that would create 27 residential units on the site of three dilapidated houses near Walker Square Condominiums. Commissioners decided unanimously that they needed more information about canopy cover, current site tree count and the dumpster design for the proposed “mixed-use building.”
    The Estes property is an old ghost for City government. Last fall, developers applied for a special use permit that City Council effectively quashed. But the developers created a similar plan that exploits a zoning loophole: By designating a mere 1.9 percent of the building “office space,” developers may rezone the property at a higher density by-right—which means once the developers address current concerns, the commission is legally obligated to approve the plan though it seems intent right now on putting off that inevitability. Demolition permits are already outstanding on the site.

The Eastern Connector took a baby step toward existence at the most recent Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting. Supervisors approved an Eastern Connector alignment study to explore options for a road that would connect Route 29N to Route 20, with the idea of alleviating heavy traffic on Route 250 and Rio Road.
    Mark Graham, director of community development, told the board he hopes to have a consultant hired within the next month to begin working on the idea. The study is budgeted at $500,000, a cost split between Albemarle and Charlottesville.
    Several Supervisors expressed skepticism that such a connector was necessary, wondering about changes when Martha Jefferson Hospital moves to its Pantops location and questioning such a road’s necessity if more people begin “reverse” commuting from residences in the city to jobs in the county.
    “It’s not clear to me how much traffic will be siphoned off [by an eastern connector],” said Supervisor Kenneth Boyd, who was appointed to represent the Board on an Eastern Connector oversight committee. Boyd will be joined by Graham and Juandiego Wade, County transportation planner. The Board of Supervisors will also search for a citizen to appoint to
the committee.
    City Councilor Kevin Lynch believes the road is necessary. “We’ve been real strong advocates,” he says. “At some point we just need to agree on what the alignment needs to be. A half dozen [alignments] will work, none are ideal, and we just have to chose the one with the least impact.”

The Bundoran Farm project will continue as planned, says new Qroe CEO Robert Baldwin Jr., son of former CEO Robert Baldwin, who died June 14 in an Albemarle plane crash while he and Regional Director David Brown tried to land on the Bundoran property that Qroe has been developing.
    Baldwin acknowledges the heavy blow from the loss of Baldwin Sr. and Brown, but says his father’s vision is already on paper. “It’s an extremely solid organization down there and we look to make zero changes to that,” says Baldwin. “It’s in very good shape. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
    Baldwin has been in real estate and development his entire adult life, including about nine years working directly for his father. Two of those years were spent working almost exclusively for Qroe Farms, planning projects, creating easements and scouting new properties.
    With the exception of Bundoran—which he has never visited—Baldwin has walked the land on all of his father’s other 10 projects. Baldwin is confident of his familiarity with his father’s concept and philosophy of preservation and land-development technique.
    According to spokesperson Anne Hooff, there are no investment changes to the project, financed jointly by Qroe Farm Preservation Development and Celebration Associates.
    That team is developing in a limited, eco-friendly fashion the 2,301 acre property formerly owned by Fred Scott. Charles Adams of Celebration Associates says in a press release, “Our financial partners, talented staff members and team of experts all are looking forward to continuing the vision and honoring the legacy of Bob and David as we continue progress on this project.”
    Baldwin says there are no current plans to hire a new regional director. “We believe that [Project Manager David] Hamilton with Adams can handle the day-to-day operations. I’ll make sure that the Qroe principles are seen through.”

Changes are in the pipeline for Upward Bound, a federal high school program administered locally by UVA that is designed to increase college attendance rates for those most at risk: low-income students and those whose parents didn’t attend college. Local programs stand to lose autonomy in how they recruit high school students to receive Upward Bound benefits, which range from tutoring to college visits, based on a U.S. Department of Education proposal issued July 3.
    “Is this another ploy to eliminate Upward Bound?” asks Leah Puryear, director of the UVA Upward Bound program, which serves 75 students during the academic year and 60 during the summer.
    The proposal comes after the Bush Administration questioned the 40-year old program’s effectiveness and tried to cut Upward Bound from the budget in February. The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rated the program “ineffective.” (Upward Bound was not alone: The OMB rated two-thirds of 74 programs run by the Department of Education “not performing.”)
    The proposed changes mandate who and when local programs recruit. Thirty percent would now have to be at “high academic risk for failure,” which either means they did not pass reading and math state tests in eighth grade or that they have a GPA below 2.5. Further, programs could only recruit eighth or ninth graders.
    The changes were immediately condemned by the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit that helps administer and advocate for Upward Bound. Their concern? That increasing “high risk” students would jeopardize the program’s effectiveness.
    But even those heavily involved with Upward Bound are unsure how great a change this will be. “Many programs are already configured so that they’re targeting more high risk students,” says Susan Beaudoin, deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Education, though she couldn’t specify how many programs already fit the new requirements.
    UVA’s Puryear believes her program is already effective. She cites its 100 percent high school graduation rate and college attendance rates that vary from 95 to 100 percent. “This is another attempt to limit the progress for Upward Bound by removing the control that each and every program has as far as recruiting students goes,” she says.

What is the deal with mega “mixed-use” development Albemarle Place? Certainly, red dirt now exists on the expansive retail and residential site just north of the Hydraulic/29 intersection surrounding Sperry Marine. Several local blogs have reported that construction has begun, even though the final site plan has yet to be approved by the Albemarle County Planning Commission.
    Despite the ground breaking, the project has not officially broken ground. “The project requires a large amount of imported fill material,” says Steve Lucas, senior vice president of Landonomics, the project’s developer. “Some dirt is now available from a nearby site and we have acquired a permit that allows us to receive that dirt only.”
    Which doesn’t mean that work won’t begin before final approval. Developers have applied for an early grading permit for much of the site, according to David Pennock, a planner with Albemarle Department of Community Development.