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Phase Two for the morning-after pill
Local FDA expert says approval is not exactly a sure thing

Plan B is a popular version of the “morning-after pill,” which can substantially reduce the chance of pregnancy if a woman takes it within 72 hours after having unprotected sex. The drug is currently available only by prescription in virtually every state, including Virginia. But in mid-December, an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that Plan B was safe enough for sale over the counter.

The news media jumped all over the announcement, giving the appearance to the casual headline reader or CNN viewer that the drug would be available on the shelf in Kroger in short order. In reality, however, the advisory committee, as its name suggests, was offering only advice. The FDA has the power to reject the recommendation. And with anti-abortion groups lined up in opposition of the morning-after pill’s approval as an over-the-counter drug, the final decision is anybody’s guess.

C-VILLE Weekly sat down with one local resident who can make an unusually educated guess on FDA decisions, Richard Merrill, a UVA law professor and former chief counsel to the FDA. Merrill’s take is that the morning-after pill still faces an uphill battle before it goes over the counter. He also says FDA chief Mark McClellan will likely be shoved in two directions, with his scientific advisors pushing for approval and his bosses in the White House seeking to appease the anti-abortion foes of the drug.—Paul Fain

Paul Fain: What factors influence an FDA decision to switch a drug from prescription only to over the counter?

Richard Merrill: The FDA would expect the manufacturer to be able to supply either clinical trial data or historical information that suggests that the incidence of adverse reactions or side effects associated with the drug were very low. That’s probably the most important thing.

Were you surprised that the FDA panel so overwhelmingly recommended that the morning-after pill be sold over the counter?

Given the controversy that surrounds this product, I guess I’m a little surprised that it was that decisive. But I would’ve been surprised if it had gone the other way, because these people, by and large, ask questions about “Can it be safely and effectively used by reasonably intelligent laypeople?” It seems to me the case for that is pretty strong. If they’d been asked other questions that had to do with the—you might say—the social desirability of having it available, you might’ve expected a wider, and more sharply divided panel.

Will the final decision be a tough one for the FDA?

I think it will be a difficult decision. At least if the press coverage of the advisory committee meetings is to be believed, not only was the vote, as you put it, quite overwhelmingly in favor of approval, but the tenor of the discussions among the committee members and the questions raised and debated and the arguments heard by members of the public would suggest that there is a strong, but not unanimous, consensus in favor of the switch [to over-the-counter status] at least on medical and scientific grounds. On the other hand, I suspect that there are pressures within the Bush administration to go the other way, and that makes it particularly difficult, I think, and sensitive for Commissioner McClellan. I’m sure that Karl Rove sees no advantage to Bush in the approval.

Could the FDA Commissioner approve the drug despite possible White House pressure?

As a legal matter, there’s no question that he has the latitude to do that. And indeed one could argue that a decision of this sort is a decision that is supposed to be based on the scientific merits and it is a decision that, by law, the Commissioner rather than anybody in the White House, is entitled to make … [President Bush] can fire him, but he can’t make the decision for him.

Why have anti-abortion groups, who are fighting the over-the-counter approval of the drug, kept the abortion argument quiet during the debate?

They pretty clearly made a decision, I think, that at least so far as the public debate that’s going to go forward, they’re going to treat it within the parameters that FDA usually operates, and not going to raise the stakes or change the discourse. That doesn’t mean, though, that there will not be pressures that reflect that very view, even if it’s not articulated, that are being brought to bear on McClellan. In some sense it makes it easier, they might think, for McClellan to disagree with the [advisory] committee. McClellan cannot issue a press release that says, “I’m not going to do it because in my view this kills babies.” He’s going to have say: “There’s an unanswered question about the safety of this product, about the extent to which young women are going to avoid getting medical counseling.”

What’s your prediction about how the FDA Commissioner will find?

One could write a decision rejecting [approval] for now, and that’s how it might come out: “There’s no ‘never,’ but there are some questions that need some further exploration, further research.” And I would think that that outcome is about as probable as approval, before the election. And it’s always possible that they’ll sit on it.

A walk in the park
Getting to know the nine acres of McIntire Park that will someday become a road

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, a golfer placed his ball on the fourth tee in McIntire Park, beside a babbling Meadow Creek. With a whoosh of his club and a soft ping, he sent the ball arching toward a red flag fluttering at the hole. The ball landed, plop, and the player hitched a bag of clubs over his shoulder and walked along a strip of land that will, someday, become Charlottesville’s portion of the Meadowcreek Parkway.

When the road is finally built, it will mark the conclusion of a decades-long battle between Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Until then, however, the S-shaped strip of land—curving from Melbourne Road near Charlottesville High School, through the park lowlands to the Vietnam Memorial at the intersection of Route 250 and McIntire Road—symbolizes how troublesome it can be for two separate jurisdictions to solve transportation problems.

To hike the land south from Melbourne Road, you first have to get around a 10′ fence that’s adorned with a sign prohibiting any dumping, even leaves, “due to environmental concerns.” An asphalt driveway overgrown with crabgrass leads down to the thorn bushes along the banks of Meadow Creek, the City’s most polluted waterway. The occasionally pretty brook absorbs most of Charlottesville’s run-off, and here in this no-man’s land between Melbourne and McIntire Park some sections of the creek glisten with a pink, oily film.

Across the creek and beyond the trees, the Parkway will swoop through the lowlands of McIntire Park. In 1926 Paul Goodloe McIntire, who had returned to his native Charlottesville after making a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange, donated to the City the land that would become McIntire Park.

Once this becomes a stretch of the Parkway, southbound drivers will see a steep hill to their right, with oak branches spreading against the sky.

For now, though, this strip of parkland belongs to the golfers and, on snowy days, a more daring breed of sled rider. While the Parkway project will pave over about nine acres of land, landscape architect Will Rieley, who is designing the City’s portion of the Parkway, estimates that about 19 acres of McIntire “will be altered significantly” when the road is finished.

Because the road will change land originally designated for everyone’s enjoyment, Virginia’s constitution protects the intent of donors by requiring local governing bodies to secure a four-fifths majority before paving public parkland.

The few acres of grass, trees and stray beer cans are the center of a conflict so intense it has caused Charlottesville’s City Council to turn on itself. One group of Councilors (Meredith Richards, Blake Caravati and Rob Schilling) hopes to accelerate construction of the Parkway by granting the land outright to the Virginia Department of Transportation against the opposition of Councilors Kevin Lynch and Maurice Cox. Both sides have rattled the saber of litigation.

Backdoor maneuvers by both the pro- and anti-Parkway factions have produced unusually intense feelings of mistrust inside Council. The obvious rancor on display at recent meetings reportedly holds off the dais, too, according to sources in the City. The two sides apparently aren’t speaking, a potential concern for those who have matters other than transportation to bring before the Council.

Given the will of the State and County to see the Parkway built, it seems like this S-shaped strip of land, a mere dot in the City’s 10 square miles, will be paved eventually. The question, then, is whether it will happen with the blessing of a cooperative Council working in the City’s best interests—all of them.—John Borgmeyer

Home movies
After a surprising success, an indie film producer wants to set up shop here

Barry Sisson was nervous when he arrived at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, last January. The first screening of every movie had already been sold out, except for one, the one he cared about: an under-the-radar character study called The Station Agent that had only been edited the night before and flown to Sundance that morning. Sisson describes himself as “an active investor” in the film, a role the film’s producer, an old friend, drew him into. Not only that, but Sisson was on set during its three-week filming process, immersing himself in the world of indie filmmaking. At Sundance he stood among the empty seats and wondered what he had gotten himself into.

In true movie-magic fashion, the story has a happy ending. The partial crowd loved the film, and word of mouth spread so rapidly that before the festival was over, not only did The Station Agent win the Audience Award for dramatic film, but Miramax studio head Harvey Weinstein flew out for a private screening. By 6:30 the next morning, Miramax and the film’s producers had a deal. The ensuing accolades and wide distribution launched this low-budget indie into the national spotlight (it’s been running for several weeks at Vinegar Hill, an indication of its draw nationwide), and Sisson reassured himself that he had made the right decision after all.

The Station Agent was Sisson’s first movie investment, but he’s determined it won’t be his last. With this major success behind him, he’s diving into the movie business even deeper with the creation of a production company here in Charlottesville, where Sisson lives with his daughter, Bari, and wife, Terre, owner of a local tour company.

After 25 years as a businessman (electronic security), Sisson speaks of films in terms of quarters and business plans, asserting that good independent films can be profitable, too. He plans to produce films for less than $1 million apiece. By movie industry standards that’s a drop in the bucket—less than some films spend on wardrobe and makeup.

Currently he is shopping for scripts while awaiting the release of Charlie’s Party, the second film he invested in, which was test-screened in Charlottesville in December. Once the groundwork is laid for the new production company—sometime this spring, he says—his assistant Marc Lieberman (a UVA grad who has spent the past three years working on films in Los Angeles) will set up an office in New York to establish ties between the indie film community and Charlottesville.

But why Charlottesville? “A whole lot of the process can be done anywhere, so why not base it close to my home?” Sisson answers. For that matter, why not just do the filming here? Charlottesville is well known as an arts-friendly community, and although the City has no official film office to help moviemakers scout locations and such, there are also no permits or fees to deal with. Not to mention the wealth of potential local collaborators who would be an added bonus.

“There’s a lot of talent in this area,” Sisson concurs. “There’s no reason why a film can’t be shot around here.”

But first Sisson needs to find his next script, raise capital from investors and find a name for his company—Cavalier Productions is the current frontrunner. Although Charlottesville has been home to a spurt of interest in guerilla and documentary filmmaking recently, perhaps an indie picture company is poised to steal the scene.—Chris Smith

News

Come sale away

Q: Ace, now that the holiday shopping season is over, everywhere I look there are huge sales going on at all the big stores. What gives? I know this happens in the retail industry every year at this time, but I don’t know why. Why?—Bill Sayles

A: As you noted, Bill, with the last week of December/first week of January come a buffet of deep discounts from retailers nationwide. That’s good for those who got cash for Christmas or gift cards for Hanukkah. But bad for everybody else who paid full price for holiday gifts a few weeks earlier only to see them now sitting on the shelves at, oh, 50 percent off.

What’s with the timing? Ace always supposed it was simply a matter of stores trying to move their overstock from the holidays. That’s partially true. But he put in some calls to a few local shops with big sales going on the past couple weeks and found some other, surprising reasons.

Men’s clothing store Beecroft & Bull (where Ace has spent many an afternoon pawing at the beautiful silk suits behind the window glass of the Barracks Road shop) started its annual post-holiday sale January 2. Manager Bill Jordan told Ace that the timing is, like their clothes, based on tradition.

“We only have two sales a year—one after Christmas, one around July 4,” he says, which is the way things used to be done before the spread of big-box and chain stores that seemingly have sales every other week. As for the January/July positioning, “They’re seasonal breaks,” he says. “In January we’re beginning to get spring and summer merchandise, while in and around July we get fall and winter merchandise.”

Corner-based footwear store Ragged Mountain Running Shop has actually been holding its sale through the month of December, but gives it an added post-holiday push to take advantage of a more shopper-friendly, student-free atmosphere.

Owner Mark Lorenzoni says Ragged Mountain is an exception to the retail world—their sales slow during the holiday season since there’s little outdoor activity then—but guesses that most retailers do the discount thing now to dump leftover inventory, on which they would otherwise have to pay taxes.

“They know people’s shopping habits slow down [after Christmas] and they have to move it” before their fiscal year is up, he says. Sometimes that’s in June, other times it’s the end of the calendar year. Lorenzoni says he sees this with the shoe companies he works with. “They’re trying to get rid of their shoes now. Maybe that’s what it is.”

Kelly Gentry, who co-owns Second Street antique store 2 French Hens with partner Miles Andrews, says, “Retailers have to make a living the best way they know how.” Her store held a sale immediately before Christmas, with larger savings after the holidays.

“A lot of people don’t understand the dynamics of retailers having to buy merchandise,” Gentry says. “A lot of people just truly think we have a little Wal-Martism about us, where we’re just going to capitalize.” In other words, retailers are not simply trying to wring every last dollar out of desperate holiday shoppers before offering seasonal discounts, and appearances to the contrary can be deceiving. But take it from inveterate shopper Ace. One thing that’s always true is this: A good sale is hard to pass up.

News

Cheap Shots ’03

The ’Fraidy cat Award for Music Appreciation
–UVA President John Casteen For his apology regarding the Cavalier Pep Band

Despite holding three degrees in English, UVA President John Casteen must have never learned the definition of the word “joke.” Maybe he’s never seen the “Award-Winning Virginia Fighting Cavalier Indoor/Outdoor Precision Marching Pep Band,” either.

But humor has always been at the heart of UVA’s 29-year-old, student-run pep band, from their taste in funky vests to their penchant for mocking opposing teams with silly skits. Yet when the pep band teased West Virginia University during halftime of the December 28, 2002 Continental Tire Bowl, Casteen and UVA officials claimed they were shocked and mortified by the gag. On January 3, the administration fell over itself apologizing not just to WVU (which lost the game 48-22), but to the entire state of West Virginia.

The offending skit featured a female member of the pep band, wearing pigtails and overalls, trying to woo a UVA man in a take-off of the TV show “The Bachelor.” Fans showered the band with boos, and West Virginia Governor Bob Wise penned a cry-baby letter to Casteen.

Some high UVA officials, such as Rector John P. Ackerly III, defended the pep band, which is one of the last student-run “scramble” bands (as opposed to marching bands) among major colleges. It was to no avail. In April, UVA benefactors Carl and Hunter Smith gave UVA a $1.5 million gift to pay for an official marching band, complete with uniforms and cheesy renditions of “Louie, Louie.”

That gesture was the beginning of the end, as Athletic Director Craig Littlepage followed up with an announcement that the pep band would not perform at athletic events in 2004. To top it off, he locked the pep band out of their instrument room for a week. Many ‘Hoos had found the pep band a hilarious––if occasionally tasteless––example of student autonomy that made UVA unique among ACC schools. Too bad Casteen and UVA’s big donors missed the punch line.

The Tipper Gore Free Speech Award
-Albemarle County School Board For banning a middle-schooler from wearing an NRA t-shirt

Thirteen-year-old Alan Newsome likes to shoot paper targets with a rifle. Not a particularly violent sport––not compared to, say, tackle football. But when Newsome walked into Jack Jouett Middle School wearing a National Rifle Association t-shirt, administrators claimed it was too much for other teenagers to bear.

The shirt in question, emblazoned with the letters NRA, depicts people holding hunting rifles. When Jack Jouett’s vice-principal saw the shirt, she claims, it reminded her of Columbine. To protect other students, she ordered Newsome to turn the shirt inside out. Newsome complained to the NRA, and when the group contacted the school, Jouett administrators added a provision to the school dress code banning any clothing that depicts weapons of any kind. That made not only an NRA shirt off limits, but even clothing depicting the Virginia State seal (it includes a spear) or UVA’s sabres.

In September, the NRA and the Newsome family sued the County school system for $150,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. In U.S. District Court, Judge Norman K. Moon found the new Jouett dress code acceptable, but in December a three-judge panel from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Norman and said Jouett’s dress code was too broad. The School Board isn’t backing down, and has asked the entire 4th Circuit to review the case. The NRA has vowed to take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

The “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” Award
-Kay Slaughter For playing the gender card

Republican State Senators had any number of reasons for blocking Governor Mark Warner’s appointment of Kay Slaughter to a seat on the State Water Control Board, and her gender probably wasn’t one of them.

Warner nominated Slaughter, a former Charlottesville mayor, to the State Water Control Board in July 2002. As an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, Slaughter had represented Indian groups and landowners suing that very State board to stop construction of a reservoir on the Mattaponi River in King William County. Although Slaughter withdrew from the case a month before she was to join the board, the SELC remains the plaintiffs’ chief council.

In January, the GOP Senators blocked Slaughter’s appointment, citing an obvious conflict of interest. Democrats suggested Republicans also opposed Slaughter because of her record as an environmental activist.

Speaking to The Daily Progress, however, Slaughter claimed she had “an intuitive feeling” that Republicans were “afraid” of strong, powerful women. As a lawyer, Slaughter probably knows that feelings are not evidence; as a strong, powerful woman, she should know that crying wolf dilutes authentic claims of gender discrimination.

In February, the Senate reversed itself and voted 23-13 to confirm Slaughter’s appointment, after environmental lobbyists and Governor Warner’s political team convinced the General Assembly that she had no conflict of interest. Slaughter promised to remove herself from the reservoir issue, but she resigned her seat in early October after Republicans questioned her meeting with Environmental Protection Agency officials regarding the project.

The Susan Smith Award for Racial Harmony
-Steve Shiflett and Ed Robb For creative use of “a black guy” in a criminal investigation

When Susan Smith drowned her children in 1994, she exploited racial prejudice by blaming the crime on a fictional black man before finally admitting her guilt. This year, Albemarle County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Shiflett tried the same trick, and Sheriff Ed Robb bought the story hook, line and sinker.

In March, Shiflett showed up at the Sheriff’s office with bullet holes in his cruiser, claiming to have been shot by an African-American man in a big coat. Before an investigation could be launched, Albemarle Sheriff Ed Robb fanned the racial flames by calling the incident a “hate crime.”

Oops. In July, County police claimed Shiflett lied about the shooting, prompting Robb to apologize to the African-American community. Despite the conclusions of County officers, Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos declined to prosecute Shiflett for filing a false police report.

The Kenneth Lay Award for Business Ethics
-Ivy Industries CEO John Reid For a $2.4 million check-kiting scheme

We’re trendy folk here in Charlottesville, fearlessly embracing fads like specialty cocktails, metrosexuality and Friendster. In 2003, shady business executives were as fashionable as chocolate martinis, so naturally Charlottesville jumped on the corporate-scandal bandwagon.

In March, former Ivy Industries CEO John Reid admitted to fraudulently manipulating more than $2.4 million at Albemarle First Bank through a check-kiting scheme that had begun two years earlier. Check kiting is a neat little trick––Reid would write checks from an account at Albemarle First that exceeded the available balance. Reid would then deposit the checks into another account at Sun Trust Bank, from which he’d write another check to cover the overdraft at Albemarle First.

To date, Reid has yet to face criminal charges in the scandal that bankrupted his company. Ivy Industries had manufactured wood moldings for picture frames and employed about 150 people in Charlottesville and Beverly, West Virginia. All those people lost their jobs, and the company’s collapse opened a 65,000 square-foot vacancy in the factory’s former site on Monticello Road. Now owned by developer and music mogul Coran Capshaw, that building’s future occupant is rumored to be fitness leader ACAC.

The “Hey, Where are the Naked Chicks?” Award
-OUR proliferating tapas bars For a homophonic confusion of food and sex

Dude, we thought you said we were going to a new topless bar!

The Crack Reporting Award
-Channel 29 For the Jesse Scheckler fiasco

Those magic words, “I’m sorry,” can solve so many problems—they might have saved NBC television affiliate WVIR a lawsuit and a load of money. But it’s hard to admit you’re wrong.

Channel 29 had plenty of chances. After Jesse Sheckler was indicted, along with four other men, on a charge of conspiracy to possess cocaine, WVIR rookie reporter Melinda Semadeni erroneously reported that 50 grams of crack and 500 grams of powder cocaine had been found in the Greene County mechanic’s garage. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Semadeni had been new to courtroom reporting, and the charge against Sheckler, who loaned money to one of his co-defendants, referred to legal “threshold weights” of 50 grams of crack and 500 grams of powder cocaine. Perhaps that’s where she got confused.

After the broadcast, at least two lawyers called the station on Sheckler’s behalf, demanding a retraction. But Benjamin Dick, a Charlottesville attorney and one of the two who called the TV station, claims station general manager Harold Wright gave him the blow-off. In court, Dick testified that Wright told him: “We have the greatest lawyer in the world and all the money in the world to fight this, so if your client wants to sue, tell him to bring it on.”

Sheckler brought it. Having been acquitted, he sued in March, and after testifying that his ordeal with Channel 29 caused him “pain in his heart,” a Charlottesville jury awarded him $10 million, the largest libel award in Virginia history. In November, Judge Edward Hogshire reduced the sum to $1 million, which Sheckler accepted. In subsequent media reports, however, Sheckler claimed that if WVIR had admitted its mistake and apologized, he never would have sued.

The McHistory Award
-Downtown law community For rejecting designs for a modern courthouse

How many Charlottesvillians does it take to change a light bulb? Three—one to screw in the new bulb and two to fondly reminisce about the old one.

The history surrounding Charlottesville and Albemarle is important to our local identity, but does that mean we have to remain stuck in the past? Apparently some like to think so, judging by the design for the new Charlottesville-Albemarle juvenile courthouse.

In 2000, the City and County appointed a design committee to plan for a new juvenile and domestic relations courthouse that would relieve the dangerous overcrowding in the current High Street building. Preservationists also demanded that the new courthouse retain the century-old jail that remains on site.

Two years later, the committee came back with a design that kept the old jail and satisfied space demands, but to architect Mayor Maurice Cox’s eyes, it was downright ugly. He proposed hiring one of his favorite firms, Philadelphia’s Wallace, Roberts and Todd, to give the new courthouse a more modern façade.

But then-Councilor David Toscano, echoing the sentiments of the influential community of Downtown lawyers (of which he is a member), advocated that a “traditional” design be put forward, too. In this case, “traditional” means something that looks more like the bricks-and-columns Albemarle County courthouse, a genuine relic of the 18th century. Each got his way, and this year Council put WRT’s “modern” design alongside the “traditional” design. Cox argued that a modern design reflects a city looking to the future, rather than the past. The traditionalists argued that a modern design just didn’t “fit in.”

The City put both designs on its website and asked people to vote for their favorite. Unfortunately for buffs of authentic history, the traditional design handily won out. On December 16 the Board of Architectural Review approved the faux-historical design. Given that the BAR’s mission is to preserve real history and separate it from the pretenders, one has to assume outside pressures—or fatigue—influenced the decision.

It has to be said that WRT’s strange mix-and-match contemporary design might have silenced some modernists or artificially swelled the ranks of tradition-lovers. But a new building that looks like an old building will cheapen the real value of its authentic twin. Shouldn’t the courthouse that heard the arguments of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe have a look all its own to match its unique place in local and national history?

The Better Living Through Science Award
-Herman Stanley For setting up a crystal meth lab in the Marriott Hotel on W. Main Street

The Marriott Hotel on W. Main Street is best known as the former target of Living Wage protests, not a place to get geeked on bathtub coke.

Use of methamphetamine, an addictive synthetic drug that produces feelings of energy and euphoria, spread throughout middle America in the late ’90s. More recently, crystal meth has shown up in Southwest Virginia, a trend the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration blames on an influx of Mexican immigrants. Meth is usually manufactured in rural areas, but on July 23 it showed up in one of the City’s swankiest hotels.

On that day, police evacuated about 40 guests from the hotel and busted a clandestine methamphetamine lab in one of the guest rooms. Officers learned of the lab from a Fluvanna County Sheriff’s deputy who, while investigating a suspicious car parked on Route 616, discovered a meth lab in the woods. The car’s driver, 36-year-old Herman Bradford Stanley of Alabama, gave a tip that led officers to the Marriott. He was arrested and charged with manufacturing a controlled substance and felony endangerment of life and property.

That’s good news for the cops, but bad news, we fear, for hotel employees who must not have detected the meth lab in their midst even though the manufacturing of the drug can lead to strong odors similar to cat urine.

The Better Shopping Award
-Supporters of Target For missing the point

When the Albemarle Board of Supervisors held a public hearing on whether to approve the 165-acre Hollymead Town Center on Route 29N, the question at hand should have been “How will the County manage its explosive growth?” But the many Target supporters there seemed to miss the point completely.

Speaker after speaker—many of them Realtors and small business owners—trotted before the Supes to plead and moan that there just are not enough places to shop in Albemarle. How long, they asked the sympathetic Board, would they have to drive to Short Pump or Tyson’s Corner? How long must they suffer without a Target of their own?

Sprawl-buster Stratton Salidis says he heard rumors that key Hollymead developer Wendell Wood hired a public relations firm to drum up support for Target and, by extension, the Hollymead project. Salidis notes a surge in television commercials around the time of the July hearing and that many of the project supporters showed up at the public hearing wearing red-and-white target buttons.

“Both the Observer and The Hook had Target logos on their covers,” Salidis points out, referring to a couple of small community newspapers. “In part, the Hollymead Town Center got passed because a lot of people thought it was just about a Target store.”

Wood denied hiring a P.R. firm. The support for Target and the Hollymead project were, he claims, strictly grassroots. “We got phone calls from people saying they supported it, asking what they could do,” says Wood. “Target gave us those buttons, and we gave them out so people could show their support.”

Leaving aside the absurd notion that we “need” a Target, or any other chain retail store, the real question before the County and its residents is whether we will continue to pave over precious (and rapidly vanishing) countryside every time a new chain comes knocking. When Target finally opens, the first thing we’re going to do is pick up a discounted copy of that Joni Mitchell record. You know, the one with that song about paving over paradise to put up a parking lot.

The Eight Days a Week Award
-The all-Beatles radio station For staying on the air all of three days

Spinning through the radio dial in early September, we stumbled across a station playing Beatles hits 24 hours a day. For one Indian summer weekend, we cruised around Charlottesville tripping on the Fab Four’s blissful pop psychadelia. Sadly, it was not to be strawberry fields forever. Turns out all the love was just a publicity stunt.

When media behemoth Clear Channel decided to switch the format of Charlottesville’s 102.3 WFFX to “classic hits” from “classic rock,” local manager Regan Keith decided to bridge the change by spinning tunes from what is arguably the most beloved rock band ever. The all-Beatles format began on Friday, September 5.

“It was always going to be a transition. We were surprised that people thought we were going to stick with it,” says Keith. By Tuesday, September 9, Keith had successfully fixed the hole. He says he was surprised to hear people lamenting the Beatles’ disappearance.

“Playing all Beatles is like playing Christmas music,” says Keith. “It’s nice for a while, but pretty soon you’re sitting at your desk blowing spit bubbles, waiting for it to end.”

The Black Lung Award
-UVA For burning coal in a residential area

As a liberal academic institution, UVA preaches the latest theories in the arts and sciences. As a multi-billion-dollar corporation, however, UVA can be surprisingly slow to embrace change.

In spring 2002, when UVA applied for a permit to burn more fuel and increase the emissions from its coal plant near the Corner, people were shocked to discover the plant already emits more than a ton of sulphur dioxide each day. UVA attempted to dodge Federal emission regulations by appealing to its nonprofit status.

Then, in January 2003, the boilers fired up and barfed black soot all over the Venable neighborhood. Neighbors awoke to find dark dust all over their cars. Councilor Kevin Lynch spearheaded an effort to convince UVA to stop burning coal and spewing pollution in the residential area. UVA claimed it has a plan to make the plant cleaner, but there’s a catch––the improvements would cost $50 million that UVA doesn’t have.

Hmmm. A public entity currently in the throes of a billion-dollar construction spree can’t find $50 mil? Maybe that’s because while deep-pocket donors don’t mind writing checks to get their name on a new sports arena or theater, they just don’t see the appeal in underwriting the “Carl Smith Smokestack.”

The Pet Rock Award for Stupid Trendiness
-Middle-class 20somethings For aping blue-collar style

It used to be that you had to join a union or hang at the VFW to see guys in mesh John Deere caps and gas station shirts drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon from cans. Now, you just have to go to the more upscale watering holes or the UVA campus.

Maybe it has something to do with trust-fund guilt or nostalgia for this nation’s lost manufacturing era, but the trend of white-bread suburban hipsters dressing up as blue-collar heroes has swept the nation. The fashion emerged from the irony-drenched indie-rock culture of the early ’90s, and has since become a bona fide fad––Pabst Blue Ribbon posted a 12 percent sales gain last year, the beer’s best showing since 1978. Local bars have caught the fire, with hip joints like Mas and The Shebeen peddling PBR on tap.

Pabst drinkers have one excuse––it’s usually the cheapest beer in the bar. But can that rationale really apply to people with champagne budgets? Retail companies like Von Dutch now charge a whopping $42 for trucker hats (truck not included) or $119 for something called a “machine shirt.” We bet wherever you might find people in Charlottesville drinking loads of cheap beer, listening to Johnny Cash and complaining about the “boss man” with complete sincerity, they didn’t pay that kind of money for their clothes.

In valuing the image of authenticity over actual honesty, Generation X embedded irony so deeply into youth culture that Generation Y can’t even tell the difference between real and fake anymore. It’s all cool or uncool, ironic or sincere, or, like, whatever, you know? We’ll leave it to the semiotics professors to puzzle the whole thing out and focus instead on one burning question: You don’t really like the taste of PBR, do you?

The John Ashcroft Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement
-Albemarle County For fighting the War on Drugs, er, Terror at home

Since September 11, it’s been hard to discern the priorities of local law enforcement.

Both the Albemarle and Charlottesville Police departments have lapped up big Federal Homeland Defense grants to purchase gas masks and high-powered rifles, even as both groups remain understaffed. While both departments pay lip service to the value of community-based policing—where officers try to make friends with neighborhood residents—the images of police officers arming themselves with military equipment sends a different message.

The war mentality among local police extends from the not entirely proven belief that the drug trade is intimately tied to international terrorism. While it is known that the Taliban made money off Afghanistan’s poppy crops, there’s no evidence that teenagers selling bags of reefer are part of a vast Al Qaeda sleeper cell.

But Albemarle Police Captain Crystal Limerick insists that the War on Drugs is part of the War on Terror, because, she says, “Someone could rob a house to buy drugs, and the money could go to terrorists.” That’s a lot of speculation for an official trained to deal with facts and evidence. It’s this kind of reasoning, though, that keeps the Federal money flowing.

In the City Hall offices of the multi-jurisdictional Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force, the fascination with warfare reaches fetish levels. Judging by all the 9-11 iconography in that office, it’s hard to tell whether JADE is tracking crack dealers or Osama bin Laden.

Drug raids are necessary and dangerous, but around here they’re relatively rare. Most local police work requires officers to imagine themselves as social workers, not soldiers. In recent years there have been numerous examples of Albemarle officers applying excessive force under questionable circumstances. In some casses, you have to wonder why these guys were hired in the first place. Most recently, Officer James Michael Fields shot unarmed French citizen Raimond Riviere twice on August 16, landing him in the hospital for weeks with an injury to his liver. After an investigation by Goochland Commonwealth’s Attorney Edward Carpenter, Fields was cleared of any wrongdoing and Riviere pleaded guilty to drunk driving, obstructing justice, eluding police, escape and assault. In October, Albemarle Police Chief John Miller fired Officer Carl Graves after Graves was charged with assault and battery on his girlfriend. Previously Graves had been charged in 2000 with threatening family members with a gun.

But perhaps no agency reaches further to connect itself to the War on Terror than the Albemarle Sheriff’s Department. Recently reelected Sheriff Ed Robb declares that fighting terrorism is his office’s No. 1 priority, even though his deputies are only authorized to guard prisoners and deliver court papers. Robb’s mission to ferret out evildoers should be a little worrisome for local Arab-Americans, given Robb’s history of jumping to racially charged conclusions, as in the Steve Shiflett case.

The “Whose Side Are You On, Anyway?” Award
-Meredith Richards, Blake Caravati and Rob Schilling For trying to give away nine acres of McIntire Park

Three Councilors, eager to get pavement flowing on the long-delayed Meadowcreek Parkway, tried by year’s end to force the highly controversial road through a legal loophole.

State law protects public space by requiring a supermajority—in this case, four-fifths of City Council—before a locality can sell parkland. Since the three pro-Parkway Councilors don’t have that supermajority, they’re maneuvering to grant the land outright to the Virginia Department of Transportation—State constitution and potential lawsuits be damned.

Even though the triumvirate could reach a supermajority if they would work harder to appease ready-to-compromise Councilor Kevin Lynch, they seemed at recent Council meetings hell-bent on squandering the political capital that the parkland represents in City-County relations.

Perhaps the fuel in their drive lies with the Chamber of Commerce, whose members—powerful and well-off City and County businesspeople—support the road. Indeed, the long reach of the Chamber has been felt before in MCP matters. Caravati, a building contractor who campaigned against the road in 2000, was probably trying to play ball with the Chamber when he switched sides in the Parkway debate. And Republican Schilling is clearly aligned with that group.

But Richards is the one side of the triangle that’s harder to solve. The Democratic Vice-Mayor has sought the advice of Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore on the parkland question, and pledged to abide by his opinion—a possible prelude to the run for statewide office she’s expected to announce in the coming year. To win outside the City, Richards needs to make friends with conservative County voters, so is it far-fetched to think her actions on the MCP might be a signal to Albemarle Republicans?

The MCP has been a political litmus test for the past 30 years, so it’s no shock that it now reappears on the agenda. The surprise, rather, is in the exposure the Parkway question gives hidden agendas—possibly at taxpayers’ expense.

The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Deconstructing development

In regards to your recently published article “Think outside the big box” [December 9], I first should commend your effort to get proactive with the oft-cement-shoed and mortar-minded developing community at large. However, I found myself considering the implications of this rampant elephant stomp that could be called commercial real estate, and unfortunately (apologetically) regressed into a soupy bowl of communal frothing. It sounded a little something like this: Holy Lincoln Logs, Lego Man—this situation has gotten out of Jenga.

Sure, it’s painful to see developers plaster-casting the free-loving world every time they hear a nickel drop, but what’s worse is that our critique of this situation fails to identify the real mechanisms at work here. In addition, all along the misguided way we’re wagging fingers in our neighbors’ faces, pretending that their Wal-Mart visit has somehow sent them falling face first down a set of karmic stairs.

Look, civilizations are complicated things, and what’s more, they flourish in near direct accordance to the successes of their governing systems. We are a nation that is founded on a free market system, and—yoo-hoo, hello!—that boils down to a bawdy little word known as “competition.” People are competing because that’s what a democratic, free market capitalist society engenders in its game plan. People work in the hopes of making enough money to gain the right to set up a business designed to take someone else’s money, land and assets.

Sure, it would be great if everyone had the awareness, moral depth and ethical span to incorporate a sincere way of managing the world’s natural resources, but the truth is, people are just trying to take advantage of what they’ve been told is theirs for the taking.

I’m not suggesting that there is no proper recourse for this ignorance, for we should ballyhoo any and all ignorance and attempt to change it. But why isn’t anyone calling this thing by its real name, capitalist greed? Or, I guess it could also be called opportunistic, mindless evolution. Whatever the case, big boxes are just one of the chest-thumping manifestations of a free market society bellowing its territorial grunt.

That’s the problem, Joe. So quit pretending your freely traded coffee bean has three extra cc’s of caffeine and that Starbucks is Juan Val-Mephistopheles, because the truth is the common consumer is just that: commonly paid, commonly led and commonly fed.

Jerry Gaura

Crozet

Building foundation

I believe the buildings on the Downtown Mall you identify as “four corners,” or the Wachovia buildings, were once the home of The Metropolitan Restaurant (Johnny and Julie Wilhelm, proprietors), Charlottesville’s largest. Probably no one who ate lunch at The Metropolitan (no relation to any current eateries of that name) ever did so again. At night, however, during the late 1940s and early ’50s, the place was crammed full—and I mean really full—of beer and wine drinkers (no hard liquor allowed then!) listening to the music of Fred Tilman on bass, George Pollock on guitar and yours truly on accordion. Unfortunately for local history buffs, doubtless few, if any, remain who recall the place—Johnny and Julie left for Upper Marlboro, Maryland, where they could have slot machines and serve mixed drinks, and I graduated from UVA and left the area until I retired back here to Ivy.

Jeffrey J. W. Baker

Ivy

Put the primary first

Even if I were to accept Ted Rall’s premise that it is proper for Democrats to emulate Republicans by short-circuiting the democratic process and rallying behind a chosen leader selected by fiat and not via state caucuses and primaries [“Cancel the primaries,” Afterthought, December 16], what of his declaration that “Patriots must support the candidate with the best chance of defeating [Bush], whoever he is”? A lot of us think that candidate is Wesley Clark rather than Howard Dean, and have polling data as well as intuition to back us up.

If nothing else, the ripples from the capture of Saddam remind us that one day’s “foregone conclusion” is tomorrow’s shattered truism. In my judgment, Clark is the major Democratic candidate most immune to the vagaries of the headlines. And I also think he’s more likely than Dean to be an effective president if elected. So my own patriotic duty is clearly to support him through the Virginia primary.

If Rall’s Democratic lockstep had been the rule when the 2004 campaigns began, John Kerry would have been anointed as our candidate a year ago after Al Gore dropped out for good. There would have been no grassroots explosion, no evolution of blog politics, no Dean for America, no Draft Clark movement, no Sharptons and Kuciniches as moral gadflies. Is that the rewriting of history Rall would prefer?

I’ll fight hard for Howard Dean if he’s the eventual nominee. But on February 10 I’ll be voting for my own candidate, thank you.

David Sewell

dsewell@cville4clark.com

Uncategorized

Fishbowl

Minority report
Local African-American business owners face the challenges of an open market

A white Charlottesville resident is about two-and-a-half times more likely to be a business owner than is a black resident, according to U.S. Census figures. But though this statistic is hardly something to cheer about, it’s less skewed than the national white-to-black business owner ratio, as well as the numbers for other similar-sized cities [see chart].

In another telling statistic, while African-Americans account for more than 22 percent of Charlottesville’s population, the 591 firms they own account for only 11 percent of the town’s total businesses. But this share is higher than the percentage of African-American-owned businesses in Virginia or in the nation, which stand at 7 and 4 percent, respectively.

William Harvey, the City of Charlottesville’s primary liaison to the minority business community since 1987, attributes much of the progress of local black business owners to stable economic footing gained through catering to a wide range of City residents. Harvey contrasts this nimble business standard with the days when black-owned businesses and residents were clustered in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood. (Much of Vinegar Hill was razed in the name of urban renewal in the 1960s.)

“This was a segregated type of economy where blacks serviced blacks,” Harvey says of the Vinegar Hill era. Harvey says Charlottesville is now an “open market” where most successful businesses must “address the needs of everybody.”

But though many black businesses have thrived by reaching out to UVA students, tourists and white residents, some business owners cite the difficulties that result from not being able to rely on a closely-knit neighborhood such as Vinegar Hill.

“That’s the biggest challenge. You have to serve everybody,” says Dr. Benegal S. Paige, an African-American dentist who has owned his own practice in Charlottesville for 24 years. “Basically people in [the Vinegar Hill] era catered to their own group.”

Both Paige and William Lewis, the owner of Duplex Copy Center and a former chair of the Central Virginia Minority Business Association, agree that Charlottesville’s black business community lacks the strength of those in larger cities such as Richmond or Atlanta. They say black businesses in those cities can rely on banks that are geared toward making loans to minority-owned businesses, and can also rely on business from other African-Americans. For example, Lewis says if Charlottesville had major black-owned law firms, as does Atlanta, “I guarantee you I’d get more business.”

Charlottesville Mayor Maurice Cox, himself an African-American business owner, says the community is not large enough to support a minority-driven market. “They really have to have a broad-based appeal,” Cox says of local black-owned businesses. He says minority business owners have risen to this challenge, and adds that strong marketing efforts will be an important facet of keeping the community moving in the right direction.

As evidence of the growing diversity and health of Charlottesville’s minority business community, Harvey displays a map that pinpoints minority-owned businesses in 1986 and in 2003. The dots for 2003 are far more broadly dispersed around the City than those from 1986, which are clumped to the west of the Downtown Mall.

Paige echoes Harvey’s optimism, and says he’s seen progress in the minority business community in recent years. He says the City has worked hard to help minorities secure loans and develop business plans. And of Vinegar Hill’s displacement, Paige says: “I think that old wound has pretty much healed.”

But despite the efforts of Harvey and other local black leaders, it’s clear that black business owners still face an uphill battle in Charlottesville.

“We’ll never make it equal and balanced,” Lewis says of the local business playing field for African-Americans. “But you try.”

The black community itself needs to work harder to support its business owners, says Scottie B., the African-American owner of the Garden of Sheba restaurant and organizer of the roving Club Massive dance party. “Why aren’t they coming out to support what we’re doing?” is a question Scottie B. says he’s asked his black neighbors. He says he “has no problems” with serving a wide blend of customers, but claims his restaurant, which opened in August, gets most of its support from the white community. As a result, Scottie B. says he worries that black Charlottesville may be “forgetting about our own people.”—Paul Fain

Meating the need
Hunters for the Hungry takes aim at filling food banks

The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is Steve Morgan’s busy season. When most folks are spending hours at the mall hunting for packages, Morgan is spending hours in his shop packaging for hunters. It’s both deer season and a season for giving, and as part of a unique program, Morgan brings the two together.

Morgan is Albemarle County’s official meat processor (the polite term for butcher) for Hunters for the Hungry, a 12-year-old national organization that provides thousands of pounds of venison a year to food banks and other nonprofit organizations for distribution to the needy. Founded in 1991 by David Horne, then-general manager of a program to salvage and distribute produce, Hunters for the Hungry was modeled on a Texas organization that salvaged and distributed meat. Horne succumbed to cancer early last year, but the program had grown under his leadership—it provided 33,948 pounds of venison the first year and 266,456 pounds in 2002.

Deer are a plentiful, nutritious source of meat in Virginia, and hunters can easily bag more than they can eat during the October-January hunting season. Processors like Morgan—there are 64 in the state—are collection points for hunters to drop off extra game. The processors remove all of the meat from the deer, package it and store it for the program to pick up.

Morgan, a soft-spoken, amiable 32-year-old, lives with his wife and two small children near Schuyler in a spread that has been in his family since the Civil War. Much of his work comes from providing taxidermy services to hunters, but during deer season he takes on two part-time employees to help him manage the processing workload. It takes about a half hour for a professional to skin, cut and package an adult deer, and in the busy season Morgan and his crew may go through 15 a day, about 20 percent of which are donated to the program. This is Morgan’s second year participating in Hunters for the Hungry, and he estimates last year he processed 70 deer for the organization, providing approximately 2,500 pounds of meat.

A hunter himself since he was 10 years old, Morgan is unaffected by critics of his trade. Deer are plentiful in Virginia, they grow up wild and are killed in a much more humane manner than animals raised for slaughter, and all parts of the carcass are used—the shoulder and neck for burger meat, the hindquarters and tenderloin for steaks and the remaining scraps sold to rendering companies. According to the Hunters for the Hungry website (www.h4hungry.org), venison is a “quality high-protein, low-fat item not normally available” to the needy.

Although the deer are donated by hunters, and the food banks distribute the meat, it still takes funds to run the organization and pay the processors, who charge the charity a reduced rate for their services. Fortunately for the program, the government recently passed the David Horne Hunger Relief Bill, which will provide an opportunity for hunters to donate $2 to Hunters for the Hungry when they apply for their licenses. For those looking to get more bang for their buck—‘tis the season.—Chris Smith

To go with the flow
Meadow Creek will be “daylighted” as The Dell gets a stream

Before Emmet Street existed, Meadow Creek was the dominant physical presence in the natural valley the road now follows. After emerging from a spring on Observatory Hill, the creek heads northwesterly toward Emmet Street and then runs with the road all the way from the Central Grounds Parking Garage up to Barracks Road. Charlottesville residents can be forgiven for overlooking this portion of Meadow Creek, however, as the segment is contained in underground pipes.

But for the first time since 1950, some of this not-so-scenic stretch will be unearthed. In recent weeks, as part of the construction project for the new basketball arena, UVA began working to “daylight” a portion of Meadow Creek located in “The Dell” on the UVA campus.

“We’re actually taking what’s in a pipe and bringing it above ground,” says Richard Laurance, the director of the University Arena Project. “It took 100 years to get everything below ground. Now we’re taking it up.”

The stream was banished to a pipe so the University could level out and use the land, says Jeff Sitler, an environmental compliance manager for the University. The project will resurrect about 400 feet of the stream and return it to some form of nature. The new Dell will feature an emerged stream, retaining pond, biofiltration system, meadows, a walkway, and plantings of ash and poplar trees and other vegetation.

Currently, Meadow Creek’s last glimpse of daylight before the underground stretch is about 100 yards west of Emmet Street in The Dell. Here, the stream trickles into a concrete pipe about 3′ in diameter, and immediately passes under a few picnic tables as it begins the long pipe run past the Barracks Road Shopping Center.

But just a few feet before Meadow Creek goes subterranean is a newly constructed right-fork that leads to the beginning of an artificial streambed. The still-dry waterway is lined with neatly stacked stones, and winds its way between tennis and basketball courts before joining a new retaining pond adjacent to Emmet Street. Bulldozers, two portable toilets and stacks of mud and rocks sit on the muddy construction site, where there will eventually be one of the planned meadows. On a recent Wednesday morning, a work crew could be seen and heard laboring with a power saw.

The benefits of the $1.2 million Meadow Creek daylighting project, according to UVA Landscape Architect Mary Hughes, are practical, ecological and economic. She says the emerged section of Meadow Creek and the retaining pond will reduce the storm water strain on the pipe system, which will remain in service, and will help to prevent flooding problems around the new arena and elsewhere downstream. While they’re at it, UVA is installing new sanitary sewer and water lines as part of the project, Laurance says.

UVA’s earthmovers hardly conjure up warm feelings for local conservationists, but this massive landscaping project actually has an environmental benefit. The daylighted stream will help clean the water in Meadow Creek, both in UVA territory and further downstream. The exposure to sunlight, vegetation and other stream life all serve “to make the water quality better than it is in a sealed pipe,” Hughes says. Finally, she says a babbling brook in the newly sylvan Dell will be a “landscape amenity” for UVA students.

According to Sitler, the reestablishment of vegetation along the stream will take longer than building a new streambed. And though construction at the Meadow Creek project is moving along, with the University anticipating a June completion date, Sitler says it “will probably be harder to put [Meadow Creek] back” in a streambed than it was to put it in a pipe. —Paul Fain

News

Safety ‘Net

An auction barker’s drawl and a musty smell fill the cathedral-like main room of the Boxer Learning building on the Downtown Mall. Two years before this bright Thursday afternoon, during the dot-com’s heyday, Gen-X employees could be found in the building breaking up the workday with a game of ping-pong. But in the lean days since the bubble burst, Boxer Learning, which deals math-teaching tools over the Internet, has shed employees and traded its swanky digs for a Court Square suite.

The auction crowd works its way through the large office, snapping up file cabinets, computers, chairs, desks—even artificial fruit and a refrigerator. Though not particularly gaudy by dot-com standards, Boxer Learning’s old haunts contain massive amounts of office equipment. More than 400 lots hit the blocks by the end of the day, some of them containing multiple items.

The former bank building appeared cleaned up on the day before the auction, but evidence of a hasty exit persisted. Half-erased on an ink board was the phrase “Fix Bogus Time-Spent Values.” Various desk drawers contained such things as notepads, tea bags, pill packs, candy, body lotion, and one contained a thank-you card. One former employee came by to claim the contents of his desk. Upstairs, a window stood open in a second-floor office containing only two trashcans and a piece of paper, which sat in the middle of the floor. The page was a February printout of “help wanted” ads from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Though Boxer Learning and colossal Internet bomb Value America’s old spaces have a ghost-town feel, there is still life in the dot-com community. At least a dozen local Internet-based companies are still clicking along, begging the question: What separated Charlottesville’s Web survivors from its pretenders?

The Internet thrust Charlottesville into the sphere of other second-tier Web meccas, such as Austin and Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, but only briefly.

“The bubble came to Charlottesville really late, and it left really early,” says local Internet vet John Paul Ashenfelter.

Charlottesville’s run as a Web player lasted roughly from the spring of ’99 until the fall of ’01, and included some spectacular highs and lows, most notably the implosion of Value America and the roller coaster rides of Kesmai and Boxer Jam. Today, Charlottesville’s Web herd has been seriously thinned. Local insiders say companies with vacuous business plans and questionable expertise have gone the way of the Dodo bird. Among Web survivors, many have had to dramatically scale back their operations. But most local Internet companies say business is good, perhaps even better than it was during the faux bonanza of the boom.

During those heady days, Charlottesville was an ideal venue for Internet startups. The Kesmai Corporation, a computer game pioneer, had given the City a techie toehold since the mid ’80s. UVA and Darden provide a steady stream of graduates looking for work, but the City lacks major corporations or other big employers besides the University. Dot-coms gave UVA grads a means of staying in Charlottesville.

Ashenfelter came to Charlottesville in 1995. He left a post as co-director of the Teaching+Technology Initiative at Darden to give dot-coms a whirl in 1998. After a stint at one startup, he hit the job-hunting circuit the following year. He was in high demand, and got about seven job offers in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. “It was just crazy,” he says. Ashenfelter eventually interviewed with Boxer Jam, a web-gaming company that had been founded in part by Julann Griffin, the then 70-year-old ex-wife of Merv Griffin and grandmother who conceived of the television quiz show “Jeopardy.”

After the job interview, Ashenfelter was asked if he wanted to report to work the next morning. On his second day of work, he says he worked on a risky new venture.

“We spent a quarter of a million dollars on [an executive’s] hunch and my tech analysis,” he says. “Boxer Jam, they burned through an enormous amount of money.”

A few months later, more cash found him, in the form of $500,000 in venture capital. Ashenfelter says he didn’t pursue the money, and that it came through “sort of a family-friend connection.” He quickly put together a tech firm called TransitionPoint and hired a couple of employees.

The new company’s plan was to offer programming and database expertise to Internet-based companies. They secured several clients, including a few in Charlottesville, but primarily focused on two large companies. As was common during the boom, the two big fish paid Ashenfelter’s firm in part with equity. This form of payment could be shares of stock in the company, or stock options, which are the option of buying a number of shares in the dot-com at a certain time and price.

“We were really rolling the dice on those two companies,” Ashenfelter says.

The gamble didn’t pay off, and about a year later, “things were really drying up,” Ashenfelter says. He tried to help his employees find other jobs, placing one at Value America. Now solo, Ashenfelter took work elsewhere, including stints at Capital One, the credit card company, and Darden, and wrote two books. But his company weathered the storm, and Ashenfelter says “the phone still rings.”

Ashenfelter’s experience follows the hackneyed dot-com storyline: Get a cash infusion, hastily hatch a business plan, spend like crazy, rely on uncertain revenue and wait for the inevitable crash. But while most dot-commers either made a killing by selling before their company completely fizzled (as did many of Value America’s brass) or walked away with nothing, Ashenfelter is still working in the field. He says his Internet experience has been the equivalent of an extremely expensive MBA.

“The bubble taught me a lesson that it taught a lot of people,” Ashenfelter says. “You really need a good business model. We’re still around, but the original model didn’t work out that well.”

Ashenfelter also echoes a common refrain among Charlottesville’s Internet survivors when he makes the surprising claim that more money was not necessarily a good thing back in the days of irrational exuberance.

“The money let me do stuff, but it also complicated things a bit,” he says, explaining that the venture capital cash cushion “made it easier to not plan as thoroughly.”

“I would’ve had to do things very differently if I had had to bootstrap it,” Ashenfelter says.

The most widely cited story of a delusional confidence boost from big venture capital was Value America’s CEO Craig Winn’s plans to buy a lavish private jet and build a corporate campus with hiking trails, all while the company hemorrhaged money and struggled with basic customer service. Indeed, several local Internet companies now in the black say they never scored high-dollar seed money, and instead kept their eye on profits, slow growth and landing a broad range of clients.

Rick White, a CPA and partner at Hoffman, White and Company, has worked with local Internet companies since 1993. In that time, he’s seen much of what works, and what doesn’t. White agrees that simple business virtues such as flexibility played a role in Charlottesville’s dot-com success stories. However, he says many failed local ventures were poised at the edge of making their ideas workable, but didn’t get the last necessary nudge. White say local investors were particularly cautious during the boom, and waited until they saw big money being made in Northern Virginia before timidly jumping into the Internet game. Many insiders echo this sentiment, and say investment in local dot-coms often came from Richmond, Washington or elsewhere.

The former vice-president of multimedia at Value America, Rusty Speidel, is one local Web vet who is still taking a chance on high-tech ventures. Speidel recently launched a foray into wireless entertainment, and says local money is of the “dribbing and drabbing” variety. “We need one more push to get over the top,” Speidel says of his company, Labrador Communications.

White cites local dot-bomb CubeCard as an example of a profitable idea that came close to getting off the ground—to provide a prepaid Internet purchasing card. He says CubeCard “had a lot of dominoes lined up” and that “if any domino had fallen” they would’ve made a bundle. Of course, investors in Value America and other colossal dot-com failures might argue that Charlottesville’s investors were wise to be cautious. And resentment certainly persists in the Charlottesville area over the massive dot-bomb layoffs that occurred while top executives reaped big stock-sale paydays.

Despite its recruitment of many skilled workers, White says Value America “did more to hurt the technology community in Charlottesville than it did to help it.”

According to Value America alum Speidel, who also worked for Kesmai and The Museum Company’s online component, dot-coms tried to become “the biggest and baddest” company in their field while failing to deliver their products. He says Boxer Learning is a great example of a good idea that wasn’t good enough.

“[Boxer Learning] got all big, but they didn’t think about profit. They thought about stock price,” Speidel says.

Musictoday.com is a local company that connects musicians and fans through Internet sales of tickets and gear, as well as by running online fan clubs. Though the middleman strategy of the privately held company is reminiscent of Value America’s corporate plan (see sidebar), Musictoday.com has managed to stay afloat.

“We are the tortoise. We did not have a lot of venture capital,” says Ford Englander, chief operating officer of Musictoday.com, which is owned by local developer and musical giant Coran Capshaw, also known as the manager of Dave Matthews Band. “We built our business in a more traditional sense. We had hard goods that we were selling.”

Local dot-commer Jack Smith also attributes part of the survival of his company, PeopleSpace, Inc., to the fact that he never got major venture capital. Also a Kesmai alum, Smith started PeopleSpace in 1997. The company develops games, polls and other interactive devices to help websites attract visitors.

“I never had a huge influx of money, so I’ve never been able to go nuts on a budget,” Smith says. However, his company still grew fast. By 2001 he had a monthly overhead of around $25,000. But when the economy took a nosedive after September 11, Smith lost several major clients, and came close to throwing in the towel. He says his frugality kept him afloat. An art collector, Smith “stripped the walls” and sold off his art to pay the bills. He also claims he stayed in New York City on business trips for as little as $20.

Though he has no employees, relying instead on two regular contractors, Smith says his client list is better than ever before. But he says he’ll avoid the profligate spending of the dot-com gilded age. Citing a dot-com insider cliché, he says he’ll never buy the expensive Aeron chairs that were popular during the boom.

“My conference chair is from Wal-Mart, with the canvas and the beer-holders,” Smith says.

Before the boom, Smith founded a regular meeting for local Internet workers. The group, which calls itself the Neon Guild, meets twice monthly and has about 350 members.

The Neon Guild’s first and only “Guildmaster” is Debra Weiss, who runs a Web design company called drw Design. With the aesthetic of an orderly housewife, Weiss hardly fits the slacker chic stereotype of the Web set. A silver scooter would look woefully out of place in her tidy home on Hedge Street, which serves as her office. Despite her mild-mannered appearance, Guildmaster Weiss doesn’t pull her punches when decrying the foolishness of dot-bombs, saying that many of them had a “business model based on air” and that often, “the idea was stupid, and unworkable.”

One particular failure cited by Weiss and other techies is NeigborhoodFind.com. Founded by local real estate agent and business owner Kenneth Clarry, the company strove to give the specs on the nation’s neighborhoods (schools, businesses, weather and more) to people looking to make a move. Clarry secured big dollars for the website, hired dozens of employees and hoped to have real estate agent sponsorship from all over the country. According to Smith and Weiss, Clarry’s vision was too rigid for the capricious nature of Internet commerce. Clarry’s company hit the skids, and he later died when the small plane he was piloting crashed near the Shenandoah National Park.

“[Clarry] didn’t bend as things changed in the market. I think initially it was a good idea, but he didn’t let it evolve,” Smith says.

In addition to flexibility, Charlottesville’s dot-com survivors highlight diverse clients as a key factor in keeping them afloat. And one of the ways local programmers and Web designers have found work over the years is through the Neon Guild, despite the fact that the group’s members are all competitors.

“We figured out a long time ago that this is a small town, and it’s better to collude than compete,” Weiss says. “It’s not who you know in Charlottesville, it’s who knows you.”

The Neon Guild has seen more than 1,000 members come through the doors over the years, and besides its networking payoff, Weiss says the Guild became a support group when the boom went bust. The group also spun-off a more formal organization for tech workers called the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council.

Smith says that beyond the Guild, other members of Charlottesville’s business society helped Internet workers when they fell down on their luck. For example, he says developers Gabe Silverman and Allen Cadgene and even local banks could be forgiving when money was tight.

“Charlottesville really is a community town,” Smith says.

Weiss says her Web design company has had some slower years, but claims she’s always managed to make a living. Rather than looking for the big score, she says she’s always worked with small and mid-size businesses. She currently has 50 to 60 clients, most of whom she’s worked with for more than five years.

Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell is a 1996 graduate of UVA who, along with three partners, founded her Web design company, Category4, in October 1998. She says her company has always worked with a broad variety of clients from among nonprofits, government agencies and educational institutions, rather than with a few big budget, but more volatile ventures. Tidwell says the decision wasn’t necessarily based on wisdom, saying that the company chose these projects because they were the ones in which she and her partners had the most interest.

But even colleges and government agencies demand a good product, and Tidwell says many other dot-coms just couldn’t deliver. She says many dot-coms were “trying to do too much” but were only competent at some of their work.

“A lot of people call themselves designers who had no business doing that,” Tidwell says.

Another crucial mistake cited by several dot-commers is one that almost tanked Ashenfelter’s company: the nonexistent paycheck. The massive stock payoff seemed just over the horizon for many in the business, so tech companies often offered stocks or options en lieu of actual payment. Weiss resisted this chimera.

“I wanted to be paid for my work,” Weiss says. “I don’t work on spec, and I don’t work on sweat equity.”

Category breaker
How Category4 resisted the Web’s excesses

The financial chart for most dot-coms looks like the profile of Mount Fuji—a steep climb followed by a precipitous decline. Category4, a Charlottesville-based Web hosting and design firm, has bucked this trend with steady growth. In 2001, Caegory4’s worst year, the company grew by 15 percent, according to founder and president Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell.

Tidwell, a 1996 UVA graduate, and three other UVA grads started the company in October 1998. They cobbled together $50,000, bought a printer and some hardware at Sam’s Club and began running the company out of a den in one of their homes. They hired their first employee the following spring, and now have 13 people on the payroll.

“We were just thinking, ‘We’re probably better as a group,’” than as freelancers or being unemployed, Tidwell says of the company’s founding philosophy.

During the boom, Tidwell and her partners thought the company would have as many as 25 employees by 2003, and that it would continue to almost double its size every year. When reality and the dot-com fantasy collided, Category4 focused on profitability instead of growth and worked on building a broad list of clients.

“It was just a matter of riding it out,” Tidwell says. “We knew the Web wasn’t going to go away.”

Over the past five years, Tidwell says Category4’s staff members have stuck to their specific skills of creative design or programming, rather than being jacks-of-all-trades. She says some of their competitors tried to do it all, “but it just wasn’t good.”

Tidwell sees a promising future for Category4, which will soon move into the new SNL Financial building on Seventh Street. Though successful in a turbulent field, Tidwell, who was an English major, says it wasn’t a path she envisioned.

“I never saw myself as a business owner,” she says.—P.F.

Valuable lesson
How one local dot-com company flamed-out big time

Perhaps no company embodied dot-com audacity better than Charlottesville’s own Value America, which sought to revolutionize retail by forging partnerships with manufactures and then selling goods online to consumers—all without any inventory of its own.

Value America managed to garner early high-dollar support from Fed Ex bigwig Fred Smith and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. On the day it went public in April of 1999, the company raised $145 million and the share price hit $74.

Value America’s founder, Craig Winn, was a billionaire on paper, but only for a day. Less than 16 months later, on the day when Value America went bankrupt, its stock was trading at 72 cents per share, 185 of its employees were let go, and its website was dormant.

In the aftermath of Value America’s flame-out, former executives and employees decried the company’s massive overspending and literal failure to deliver the goods.

“[Value America] couldn’t figure how to deliver products reliably,” says Rusty Speidel, a former company executive. He once ordered a washing machine from Value America, and says it was dumped on his driveway—hardly a sterling example of customer service.

While Value America’s rank-and-file were getting their walking papers—about 300 employees were laid-off just days before the holidays in 1999—several of the company’s top executives were reportedly making a mint on the company’s hollow value. Business Week reported that Winn made over $50 million on Value America, and C-VILLE Weekly found that several other senior company execs filed for stock sales valued at as much as $3.2 million.

“[Value America] is one of the great tragedies of this town,” says local Web designer Debra Weiss. “When they folded, they did it in such a rude, horrible way.”

For further reading on Value America, both Winn and Value America’s former flack, J. David Kuo, published books on the company’s saga. Ironically, Kuo’s book, dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath, received a favorable review on Amazon.com, Value America’s former nemesis.—P.F.

The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Pine needles

In regards to the article “How green is your evergreen?” [Fishbowl, December 9], I feel a need to respond to a perceived negative association by way of proximity to Ivy Corner’s advertisement for “fresh Fraser fir Christmas trees.” Firstly, because Ivy Corner hand selects almost all of its trees, Christmas or otherwise, we by necessity only deal with small family-type growers. I personally have relationships with these owners and for years have seen the successful careers and fine lives their businesses and religious faiths have provided for their immigrant workforces.

Secondly, I think this article more accurately points to the seemingly pervasive business practices of “save or make money at any expense,” whether it be agriculture’s not paying overtime or “loss leader”-style promotions by giant retailers at the expense of family businesses and the small-town way of life. In fact, it should not be news that taking advantage of any money-making/money-saving practice seems to be the present state of the American dream, slightly removed from the very few things that really seem to matter in life. Perhaps because it is Christmas, the only news worth consideration is the good news of family, love and forgiveness.

William Vlasis

Owner

Ivy Corner Garden Center

Uncategorized

Fishbowl

Ease on down the road
City Attorney braces for a fight as Councilors squabble over MCP easement

Craig Brown seemed a little nervous. He shuffled a stack of papers, wearing the apprehensive expression of someone unaccustomed to dropping bombs.

“There’s no shortage of opinions in this community about the Meadowcreek Parkway,” Brown said, bracing for the uproar he was about to set off as City Council began its meeting on Monday, December 15.

In the most recent chapter of the Meadowcreek Parkway saga, Brown, who is the City Attorney, has found himself the reluctant center of a fierce game of legal brinkmanship that could pit Councilors against each other in court and cost the City hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I’ve been directed to ask the State Attorney General for an advisory opinion on easement by a simple majority,” Brown announced to Council at the start of the meeting.

“Directed by whom? This is the first time I’ve heard about this,” replied Councilor Kevin Lynch, seeming indignant. “Jerry Kilgore is the expert now? This is the same Attorney General who opposes providing contraception for college students.”

Councilor Meredith Richards apparently had spearheaded this particular escalation of the McIntire Park easement question, which these days is at the heart of the never-ending Meadowcreek Parkway problem. A nine-acre strip of City-owned parkland is the last obstacle blocking the Meadowcreek Parkway, which first came onto Council’s agenda in 1967. Albemarle County and the Virginia Department of Transportation want the City to grant right-of-way through McIntire Park so VDOT can build the Parkway, which would run through City and County lands. But a State law designed to protect public space requires a four-fifths supermajority for Council to sell parkland.

Only three Councilors––Richards, Rob Schilling and Blake Caravati––favor the Parkway, however. So in November they asked Brown whether the three of them could legally ease the land to VDOT for free, instead of selling it. Brown says an easement is legally feasible, while State constitution expert A.E. Dick Howard has opined that such a move blatantly violates the spirit––and probably the letter—of Virginia law. After Mayor Maurice Cox and Councilor Kevin Lynch went public with their vehement disapproval of an easement, Vice-Mayor Richards and her allies directed Brown to seek Kilgore’s advice. It was a transparent attempt to bolster their easement arguments, but not transparent enough. Lynch and Cox learned about the Kilgore idea for the first time on December 15, which apparently infuriated the Mayor.

“I had lunch with you today,” he stormed at Richards. “We talked on the phone this weekend. The idea that you were seeking the Attorney General’s opinion never crossed your mind? I’m appalled.”

Richards suggested that she was merely following the people’s will, as she had received many requests to contact Kilgore.

“No one’s asked me that,” Cox snapped. “Please forward them, so we can share in this sentiment you seem to have found among Charlottesville residents.”

After campaigning against the Parkway in 2000 and receiving more votes than any other current Councilor, Cox remains intent on blocking the Parkway; he continues to speak of the road in the subjunctive. Lynch, who also campaigned as an anti-Parkway “Democrat for Change,” has lately adopted a more compromising tone, by contrast, saying he would support selling the McIntire Park land if the City could secure usable replacement land from Albemarle. His other conditions include State appropriations for a Meadowcreek Parkway interchange at Route 250 and McIntire Road, and for proposed eastern and southern connector roads.

“I think we’re really close to a compromise and commitments that would put the Parkway in a context where it is an asset to the City,” said Lynch in an interview prior to the Council meeting.

But the newly combative Richards says she doesn’t buy Lynch’s diplomacy: “These claims are intended to kill the road, not improve the road.”

On December 15, Richards said she would be “happy” to see a court battle over the proposed easement. After the meeting, Schilling, who ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism, said he would have no problem with a lawsuit, either: “If that’s the way it has to go, then so be it.” Caravati wasn’t at the Council meeting, and was unavailable for comment.

The December 15 meeting ended with Cox telling Richards she should be “ashamed,” Richards accusing Cox of “bullying tactics” and Schilling threatening to walk out. Afterward, Brown sat alone among his stack of papers in the empty Council chambers.

“That’s not the way anyone would like to see a Council meeting end,” he said later. “I was spending a few minutes trying to reflect on what happened, and my role.”

Brown says this is the most intense conflict he has witnessed in his 18 years in City Hall. If Richards, Schilling and Caravati order an easement, Brown says, a lawsuit will probably ensue, and he stands ready to defend the majority’s decision.

“It’s not the easiest position to be in, but that doesn’t affect my analysis of the issue,” Brown says. “I approach it as unbiased as I can. My job is to present options available to Council, and the risk. Obviously, the risk here is being sued.”

Danielson returns

It’s been a while since Lee Danielson showed up at a meeting of the Board of Architectural Review. Given his history with that body, he had every reason to expect a lukewarm homecoming.

But on Tuesday, December 16, when Danielson’s architect, Mark Hornberger, described the California developer’s plans for a nine-storey, 100-room hotel at 200 E. Main St., the former site of Boxer Learning, the Board seemed enthusiastic.

“I’d like to see the Mall get this building,” said Board member Katie Swenson, echoing the general sentiment.

The plans presented were tentative, comprising various aerial views of a tall building measuring 53 feet across and nearly 300 feet long, from the Downtown Mall to Water Street. Hornberger showed several potential shapes for the hotel structure, but no design details. “We’d like to ask your opinion on massing,” said Hornberger to the BAR.

Some Board members wanted Danielson to preserve the building’s current façade, while others didn’t care if he tore it down. Although no formal vote was taken, the BAR gave Danielson the green light to proceed with design. Hornberger asked how the notoriously conservative BAR felt about modern architecture, then cited his own views: “We are in the 21st century, and as architects we have an obligation to mirror the 21st century.”

Board Chair Joan Fenton encouraged Danielson and his architects to consult with Board members—not because the BAR wanted to enforce a “traditional” design, but because the BAR could be willing to give Danielson more leeway than he might expect, given his past battles with the Board over the Charlottesville Ice Park and Regal Cinema buildings, which he developed in the ’90s with former business partner Colin Rolph.

“This board has been much more open to modern architecture, as evidenced by the new arts building,” said Fenton, referring to the modern City Center for Contemporary Arts, which is sited one block behind Danielson’s building. “There’s an openness to new materials,” Fenton continued. “Sometimes people shy away from a design because you think the Board won’t do it, but I encourage you to come talk to us.”

That didn’t sound like the stodgy BAR that infuriated Danielson during his prime as a Mall magnate. But the brash developer seemed himself a little different, too. Known for his bold declarations, Danielson kept mum at the meeting and offered only mild comments afterward.

“I’m a little gun-shy,” he said, declining to speculate on when construction might commence. “But I must say I’m glad about the reception [the hotel] is getting. Even people who are against everything seem to think it’s a good idea.”—John Borgmeyer

Under the knife
After lessons with a real-life chef, I know how the carved bird steams

Norman Rockwell was a crackhead. That’s the only way I can explain the utopian scene in his painting “Freedom From Want”—a perfectly coifed, multi-generational family gathered around the exquisitely placed Thanksgiving table, the aging matriarch delivering a turkey Arnold Schwarzenegger could drive, the gathered brood a portrait of Radcliffe futures and Howard Dean smiles.

Coming from a large family myself, I know this is not how it goes. Sure, it may start out this way—perfectly aligned silverware, well-bleached linens, the only spots to be found are on Grandma—but this is an aspiration, a beginning that has no possible future but to spin out of control into total holiday entropy. As soon as the knife pierces the skin of that turkey, the feeling that something’s got to give becomes the realization that something just did, and within minutes we are transformed from dinner at the White House to dinner with the Muppets’ Swedish Chef, a cacophony of drips, spills and airborne potatoes, a controlled food fight at best—“Vergoofin der flicke stoobin, bork bork bork.”

But all is not lost. The centerpiece of the feast is that massive winged SUV in the middle of the table, and if father can carve it like a surgeon instead of a lumberjack, he just might be able to save Christmas. After copious research and a demonstration by executive sous chef Dan Paymar at Boar’s Head Inn, I have ordained myself skilled (or at least capable) in the art of turkey carving. If necessary, I can stand in for father this year, and with these tips, so can you:

There are essentially four edible parts of the bird: breast, wing, thigh and leg. The breast is the white meat—the most tender—and the other parts are dark meat. While one could just haphazardly slice dark meat off the leg and white meat out of the breast, consensus seems to be that the carver should first separate the leg and thigh from the rest of the bird. To do this, insert the knife between the leg and the breast, slicing the skin and feeling your way down to the joint at the thighbone. Pry the thigh off at the hip joint while gently twisting the leg—this should remove the leg and thigh en masse. By further separating the thigh and the leg (again, find the joint between the two and slice) you will have a nice thigh and drumstick, which you can serve whole if you are related to Hagar, or cut into slabs of dark meat by slicing parallel to the bone.

The wing can then be removed by gently pulling it outward from the breast and using the knife to find the shoulder joint, slicing through where it gives way the best. Wings are too bony to yield good slabs of meat, but those Radcliffe-bound youngsters like chewing on them, so serve them as-is to the shorties at the kids’ table.

Last there is the breast, which is generally the most popular part of the bird. You can serve the breast two ways: cutting slabs right off the whole bird with long, slanty slices parallel to the rib cage, or pulling the breast out of the turkey and cutting the slices in the opposite direction, against the grain of the meat, which Chef Paymar insists results in juicier pieces. Either way, the turkey will cool quickly, so wait until the family is ready to be served before seeking perfection in your dissection.

For the neat-freaks who want to do all the carving ahead of time, there is another option. Section the bird as described above, then boil the remaining meat off the bones and use it along with the giblets to make a delicious gravy. When you’re ready to serve, just reheat the meat slices, douse them with gravy, and bon appetite! And if you ever find a Norman Rockwell painting of kids eating turkey sandwiches in January, let me know. At least that would be believable.—Chris Smith

The shape of things
Frank Stella’s former printmaker sculpts his own path in Charlottesville

Few of us ever meet a true art legend. Fewer still work side-by-side with one. Local artist James Welty is one of the luckiest few to do both. After taking printmaking at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he served as Frank Stella’s master printer for 12 years. Stella, famous for his 1960s “black paintings,” is also known for creating energetic assemblages of colorful, often circular spiral forms.

But that’s in his past—now Welty directs his own art career. In 1987, Welty left Stella’s New York workshop to focus on his own sculpture. He spent 10 successful years in New York City exhibiting at many spaces, including the John Davis Gallery. In 1999, his wife, Karen Van Lengen, was offered a position as dean of UVA’s architecture school, and they moved south to Charlottesville. Welty entered the local art scene in 2000 when he exhibited his welded copper sculpture “A Short History of Decay” in “Hindsight/Fore-site,” the collaborative exhibition between UVA and Les Yeux du Monde. Next year he will have his own show at the UVA Art Museum.

Welty brings a whole host of experiences to his art, from his time with Stella to his work in modern dance. He collaborated in New York with the Dan Wagoner Dance Company and The Kitchen, designing costumes and sets, and, in the case of avant-garde performance space The Kitchen, conceptualizing projects.

He also incorporates an encyclopedic range of knowledge from literature to anthropology to pop culture. He reads voraciously and cites sources such as Francois Rabelais, Henri Michaux and Franz Kafka. In the next breath he mentions Dr. Seuss and Daffy Duck. Welty finds kindred spirits that inspire and influence him.

Throughout his career, the juxtaposition of ideas (organic and mechanic, decay and rebirth, interior and exterior) has inspired Welty. Not unexpectedly, the way he envisions these dualities has evolved. In the last few years, his works have grown increasingly organic. His brazed copper structures often consist of hollow areas that suggest interiors, albeit interiors like the knotty cave formed by the tangled roots of a tree. As Welty says, “I am always returning to spaces that have tension and ambiguity.”

Early reviews of Welty’s work noted an inherent fearfulness in his structures. As his works have fleshed out, a sense of unease still exists—Welty acknowledges that some of his works might intimidate. However, this unease is more disorienting than ominous as Welty manipulates familiar objects into imagined forms. In “The Isle of Wild Sausages,” for example, a cylindrical form resembles a car part.

Underneath the gnarled, almost sci-fi veneer, Welty’s works want to invite us in. He reminisces about the cardboard structures his dad built for him as a child. He tries to recreate that sensation by building a “space to hide in,” he says, wanting his works to challenge but ultimately provide refuge.

Among the new works Welty is preparing for his June show at UVA Art Museum is a 50-foot scroll inspired by the “macabre, yet poignant” Japanese Hell Scrolls. Although a shrewd observer will undoubtedly notice the Stella construction in the museum’s adjoining room, she’ll surely conclude that Welty’s sculptures have lives of their own.—Emily Smith

News

Think outside the big box

Post author By c-ville-weekly-writers
Post date December 16, 2003
No Comments on Think outside the big box

With the spring 2004 start of construction on Albemarle Place, the big box conquest of 29N marches on. The complex, slated for the northwest corner of Hydraulic Road and 29N, will be a 1.9 million-square-foot retail behemoth. Once it’s completed, shoppers will be able to literally live on the development’s grounds, which could include a hotel, a cinema and apartments, as well as high-end retailers like J. Crew and Pottery Barn.

But while development continues on 29N, many existing structures remain vacant in and around Charlottesville. A scan by C-VILLE of empty buildings in the area found 1,199,088 square feet of unused space—nearly equivalent to that aforementioned whopper of a space filler. With abundant real estate in locations like the former supermarket across from the Omni Hotel and the Boxer Learning building on the Downtown Mall, why are developers skipping the empty spaces and choosing to break new ground on 29N?

The answer, according to Ivo Romenesko, a professional real estate agent, president of the Appraisal Group, and chairman-elect of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, is population and job growth in Albemarle County.

“Over 80 percent of all major retailing is located along that 29 corridor,” Romenesko says. “We’re going to see a continuation of that trend.”

Additionally, the most practical means of development along roads like 29N is to merely knock down an existing Radio Shack or Home Depot and erect a new building, since strip mall and big box retail spaces are relatively cheap and simple to bulldoze and build.

Yet some developers are willing to roll the dice on what’s called “adaptive reuse” of existing buildings. A notable example is the 324,626 square feet of the Frank Ix building, which served as a textile mill for 70 years. Located just south of Garrett Square, the huge complex was purchased by local developer Bill Dittmar and partners for $5.3 million in 2000.

“It’s a unique location. It’s the largest tract of developable property near Downtown,” Dittmar says of the Ix building. “You couldn’t afford to build that core structure today.”

The historic facades of buildings such as the Ix factory and the Jefferson School—and the stories behind them—might even draw some local residents to future ventures. Romenesko says the vacant buildings near Downtown could house boutique hotels, restaurants, specialty retail shops and high-end office space. So while Target or Best Buy probably won’t be moving into the Ix building, Dittmar and other optimistic developers might have reason to hope that vacant buildings around town can one day find new tenants. Below is a list of some of the properties waiting for a second—or sometimes third or fourth—act.

Four corners
Wachovia buildings

Address: 101, 105, 107 and 111 E. Main St.

Area: 19,900 square feet (estimate)

Empty since: Various dates

Owner: Woodard Properties

Price: Not for sale

The story: The four buildings have housed numerous businesses and storefronts, including Gleason’s Bakery, which opened in 1953, became Dough Boy Bakery in 1976 and later Antojito’s. Also operating out of the buildings were Cato’s Dress Shop, Gitchell’s Studio, Daisy Shoe Center, Stacy’s Music Store and a bookstore. Beginning next year, Woodard Properties plans to renovate and rehabilitate the buildings, which sat empty the past four years while the former owners, D&R Development, battled City officials and each other. With that behind them, the buildings now house, on the ground-floor level, Mountain Air Gallery and the leasing office for Walker Square and Riverbend Apartment Homes.

Smart investment
Boxer Learning

Address: 200 E. Main St.

Area: 20,115 square feet

Empty since: June 2003

Owner: Lee Danielson

Price: Assessed at $1,650,000

The story: Citizens Bank built the original structure in 1931, on the site of an old bookstore. A 1966 renovation gave the building the marble and glass façade it has today. Recently, the building was home to an Internet company, Boxer Learning, and owned by the now-defunct D&R Development Company (see “Wachovia Buildings” above). When that company dissolved in a bitter lawsuit in 2000, a judge put 200 E. Main in the hands of receiver Gaylon Beights. In July 2002, the “D” of D&R, California developer Lee Danielson, purchased 200 E. Main and 108 Second St. SE from Beights for a combined $3.3 million. On December 4, The Daily Progress reported that Lee Danielson wants to build a nine-storey hotel on this site, and that on December 16 he will present plans to the Board of Architectural Review. Given the California developer’s tumultuous history with the BAR, the presentation promises to be spirited.

Class act
Jefferson School

Address: 201 Fourth St. NW

Area: 70,000 square feet

Empty since: Preschool program vacated in January 2002; still houses some classes

Owner: City of Charlottesville

Price: Assessed at $4.5 million. The City says Jefferson School will need a major overhaul, at an estimated cost of about $10 million, although State and Federal tax credits will cover 45 percent of the rehab cost.

The story: The 100-year-old Jefferson School building was the center of black education in the days of racial segregation, and one of the few structures to survive the “urban renewal” of Vinegar Hill. In January 2002, the Charlottesville School Board voted to move the City’s preschool program out of Jefferson School, and City Council prepared to sell the building to developers. A group of citizens fought the sale, so Council created the Jefferson School Task Force to decide the building’s fate. In December, the Task Force will likely recommend Jefferson School become the new home for the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library or a social service and education center.

Shaping up
Ivy Industries

Address: 111 Monticello Ave.

Area: 64,378 square feet of warehouse space currently available

Empty since: April 2003

Owner: 111 Monticello Avenue, LLC

Price: Previously listed at $6.2 million

The story: Built in 1983, the site was most recently home to picture frame-maker Ivy Industries, which went out of business after CEO John C. Reid was nabbed in a check-kiting scheme earlier this year. New owner Coran Capshaw is shopping for tenants, and the real estate rumor mill says the fitness club ACAC is likely to move in soon.

Money talks
SNL Building (and annex)

Address: 321 E. Main St.

Area: 53,643 square feet

Empty since: August 2003

Owner: SNL Financial

Price: $3,750,000

The story: The building was constructed in 1955 and originally housed a department store. Later, Jefferson National Bank & Trust Co. bought the space and used it as an operations center. Wachovia eventually acquired Jefferson National Bank. In 1998, SNL purchased the building and renovated it at a cost of about $2 million. It then became the SNL Financial headquarters. Around five years later, in August 2003, SNL fully vacated the building. It is currently assessed at $3,887,700.

Travel plans
Lakeland Tours

Address: 2000 Holiday Dr.

Area: 24,279 square feet

Owner: Holiday Drive, LLC (Andrew Dondero, CEO)

Price: For sale at $2,400,000, with an additional two acres of land for an extra $500,000. For lease at $13 per square foot.

The story: General Electric built this faux colonial building in 1966. Since then it has been owned by a now-bankrupt petroleum company from Mississippi and Lakeland Interstate Tours, Inc., hence the building’s nickname. The building was fully renovated in 1985, and sold to its current owners in 1998 for $2.6 million. The building now is owned by Keswick’s Andrew Dondero, and a portion of it is home to 1st American Mortgage and the Piedmont Housing Alliance.

Bargain shopping
Save-A-Lot grocery

Address: 243 Ridge-McIntire Rd.

Vinegar Hill Shopping Center

Area: 24,500 square feet

Empty since: 2000

Owner: Piedmont Land Trust

Price: Lease for $9 per square foot

The story: The original King’s Market grocery store was built in 1978. It was eventually purchased by the Richmond-based Richfood, and finally closed for good as Save-A-Lot in 2000. The building operated as a grocery store throughout its 22-year lifetime.

Deals loom large
Frank Ix building

Address: 601 E. Market St.

Area: 324,626 feet

Empty since: November 1999

Owners: William D. Dittmar, Gabe Silverman, Allan Cadgene and Ludwig Kuttner

Price: Lease for $7 per square foot

The story: Frank Ix & Sons was a textile company that produced dress fabric, as well as material used in sailing equipment, backpacks and bathing suits. Its Charlottesville plant, a 17-acre facility, was the largest of the company’s six mills, and the last to shut down (in 1999). Construction began on the textile mill in 1925, and it opened in 1929. In June of 1973, The Daily Progress reported that Ix & Sons added 60,000 square feet to the factory and hired 150 new employees, bringing the total number of workers to 650. But the company’s boom subsided, and it began a gradual decline that lasted throughout the ’90s. Ix eventually filed for Chapter 11, and the Charlottesville textile mill stopped production on October 29, 1999. The building has hosted several art events since closing. Developer Bill Dittmar and partners bought the site in 2000 for $5.3 million. Though the site is currently assessed at $4,589,700, the buildings appear dilapidated, and are missing many walls. Still, several tenants, including CK Courier, Stafford Insulation, Telephone Services, AIDS Service Group, and JADE (Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement) are already in one portion of the building—pioneering the landscape for the retailers, professionals and City dwellers that Dittmar and associates hope will follow.

Blue light special
K-Mart Plaza

Address: 1801 Hydraulic Rd.

Area: 41,414 square feet

Empty since: Food Lion closed in September 1999

Owner: Peyton Associates Partnership

Price: Vacant building sites recently assessed at $2,836,000

The story: A company called Charlottesville Plaza, Inc. built the K-Mart building in 1964 for $600,000. The building included the space later occupied by Food Lion and Brown’s Cleaners. The Terrace Theatres cinema was added in 1974. In 1997, the buildings’ owners, Peyton Associates Partnership, wrote the City assessor’s office in the hopes of getting a lower tax assessment. Willard N. Clayton, the city assessor, responded that the space was located in “the hot spot” for commercial development in Charlottesville, and the request for an eased tax rate was nixed. The Food Lion closed in September 1999 and the space remains empty. Brown’s Cleaners and the Terrace Theatres are also vacant.

Long-distance operator
Comdial

Address: 1180 Seminole Trail

Area: 454,900 square feet

Empty since: Late 2002

Owner: Seminole Trail Properties, LLC.

Price: Sold for $11.4 million in March 2001

The story: The facility was built in 1954 and originally housed the manufacturing operations of the United States Instrument Corporation, which produced telephone parts. Comdial Corporation, also a telecommunications company, purchased the site from military-industrial giant General Dynamics in 1982. In 2001, Comdial moved its corporate headquarters to Sarasota, Florida, and sold the manufacturing plant. Comdial leased some of the site to house a small numbers of engineers. Those straggling employees left the building about one year ago. The property is currently assessed at $11,820,100.

Material gains
Institute of Textile Technology

Address: 2551-2555 Ivy Rd.

Area: 28,033 square feet

Empty since: Late 2002

Owner: Ivy Road Properties, Inc.

Price: Sold for $6,600,000 in August 2003

The story: The Institute of Textile Technology (ITT) and the North Carolina State University College of Textiles formed an alliance in November 2002, and all of ITT’s operations were subsequently moved to the NC State’s Centennial campus in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Under Valued
Hollymead Professional Center

Address: 1522-1560 Insurance Ln.

Area: About 5,300 square feet

Empty since: Late 2000

Owner: Charles Hurt, Virginia Land Company

Price: Lease for $15 per square foot

The Story: The Hollymead Professional Center comprises five buildings, each about 6,000 square feet. It was built four years ago for notorious dot-bomb Value America, which all but vacated the premises two years later. A small portion of the site is currently home to a collection of offices for companies like Remax Properties, Dr. Wesley Haddix, Old Dominion Equine, Edward Jones and Associates and Larry Miller, attorney.

Off-campus campus
Town Center One in the UVA Research Park

Address: 1000 Research Park Blvd.

Area: About 18,000 square feet

Empty since: 2001

Owner: UVA Foundation Real Estate Foundation

Price: Full service lease for $19.25 per square foot

The story: UVA built Town Center One in September 2000 for Qual Choice, an insurance company now called Southern Health. When Southern Health downsized two years ago, it vacated 30,000 square feet, and new high-profile tenants, such as TIAA-Cref, Northrop Grumman IT and Angle Technology, moved in to some of the space.

Not too late
Earlysville Professional Center

Address: 395 Reas Ford Rd., Earlysville

Area: 50,000 square feet in warehouse, 15,000 in office

Empty since: Technicolor moved out in December 2002

Owner: 4F, LLC

Price: Lease for $4 per square foot for warehouse space, $7-10 per square foot for office

The story: The Earlysville Professional Center was built in stages between 1960 and 1985 by Murray Manufacturing Company. The building, currently home to Earlysville Medical Practice, Downtown Athletics, Crutchfield and National Linen, is three miles from the airport, and is wired for high-speed Internet.

The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Holding it in

Having been a devoted reader of C-VILLE since its inception, I have enjoyed watching the paper grow and change, not surprisingly, in sync with the life cycle of its owners/publishers. The “more mature” C-VILLE has contributed so much to keeping its readers informed about our incredibly rich cultural community and the many opportunities if offers. I was especially applauding C-VILLE’s recent timely focus on our local nonprofits and their various needs in its November 25 issue [SHARE]. Therefore, I was completely taken aback when I read on page 31 the following sentence in a C-VILLE pick: “Do you really want to brave hours on the Interstate, eat dry turkey and spend your weekend looking after incontinent Aunt Myrtle?” Come on, C-VILLE—that’s not really you anymore is it?

Perrie H. May

Charlottesville

Vendor bender

I was quite amused that your article about the vendors on the Mall [“Against the grain,” Fishbowl, November 25] had only one fact correct—what I was wearing that night. If the reporter had paid more attention to what was said rather than my wardrobe, he might have gotten the following facts correct:

1) The group that put together the suggested vendor guidelines was composed of City employees, vendors and members of the community. I was one of the people asked to be part of this group. They were not written by the Board of Architectural Review as stated in the article.

2) When these guidelines were presented to the BAR for comment, there was one amendment made—not to allow clothing racks on the Mall. As a business owner who has had a rack outside my store, April’s Corner, for three years, I too will be affected by this ordinance and have to remove my display rack.

3) All of the signs at York Place were approved by the BAR. However, the BAR required the requested projecting signs to be mounted flush to the wall as required by City code and the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act regulations. There are no projecting signs on any building in Charlottesville at a height below 80". In fact I would challenge you to find regulations in any city that allow signs below 80" to project from a building. There is a good reason for not wanting this precedent to be set. I have no idea how the signs on the posts on the Mall got approved. That was before my time on the BAR. Many people find them to be a hazard as well.

4) Oh, and that “new freestanding sign” outside of Quilts Unlimited has been there since we opened about four years or so ago. Where have you been?

I opened stores on the Downtown Mall because I believe in this community and want to see the Downtown thrive. The Downtown Mall is the heart and soul of Charlottesville. I think we all, including C-VILLE, should be committed to seeing the Downtown Mall be a place of joy and prosperity for everyone.

Joan Fenton

Charlottesville

The editor replies: Fenton is correct that a 16-member committee, not the BAR, crafted the regulations affecting Mall vendors. The BAR, which Fenton chairs, however, added one of the ordinance’s more controversial elements, as she correctly notes—namely, the prohibition of clothing racks. While that rule will affect Fenton’s business, too, she will retain the right to display and sell clothes inside April’s Corner, a privilege denied to her competitors who do not operate inside Downtown retail properties. As for the details surrounding the approval of the York Place signs, Fenton’s facts align with those reported by John Borgmeyer, who evidently was not as distracted by Fenton’s public-hearing apparel as she purports. Finally, if the sign outside Fenton’s store has been around for four years, this fact was not, at the time the story was reported, known to all of her employees, one of whom identified it as “new” to C-VILLE.