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Fishbowl

Feels like the last time
After a bad season of foul weather and Foreigner, CDF could be ready to bow out of Fridays

Charlottesville needs less than two inches of precipitation in the remaining weeks of 2003 to break a 66-year-old record for annual rainfall. That’s quite a reversal of fortune from last year’s drought, a change that climatology experts, quoted in The Daily Progress, attribute to shifts in the jet stream.

But some of the credit––or blame—for the rain must fall on the coifed heads of Foreigner, the ’70s arena rockers whose Fridays After 5 concert was rained out three times last summer. Apparently offended by Foreigner, the gods of rock thrice sent a series of storms, including Hurricane Isabel, to rain out the hot-blooded band. The Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, which runs Fridays After 5, finally held the Foreigner show at the Downtown Amphitheater on Sunday, September 28.

The anti-Foreigner showers also ended up playing head games with Fridays After 5—it now seems the bad weather may have shut down Fridays for good.

“It’s not clear to me at this time that they [the CDF] would be prepared to take on that event next year,” said Aubrey Watts, the City’s director of economic development, in a report to City Council on Monday, December 1.

Charlottesville is planning to start building a federally funded transit center near City Hall in 2004. The construction will include improvements to the amphitheater, home to the Fridays concerts, and Watts predicts the work will interrupt shows during the summer of either 2004 or 2005. Watts told Council the City is negotiating with CDF to hold the concerts somewhere else––perhaps the parking lot at the old Save-A-Lot grocery store near the Omni Hotel––during construction.

But in his report to Council, Watts hinted that the CDF might not be able to put on the shows next year.

“This year with the rain and everything, they had to end up canceling some shows,” Watts said to C-VILLE later. “They are having some issues they’re trying to work through.”

Asked if the City would consider picking up the tab for Fridays After 5, Watts said “I have not seen any desire on the part of the City to do that, but that could change.”

Last year the CDF began charging admission fees to Fridays After 5 to boost the group’s flagging finances, but the organization still seems shaky. President Patricia Goodloe says the CDF would certainly look for a new location for the concerts if necessary, but she wouldn’t comment on whether financial difficulties will mean the end of the concerts. She said she is negotiating with the City on the future of Fridays.

“I don’t want to mess up those negotiations by making any formal statements,” says Goodloe.

Regardless of the CDF’s financial outlook, free or cheap concerts Downtown could come to an end, anyway. On December 1 the Council considered leasing the Downtown Amphitheater to the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority, which would sublease the site to a private concert promoter. The leading candidate is Dave Matthews Band manager and über-developer Coran Capshaw.

Under the current plan, the City would loan the CIDA $2.5 million, and that agency in turn would loan the money to Capshaw at “a below-commercial bank rate,” according to City documents. The developer would use the money to improve the amphitheater and its sound system, and pay back the City over several decades.

Council will vote on the proposal at its next meeting on December 15. According to City documents, the City wants Capshaw to provide for a minimum of 20 public events, such as Municipal Band concerts and First Night Virginia, and provide a Fridays After 5-type event during the summer “so long as it is economically feasible.”

Councilor Kevin Lynch took issue with that clause, saying he wanted some assurance that Capshaw would hold “free or reasonably priced” concerts. Mayor Maurice Cox countered that such a commitment would be unrealistic.

“It’s unreasonable to for us to say events will be free, even if it’s not economically feasible,” says Cox. “[This deal] is going to bring a level of experience in managing entertainment that we have no precedent for here in Charlottesville.”

Watts, who negotiated a similar lease arrangement with SNL Financial when that company moved from its Mall building to the former National Ground Intelligence Center, is negotiating the exact terms of the lease with Capshaw. His management of the amphitheater will likely mean more expensive shows, as his will be a profit-making venture. But if Capshaw’s Starr Hill Music Hall is any indication, those shows will be culled from a 21st-century roster of artists. Maybe that will keep the rock gods happy.––John Borgmeyer
 

Man of few words
Crozetians want to hear about the new Supe’s pro-growth agenda, but Wyant’s not talking

Now that David Wyant has won the White Hall seat on Albemarle’s Board of Supervisors, his new constituents would like to know more about him. So far, that hasn’t proven easy.

Speaking at candidate forums held in Crozet during the race, Wyant disparaged the major planning project affecting his district, the Crozet Master Plan. Wyant’s campaign literature, for example, said the much-publicized plan (which drew an average of 125 citizens to each of 10 community meetings) was the unrealistic product of “a very small group of people with the backing of special interests.”

Laura Juel, for one, would like to get past Wyant’s public remarks to better understand how he plans to manage Crozet’s impending dramatic growth. A town of 3,000, Crozet, under current zoning, could quadruple by 2020. Like many people in Wyant’s district, Juel awaits the new arrivals as she would a hurricane––hoping for light rains while boarding up the windows.

“I know the growth is coming,” she says. “What are we going to do about it?” That’s the big question in Wyant’s district, but it’s hard to get him to address it.

“I know his family has lived here for more than 200 years. He’s said that several times,” Juel says. “But I don’t know anything about his vision.”

Of 4,017 votes cast in Crozet, Free Union, Earlysville, Brownsville and Yellow Mountain, the Republican Wyant took 54 percent by employing the tried-and-true strategy of bashing an opponent while making as few public commitments as possible. The closest race within the district was in Crozet, where Wyant topped his opponent, Democrat Eric Strucko, by a slender 41 votes.

On the issue of growth, candidate Wyant would only say, “I am not in favor of taking away peoples’ property rights,” which some might recognize as a sly wink to developers.

While Wyant said little about growth, Strucko perhaps said too much. Strucko sat on the County’s Development Initiative Steering Committee (DISC), where he spent time working on the Crozet Master Plan. Starting in January 2002, the County sent architects and planners to meet with Crozetians in a series of community work sessions that were advertised in media outlets, stores, libraries and gas stations. Details of the plan were hung in the Crozet post office.

The resulting Crozet Master Plan aims to coordinate the development of subdivisions, roads, shopping centers and schools in a pedestrian-friendly scale, with the hope that Route 250W won’t follow the example set in the County’s other growth areas along Route 29N and Pantops.

“Growth management doesn’t lend itself to sound bites, where the message is conveyed in 10 seconds,” Strucko says. “It has a lot of moving parts and requires contemplation. I think I laid out too much of a plan.”

Strucko credits the Wyant campaign for playing on people’s fear of growth by spinning the Crozet Master Plan as “my opponent’s plan to urbanize Crozet.” That’s the way Wyant described it in a statement conveyed via his campaign manager to C-VILLE in October.

“The whole thing is really screwed up,” says Brian Cohen, who publishes the Crozet-centric newspaper The Whistle. In his November “Soapbox” column, Cohen claimed “Wyant lied and misled the citizenry” by portraying Strucko as a tool of special interests who wanted to bring growth, raise taxes and curtail property rights.

“[Wyant] is accurate in that Strucko’s approach takes a lot of regulation,” says Vito Cetta, whose company, Weather Hill Homes, is building about 80 houses in Crozet. “That’s because we live in a beautiful place, and we want to keep it beautiful. Buildings are so visible, and this stuff will be around indefinitely.

“Albemarle is getting 800 new homes a year whether we like it or not,” says Cetta. “We have to have sensible planning, or this place will look like a big subdivision. Anybody, in general, who would object to planning I think they got blinders on.”

Cetta says he thinks White Hall’s Supervisor-elect “means well” and hopes Wyant will change his mind once he learns more about the plan. Wyant himself has acknowledged in forums that he didn’t attend any of the Crozet Master Plan development sessions, and Wyant hasn’t spoken to any of the plan’s major players––County planner Susan Thomas, Planning Committee Chair Will Reiley and architects Warren Byrd and Kenneth Schwartz, for instance––for details about Crozet’s future.

“I’d be interested to hear his alternatives,” says Cetta.

So would many others, but Wyant isn’t talking. He didn’t return numerous calls over several weeks from C-VILLE, and Cohen says he was only able to interview Wyant for a voter’s guide through his campaign manager, Peter Maillet. Juel, who is president of the 350-member Crozet Community Association, says she couldn’t get calls returned to have Wyant speak at candidate forums.

“When I’ve spoken with him at candidate forums, he didn’t really answer the questions. He just changed the subject,” says Juel, who describes Wyant as “real flippant.”

“I asked him how I could get in touch with him,” says Juel. “He said he’d have somebody get back with me. I said, ‘No, if I elect you, I want to talk to you.’ He said he had a lot of things going on.”

The County’s Planning Commission is currently reviewing the Crozet Master Plan. The Board of Supervisors––including Wyant––will vote on the plan in late January.––John Borgmeyer

 

Unchained melody
The Washington, D.C., DJ duo Blowoff, a.k.a. Richard Morel and Bob Mould, inaugurated new local dance club R2 on November 14. With enthusiasm for Charlottesville and what they saw of its club scene, Blowoff will return to R2 on December 12 and January 16. Blowoff is one of several projects for each of the musicians. Mould, who has fronted rock bands like Hüsker Dü and Sugar and worked as a solo artist during the past 20 years, also had a stint as a scriptwriter for professional wrestling. More recently, he has branched out to record electronic-style music under his own name as well as the pseudonym LoudBomb. Morel fronts an electronica-guitar rock band called Morel, which last year released the sublime CD Queen of the Highway. As Pink Noise, he is also a much-sought-after remix master, who has worked with Mariah Carey, Beth Orton and Charlottesville’s own Clare Quilty. Both profess a deep appreciation of pop music: Morel likes the Pink/William Orbit single from the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle soundtrack and new music by Mark Ronson; Mould likes the new Sarah McLachlan record, calling the single “heartbreaking.” He also characterized the latest TV commercial for Little Debbie Snack Cakes as “trippy” and “really well done.” Cathy Harding talked to Blowoff about working the crowd at R2 and wearing so many musical hats.

Cathy Harding: What were your impressions of R2?

Richard Morel: For both of us it was really exciting to go to Charlottesville. We thought the crowd was so cool and so hip to what we were doing. We had no expectations going in. We left on a total high because the night was so great.

Bob Mould: We have a weekly gig at the Backbar at 9:30 Club in Washington and it’s a much more intimate space. I was pretty blown away by the amount of immediate feedback at R2. Not only people dancing but people looking up to the booth and giving the big thumbs up to certain songs, which was great.

Your set lists have a really wide mix of club music, pop music and everything in between. With your motto, “Let the music set you free,” are you speaking as much to yourselves as you are to the crowd?

RM: Absolutely. One of the things that is central to both of us is we play music that we truly love and dig. We play records that we get off on. As far as the style, it’s less important than the vibe we get off them.

BM: I’ve been making music and listening to music and obsessed with music my whole life. It’s an interesting time in the sense that when I started in music professionally 25 years ago, there were only five or six stylistic differentiations in music. As information has traded quicker and technology has made it much more affordable for everyone to make music, it has become so much more splintered that it would be pointless to be so micro-genre-specific. As Rich said, a good song is a good song. The challenge is how to string them all together across the course of an evening as legendary DJs used to do to try to tell a story through the night.

Is there a learning curve to going from guitar, bass and drums to the DJ gear?

BM: For me, the past five or six years has been learning by trial and error, learning by looking at the manuals, and learning by listening to music I like and emulating it, which is pretty much how I learned to play guitar many years ago.

On the first night at R2, I kept thinking about the DJ as a director of a ’60s-style Happening: It’s great, when it’s working, to set the direction for an ephemeral event, and really difficult, I bet, when it’s not.

RM: When I got back into the dance and rave scene seven or eight years ago, I immediately thought it was like a Grateful Dead concert. That was the closest reference I had to club culture and what was going on at that point. Besides the obvious drug reference, there was a large group of people responding to music. It had a real hippie vibe.

What’s the status of the Blowoff record?

BM: We’re about 10 songs in. I would feel good if we got four to six more songs recorded in the next couple of months. It’s a pretty wide variety of styles.

RM: It’s kind of a good mixing of where Bob is coming from and where I’m coming from. At one point, Bob was talking about how it has a ’60s pop sensibility with two male vocals a lot of times singing together. The production is not like that, but in terms of the classic two male vocals

…Are we talking Everly Brothers here?

RM: In a way. Or Righteous Brothers or The Association. Of course, the lyrics are a little different, but the themes are the same.

Relationships, looking down the road, wondering about your identity?

BM: Pretty much. It tends to be on the darker side. The music is pretty uplifting. Personally that’s a combination that has always intrigued me—the darker lyric with the brighter music. There’s a lot of guitar on it, there’s a lot of beats on it, there’s a lot of vocals on it, there’s a lot of trading off lyrical ideas on it.

What about the individual projects, like Bob’s Body of Song?

BM: I’ve been talking to a number of labels about releasing that. In the next couple of weeks I’ll know when that record will be up and available. For my older fans, it’s more in the Workbook vein.

RM: We’re just completing the new Morel record, which will come out, hopefully on Yoshitoshi, the end of next year. On the Pink Noise front, I’ve done a remix of Luke Wan, which is coming out in the next month, called “The Wish.”

Is it challenging to have so many different music identities?

BM: My personal frustration is my birth name and the work that I do under that has been so prominent for so long that people who write about music are hesitant to go with me on the other things.

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News

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.

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Uncategorized

Fishbowl

Feels like the last time
After a bad season of foul weather and Foreigner, CDF could be ready to bow out of Fridays

Charlottesville needs less than two inches of precipitation in the remaining weeks of 2003 to break a 66-year-old record for annual rainfall. That’s quite a reversal of fortune from last year’s drought, a change that climatology experts, quoted in The Daily Progress, attribute to shifts in the jet stream.

But some of the credit––or blame—for the rain must fall on the coifed heads of Foreigner, the ’70s arena rockers whose Fridays After 5 concert was rained out three times last summer. Apparently offended by Foreigner, the gods of rock thrice sent a series of storms, including Hurricane Isabel, to rain out the hot-blooded band. The Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, which runs Fridays After 5, finally held the Foreigner show at the Downtown Amphitheater on Sunday, September 28.

The anti-Foreigner showers also ended up playing head games with Fridays After 5—it now seems the bad weather may have shut down Fridays for good.

“It’s not clear to me at this time that they [the CDF] would be prepared to take on that event next year,” said Aubrey Watts, the City’s director of economic development, in a report to City Council on Monday, December 1.

Charlottesville is planning to start building a federally funded transit center near City Hall in 2004. The construction will include improvements to the amphitheater, home to the Fridays concerts, and Watts predicts the work will interrupt shows during the summer of either 2004 or 2005. Watts told Council the City is negotiating with CDF to hold the concerts somewhere else––perhaps the parking lot at the old Save-A-Lot grocery store near the Omni Hotel––during construction.

But in his report to Council, Watts hinted that the CDF might not be able to put on the shows next year.

“This year with the rain and everything, they had to end up canceling some shows,” Watts said to C-VILLE later. “They are having some issues they’re trying to work through.”

Asked if the City would consider picking up the tab for Fridays After 5, Watts said “I have not seen any desire on the part of the City to do that, but that could change.”

Last year the CDF began charging admission fees to Fridays After 5 to boost the group’s flagging finances, but the organization still seems shaky. President Patricia Goodloe says the CDF would certainly look for a new location for the concerts if necessary, but she wouldn’t comment on whether financial difficulties will mean the end of the concerts. She said she is negotiating with the City on the future of Fridays.

“I don’t want to mess up those negotiations by making any formal statements,” says Goodloe.

Regardless of the CDF’s financial outlook, free or cheap concerts Downtown could come to an end, anyway. On December 1 the Council considered leasing the Downtown Amphitheater to the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority, which would sublease the site to a private concert promoter. The leading candidate is Dave Matthews Band manager and über-developer Coran Capshaw.

Under the current plan, the City would loan the CIDA $2.5 million, and that agency in turn would loan the money to Capshaw at “a below-commercial bank rate,” according to City documents. The developer would use the money to improve the amphitheater and its sound system, and pay back the City over several decades.

Council will vote on the proposal at its next meeting on December 15. According to City documents, the City wants Capshaw to provide for a minimum of 20 public events, such as Municipal Band concerts and First Night Virginia, and provide a Fridays After 5-type event during the summer “so long as it is economically feasible.”

Councilor Kevin Lynch took issue with that clause, saying he wanted some assurance that Capshaw would hold “free or reasonably priced” concerts. Mayor Maurice Cox countered that such a commitment would be unrealistic.

“It’s unreasonable to for us to say events will be free, even if it’s not economically feasible,” says Cox. “[This deal] is going to bring a level of experience in managing entertainment that we have no precedent for here in Charlottesville.”

Watts, who negotiated a similar lease arrangement with SNL Financial when that company moved from its Mall building to the former National Ground Intelligence Center, is negotiating the exact terms of the lease with Capshaw. His management of the amphitheater will likely mean more expensive shows, as his will be a profit-making venture. But if Capshaw’s Starr Hill Music Hall is any indication, those shows will be culled from a 21st-century roster of artists. Maybe that will keep the rock gods happy.––John Borgmeyer
 

Man of few words
Crozetians want to hear about the new Supe’s pro-growth agenda, but Wyant’s not talking

Now that David Wyant has won the White Hall seat on Albemarle’s Board of Supervisors, his new constituents would like to know more about him. So far, that hasn’t proven easy.

Speaking at candidate forums held in Crozet during the race, Wyant disparaged the major planning project affecting his district, the Crozet Master Plan. Wyant’s campaign literature, for example, said the much-publicized plan (which drew an average of 125 citizens to each of 10 community meetings) was the unrealistic product of “a very small group of people with the backing of special interests.”

Laura Juel, for one, would like to get past Wyant’s public remarks to better understand how he plans to manage Crozet’s impending dramatic growth. A town of 3,000, Crozet, under current zoning, could quadruple by 2020. Like many people in Wyant’s district, Juel awaits the new arrivals as she would a hurricane––hoping for light rains while boarding up the windows.

“I know the growth is coming,” she says. “What are we going to do about it?” That’s the big question in Wyant’s district, but it’s hard to get him to address it.

“I know his family has lived here for more than 200 years. He’s said that several times,” Juel says. “But I don’t know anything about his vision.”

Of 4,017 votes cast in Crozet, Free Union, Earlysville, Brownsville and Yellow Mountain, the Republican Wyant took 54 percent by employing the tried-and-true strategy of bashing an opponent while making as few public commitments as possible. The closest race within the district was in Crozet, where Wyant topped his opponent, Democrat Eric Strucko, by a slender 41 votes.

On the issue of growth, candidate Wyant would only say, “I am not in favor of taking away peoples’ property rights,” which some might recognize as a sly wink to developers.

While Wyant said little about growth, Strucko perhaps said too much. Strucko sat on the County’s Development Initiative Steering Committee (DISC), where he spent time working on the Crozet Master Plan. Starting in January 2002, the County sent architects and planners to meet with Crozetians in a series of community work sessions that were advertised in media outlets, stores, libraries and gas stations. Details of the plan were hung in the Crozet post office.

The resulting Crozet Master Plan aims to coordinate the development of subdivisions, roads, shopping centers and schools in a pedestrian-friendly scale, with the hope that Route 250W won’t follow the example set in the County’s other growth areas along Route 29N and Pantops.

“Growth management doesn’t lend itself to sound bites, where the message is conveyed in 10 seconds,” Strucko says. “It has a lot of moving parts and requires contemplation. I think I laid out too much of a plan.”

Strucko credits the Wyant campaign for playing on people’s fear of growth by spinning the Crozet Master Plan as “my opponent’s plan to urbanize Crozet.” That’s the way Wyant described it in a statement conveyed via his campaign manager to C-VILLE in October.

“The whole thing is really screwed up,” says Brian Cohen, who publishes the Crozet-centric newspaper The Whistle. In his November “Soapbox” column, Cohen claimed “Wyant lied and misled the citizenry” by portraying Strucko as a tool of special interests who wanted to bring growth, raise taxes and curtail property rights.

“[Wyant] is accurate in that Strucko’s approach takes a lot of regulation,” says Vito Cetta, whose company, Weather Hill Homes, is building about 80 houses in Crozet. “That’s because we live in a beautiful place, and we want to keep it beautiful. Buildings are so visible, and this stuff will be around indefinitely.

“Albemarle is getting 800 new homes a year whether we like it or not,” says Cetta. “We have to have sensible planning, or this place will look like a big subdivision. Anybody, in general, who would object to planning I think they got blinders on.”

Cetta says he thinks White Hall’s Supervisor-elect “means well” and hopes Wyant will change his mind once he learns more about the plan. Wyant himself has acknowledged in forums that he didn’t attend any of the Crozet Master Plan development sessions, and Wyant hasn’t spoken to any of the plan’s major players––County planner Susan Thomas, Planning Committee Chair Will Reiley and architects Warren Byrd and Kenneth Schwartz, for instance––for details about Crozet’s future.

“I’d be interested to hear his alternatives,” says Cetta.

So would many others, but Wyant isn’t talking. He didn’t return numerous calls over several weeks from C-VILLE, and Cohen says he was only able to interview Wyant for a voter’s guide through his campaign manager, Peter Maillet. Juel, who is president of the 350-member Crozet Community Association, says she couldn’t get calls returned to have Wyant speak at candidate forums.

“When I’ve spoken with him at candidate forums, he didn’t really answer the questions. He just changed the subject,” says Juel, who describes Wyant as “real flippant.”

“I asked him how I could get in touch with him,” says Juel. “He said he’d have somebody get back with me. I said, ‘No, if I elect you, I want to talk to you.’ He said he had a lot of things going on.”

The County’s Planning Commission is currently reviewing the Crozet Master Plan. The Board of Supervisors––including Wyant––will vote on the plan in late January.––John Borgmeyer

 

Unchained melody
The Washington, D.C., DJ duo Blowoff, a.k.a. Richard Morel and Bob Mould, inaugurated new local dance club R2 on November 14. With enthusiasm for Charlottesville and what they saw of its club scene, Blowoff will return to R2 on December 12 and January 16. Blowoff is one of several projects for each of the musicians. Mould, who has fronted rock bands like Hüsker Dü and Sugar and worked as a solo artist during the past 20 years, also had a stint as a scriptwriter for professional wrestling. More recently, he has branched out to record electronic-style music under his own name as well as the pseudonym LoudBomb. Morel fronts an electronica-guitar rock band called Morel, which last year released the sublime CD Queen of the Highway. As Pink Noise, he is also a much-sought-after remix master, who has worked with Mariah Carey, Beth Orton and Charlottesville’s own Clare Quilty. Both profess a deep appreciation of pop music: Morel likes the Pink/William Orbit single from the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle soundtrack and new music by Mark Ronson; Mould likes the new Sarah McLachlan record, calling the single “heartbreaking.” He also characterized the latest TV commercial for Little Debbie Snack Cakes as “trippy” and “really well done.” Cathy Harding talked to Blowoff about working the crowd at R2 and wearing so many musical hats.

Cathy Harding: What were your impressions of R2?

Richard Morel: For both of us it was really exciting to go to Charlottesville. We thought the crowd was so cool and so hip to what we were doing. We had no expectations going in. We left on a total high because the night was so great.

Bob Mould: We have a weekly gig at the Backbar at 9:30 Club in Washington and it’s a much more intimate space. I was pretty blown away by the amount of immediate feedback at R2. Not only people dancing but people looking up to the booth and giving the big thumbs up to certain songs, which was great.

Your set lists have a really wide mix of club music, pop music and everything in between. With your motto, “Let the music set you free,” are you speaking as much to yourselves as you are to the crowd?

RM: Absolutely. One of the things that is central to both of us is we play music that we truly love and dig. We play records that we get off on. As far as the style, it’s less important than the vibe we get off them.

BM: I’ve been making music and listening to music and obsessed with music my whole life. It’s an interesting time in the sense that when I started in music professionally 25 years ago, there were only five or six stylistic differentiations in music. As information has traded quicker and technology has made it much more affordable for everyone to make music, it has become so much more splintered that it would be pointless to be so micro-genre-specific. As Rich said, a good song is a good song. The challenge is how to string them all together across the course of an evening as legendary DJs used to do to try to tell a story through the night.

Is there a learning curve to going from guitar, bass and drums to the DJ gear?

BM: For me, the past five or six years has been learning by trial and error, learning by looking at the manuals, and learning by listening to music I like and emulating it, which is pretty much how I learned to play guitar many years ago.

On the first night at R2, I kept thinking about the DJ as a director of a ’60s-style Happening: It’s great, when it’s working, to set the direction for an ephemeral event, and really difficult, I bet, when it’s not.

RM: When I got back into the dance and rave scene seven or eight years ago, I immediately thought it was like a Grateful Dead concert. That was the closest reference I had to club culture and what was going on at that point. Besides the obvious drug reference, there was a large group of people responding to music. It had a real hippie vibe.

What’s the status of the Blowoff record?

BM: We’re about 10 songs in. I would feel good if we got four to six more songs recorded in the next couple of months. It’s a pretty wide variety of styles.

RM: It’s kind of a good mixing of where Bob is coming from and where I’m coming from. At one point, Bob was talking about how it has a ’60s pop sensibility with two male vocals a lot of times singing together. The production is not like that, but in terms of the classic two male vocals

…Are we talking Everly Brothers here?

RM: In a way. Or Righteous Brothers or The Association. Of course, the lyrics are a little different, but the themes are the same.

Relationships, looking down the road, wondering about your identity?

BM: Pretty much. It tends to be on the darker side. The music is pretty uplifting. Personally that’s a combination that has always intrigued me—the darker lyric with the brighter music. There’s a lot of guitar on it, there’s a lot of beats on it, there’s a lot of vocals on it, there’s a lot of trading off lyrical ideas on it.

What about the individual projects, like Bob’s Body of Song?

BM: I’ve been talking to a number of labels about releasing that. In the next couple of weeks I’ll know when that record will be up and available. For my older fans, it’s more in the Workbook vein.

RM: We’re just completing the new Morel record, which will come out, hopefully on Yoshitoshi, the end of next year. On the Pink Noise front, I’ve done a remix of Luke Wan, which is coming out in the next month, called “The Wish.”

Is it challenging to have so many different music identities?

BM: My personal frustration is my birth name and the work that I do under that has been so prominent for so long that people who write about music are hesitant to go with me on the other things.

Categories
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.

Categories
News

Murder Ink

When UVA student Andrew Alston was charged with the murder of Walker Sisk on November 8, the tail ends of news stories in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Daily Progress cited another recent case of a UVA student to be charged with murder. “That’s me, the last paragraph,” says convicted murderer Jens Soering from a visiting room at the Brunswick Correctional Center in south central Virginia. Soering is a former Jefferson Scholar and honor student at UVA who, in 1990, was found guilty of the 1985 murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom at their Bedford County home. The Haysoms’ daughter, Elizabeth Haysom, was Soering’s girlfriend and fellow UVA student. Soering still vigorously proclaims his innocence in the gruesome slayings.

Though Soering talks of his recent news cameo with a wry tone that suggests embarrassment, he is working hard to ensure his story and his self-proclaimed “mission” are far more than just a throwaway paragraph in a newspaper story.

As of October, Soering is a published author with a book called The Way of the Prisoner: Breaking the Chains of Self Through Centering Prayer and Centering Practice. Soering’s book, available on Amazon.com, includes a jacket endorsement from Sister Helen Prejean, the author of Dead Man Walking. In the last year Soering has written dozens of essays that deal with prison reform and Christian prayer techniques, several of which have been published in venues such as America: The Catholic Weekly Magazine and Sojourners Magazine. He has also just finished the handwritten manuscript of a second book, a consideration of the penal system.

“There are things about us that never change,” Soering says of his dogged academic discipline, which earned him a full ride to UVA in 1984. “I can’t be the best student, but I can be the best damn convict.”

The budding prison author does not appear likely to rest on his laurels. Soering says that between his waking hours of 4:45am to 8:15pm, he crams in a daily ritual of writing, prayer, exercise and a job representing other inmates in a jailhouse tribunal. Soering has never received a prison demerit in the more than 17 years he’s been in jail.

“I’m in the saddle and I work. This is my job,” Soering says of his prison life. “Trust me, this is just the start, I’m just getting going.”

Soering was exposed to Buddhism as a child, but remained agnostic until his conversion to Christianity in 1994. Soering’s The Way of the Prisoner is mostly a tutorial in a Christian form of meditation called Centering Prayer, which Soering extrapolates to a broader lifestyle/teaching he calls Centering Practice. But the book is also a thorough rebuttal of Soering’s guilty verdict and a denunciation of the United States prison system. Though Soering insists the murder case comprises a small portion of the book and can be skipped without interrupting the flow of its spiritual side, the graphic and disturbing descriptions of his murder case and prison life interspersed among scriptural references and prayer techniques make for a bumpy reading experience.

“Could I have written just a little book on prayer? Sure. Who the hell would buy it?” Soering asks.

But Soering’s book raises another concern: Should people value a convicted double murderer’s opinions on prison reform or Christian prayer? Furthermore, should Soering profit from the sales of his book?

This is a dilemma Soering anticipated, and his book is rife with attempts to defend his role as message bearer. For instance, he argues: Who better to advise people with a terminal illness than a man who sat behind bars for more than three years awaiting almost certain death by the electric chair? And doesn’t a convict who has served 17 years in Virginia’s prisons have some expertise on the ills of the penal system?

Captain Ricky Gardner of the Bedford County Sheriff’s Department was a Bedford cop who investigated the Haysoms’ murder. He traveled to London, where Soering was eventually apprehended, to participate in Soering’s interrogation and helped take two separate confessions from Soering. It was Gardner’s first murder case. “I picked a good one,” he says.

Gardner expressed curiosity about Soering’s book, and though he says Soering’s publishing foray doesn’t bother him, but he adds: “I’m sure it does offend the victims’ families.”

“I don’t know that he’ll ever step up to the plate and tell the truth,” Gardner says of Soering’s continued insistence of his innocence.

Soering’s book is published by Lantern Books, a New York-based publisher that specializes in authors with a spiritual or liberal activism bent. The book sports a price tag of $17.95, but whether Soering can reap any of the profits from the book’s sale is unclear. Many states have so-called “Son-of-Sam” laws, named for infamous New York City serial killer David Berkowitz. Virginia has a Son of Sam law on the books, which mandates that a defendant must forfeit any proceeds gained as result of his crime, or even from “the notoriety which such crime or sentence has conferred on him.”

Soering did his homework on the Son of Sam rule—even citing the Virginia Code on his prison-produced website. He says Way of the Prisoner should be in the clear, as he states that less than 10 percent of the tome actually deals with his case. He further covers his bases by volunteering to cede all royalties from the book to charity, with the exception of a portion to cover his writing expenses—stamps, photocopying of manuscripts, etc.

Sarah Gallogly is Soering’s editor at Lantern. She says Soering’s book “was wonderful to work on because it was so well written.” Lantern usually prints a small first run of its author’s books, and then ups the ante on reprints.

“We have hopes for it certainly in the religious community,” Gallogly says of sales of Soering’s book.

Gallogly could not say what percentage of the book’s royalties would go to Soering. She says Lantern is aware of the Son of Sam snag, but received “legal advice to the effect that there probably aren’t grounds” for Virginia to grab the book’s revenue.

Larry Traylor, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections, says the decision to pursue Soering’s proceeds is probably up to the Commonwealth Attorneys or local district that originally prosecuted him—in this case, Bedford County.

 

Most people involved in the Soering trial, or even just familiar with it, likely wish that Jens Soering would remain hidden in his cell, never to be heard from again. But he continues to find and cultivate influential allies and to garner attention from behind bars with persuasive words and considerable charm.

In his preface to The Way of the Prisoner, Rev. Richard A. Busch, Ph.D., a Professor Emeritus at the Virginia Theological Seminary, writes that after reading Soering’s manuscript, he began corresponding with Soering and visiting him on a regular basis. He describes Soering as “a very special human being” who is both bright and articulate.

“Jens has a rare gift: the ability to deal with deep issues of the human spirit,” Rev. Busch writes, adding that Soering has “awakened in me a growing involvement in prison issues and reform.”

Soering appears sincere in his quest to spread the word about the power of Christian meditation and the ills of Virginia’s prison system. But his personal story of suffering and eventual transcendence is prominent in the book, whether as a case study for how to apply Centering Practice, or to illustrate prison failures and the power of forgiveness.

“I’ve been kidnapped…for a very long time. Yeah, the only way I can deal with that is to make it about something larger than myself,” Soering says. “Man, you can find a guy like me in every cell house, and every penitentiary. I’m just a guy who can write it, and who can make the biblical and scriptural connections. Which is why I say that God sent me here for that purpose. Other guys are just not as eloquent as I am.”

Soering has always stood out from the crowd, for good or for ill. And though The Way of the Prisoner is loaded with research and well-elucidated arguments, it is decidedly about one particular prisoner.

Though Soering expects to die in prison, the notorious former Charlottesville denizen says the town remains prominent in his thoughts.

“I just have good memories of it,” Soering says of Charlottesville. “I’d like to see people, you know, lying on the Lawn at UVA, you know, between classes, and, you know, reading this,” he says pointing to the book. “Why not?”

When asked where his favorite pre-prison memories occurred, Soering cites his grandmother’s chateau on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland. But he reluctantly admits he’d rather trade another fantasy life for that of a luxurious existence in Europe.

“I would like to be exonerated. I would like the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Services] to give me a green card because I don’t want to leave, O.K.?” Soering says. “And I would like to be sort of the resident UVA law school weenie responsible for being the gadfly on the Department of Corrections’ behind.”

That fantasy will remain on hold while Soering continues to serve two life sentences for the murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom. He is incarcerated with approximately 760 other inmates at the Brunswick Correctional Center, which is about 15 miles from the North Carolina border. The Brunswick facility is only about a 140-mile drive from Charlottesville, but the journey seems to traverse a distinct regional boundary.

One of the northerly approaches to the prison is a twisting and unlined road with trees crowding each side. The Brunswick County Chamber of Commerce claims as many major correctional facilities as hotels, and the nearest town of Lawrenceville is a sleepy place of 1,275 people. The prison itself is a tidy, brick complex with two rows of razor-wire-enforced fences. The maximum security level for a Virginia prison is six. Brunswick is level three.

Soering lets himself into a small, cold visiting room with bars on one row of windows, and smiles as he removes an orange wool cap, which he stuffs into his jacket pocket. He is not wearing any form of restraint or any overt markings of his prisoner status. The only visible sign of security in the vicinity is a revolver, which lies between a Subway beverage cup and a tape dispenser in the adjacent guard station, its chamber open and displaying six bullets.

Though prison life at Brunswick differs radically from Soering’s earlier turns as a promising UVA honors student, or even as a young adult on the run with his girlfriend in Europe, a static existence has never been Soering’s fate. He was born in Bangkok, Thailand, to a German diplomat and his wife and spent the rest of his pre-adulthood on the island of Cyprus, in Germany and finally at a prep school in Atlanta. German is Soering’s native tongue, and he retains a subtle, highbrow accent tinged by German and the British school English he learned as a small child on Cyprus.

The global-elite upbringing led to a feeling of detachment for young Jens, a feeling that has persisted during his long incarceration. But that wasn’t the case during his brief time at UVA.

“UVA was like, it was like heaven,” Soering says. “For the first time in my life I was surrounded by people like me.”

One of those people was Elizabeth Haysom, an attractive freshman honors student at UVA who was almost two years older than Soering. Haysom was the daughter of a Nova Scotia steel company executive, and had a penchant for heroin, LSD and extravagant tales, many of them untrue. Like Soering, Haysom had lived a sophisticated life replete with international experiences. She was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and lived in Luxembourg, Canada and England prior to her family’s move to a Bedford County suburb of Lynchburg. As a teenager, Haysom ran away from her English boarding school and took an illicit sojourn with a female friend around Europe.

Both Soering and Haysom have admitted that their relationship resulted in the deaths of Elizabeth’s parents, Derek and Nancy, reported to be 72 and 54, respectively, at the time of their deaths. The Haysoms were murdered in a brutal attack, their bodies discovered a few days later, on April 3, 1985. They had both been stabbed many times, and had massive slashes to their throats. The scene at their home was gruesome, with blood coating the floors. There was no sign of forced entry [see sidebar].

Several months after the murders, following being questioned about their activities during the presumed weekend of the murder, Soering and Haysom fled the country. They traveled together to Bangkok, France, Switzerland, England and perhaps elsewhere.

Police arrested the jet-setting couple for an attempted shoplifting scam at an upscale department store in a London suburb in April 1986. Haysom was extradited and pleaded guilty as an accessory to the murder of her parents, and was convicted in October 1987. Soering initially confessed, repeatedly, to the murders. He now claims he did so to save his girlfriend and in the mistaken belief that, as a German citizen, he would be deported to Germany and tried as a minor. He was eventually extradited to Virginia and tried in Bedford County in June 1990—more than five years after the homicides. Though he recanted his confessions, his letters to Haysom and a bloody sock print from the scene of the murders that seemed to match Soering’s foot proved more compelling to the six men and six women on the jury. Soering’s supercilious aura didn’t help his defense, either. The jury convicted him of both murders on June 21, 1990, and he was sentenced to two life sentences.

 

On the night of his conviction, Soering says he made a half-hearted attempt to kill himself with a plastic bag and shoestrings. He survived, and has now become a disciplined veteran prisoner, a self-described “old head.” The baby fat-addled awkwardness he displayed during the trial, enhanced by thick glasses and a bowl haircut, has been replaced by a trim and confident looking 37-year-old man who lifts weights and jogs four to five miles every other day. Though fit, he certainly doesn’t look like a prison goon. He is slight, and his wire-rim glasses and neat haircut give him an intellectual air.

During our interview in the Brunswick prison, Soering thoughtfully responds to questions and displays a healthy amount of humility. He is quick-witted, likeable and laughs often. He claims to be “content” with his current life, which is dominated by Christian devotion and his mission of prison reform, but is in no way at peace with his imprisonment.

“Seventeen years, six months and 14 days have been taken out of my life,” Soering pauses, looks at his watch, and continues, “21 hours and 53 minutes, O.K. I know by the hour. I’m owed something. And I’m not just owed my puny little freedom.”

Soering says his ultimate goal is “to shine a light into what’s happening here, in America’s vastly overbuilt prison system, and to get justice.”

The foundation for Soering’s quest for justice is The Way of the Prisoner, a book Soering began on the day in January 2001 when the U.S. Supreme Court squashed all hopes of having his name cleared by the legal system. By denying his habeas corpus petition and refusing to hear his case, the Supreme Court effectively closed the file on the Haysoms’ murder forever.

Though Soering is eligible for parole, he says his release is unlikely. He was denied parole at his first parole board hearing in September.

So Soering, who claims to be an innocent man who was railroaded for life because of his foolishness and law enforcement’s need for a scapegoat, says he’s funneled his energy into helping the 2.1 million other incarcerated Americans, whom he calls “my brothers and my sisters.”

Soering’s book describes an instance when a fellow inmate grabbed him and threatened to drag him into a cell and rape him. Soering escaped this attack. Though disturbing, it seems surprising that this is Soering’s chief example of violence against him in his 17 years in Virginia prisons. In the book, Soering says Mecklenburg Correctional Center, the “supermax” at which this attack occurred, was “a comparatively successful and well-run prison” with vocational training, high school and college classes, libraries and five separate recreational yards. In fact, the British prison where inmates twice broke Soering’s thumb and wrist sounds rougher than Virginia’s pens.

But Soering’s success at surviving need not mean that Virginia’s lock-ups are soft, or even humane. The fact that a pencil-necked former UVA honors student can thwart a prison rape and become adept at navigating the myriad hazards of a penitentiary is evidence that a keen intellect can triumph over brawn even in the primordial, dog-eat-dog world of prison.

Soering’s major beef with the American justice system, as described in his book, is that it is rife with gross “mockeries of justice” in which the accused are not given fair trials. His point is not to say that convicts are necessarily innocent, but that the system itself is flawed because of the pressure to find and convict criminals. Soering writes that all Americans have a responsibility to correct the alleged flaws in the criminal justice system.

The Way of the Prisoner issues a strong suggestion for pursuing both contemplative peace and prison activism. “It is really so very simple: to learn how to carry your cross willingly, truthfully, dispassionately and altruistically—that is, to transform your metaphorical prison into your means of salvation—you must go to a real penitentiary over and over and over again, as a tutor, visitor or even minister.”

Soering also argues that reformed criminals should be released. As an example of this conviction and of the power of forgiveness, his book includes a letter he recently sent to Virginia Gov. Mark Warner asking for the release of Elizabeth Haysom. He concludes the book with a plea for the reader to send similar letters asking for Haysom’s freedom.

This act may be nothing more than the sincere example of Christian charity it purports to be. But Soering and his former lawyer admit that his chances of parole are extremely slim while Haysom, who was convicted of a lesser crime than Soering, remains in bars.

So in a way, the book Soering began on the day his appeals died continues his quest for freedom.

 

“Parole is not imminent,” Soering jokes after being asked if he has time to extend a prison interview.

Though his appeals are over, Soering can say he pulled all the stops in pursuing them. In addition to reaching the highest court in the land, he found an influential advocate to represent him during his appeals: Gail Starling Marshall, an adjunct professor at the UVA Law School and former Deputy Attorney General of Virginia.

In an interview at a coffee shop inside UVA law school, Marshall says she is no longer Soering’s attorney, but considers him to be a friend. Marshall says that in her 35 years of practice, only twice has she felt with “moral certainty” that a person had been convicted and was serving time for a crime he did not commit. She says one of those two cases is Soering’s.

“I cannot imagine that he is guilty, just because of the whole Gestalt of the circumstances,” Marshall says of Soering. “If he is [guilty], he doesn’t believe it.”

In addition to handling Soering’s appeals, Marshall recently wrote a lengthy letter to his parole board. In the letter, she contends that Soering is likely innocent, that he has shown no propensity toward violence while in prison, and that the parole board must make a good faith effort to grant parole where it is applicable. (Virginia eliminated parole after Soering was incarcerated, but he remains eligible.)

Marshall was joined at the recent parole hearing by one of Soering’s prep school buddies. Marshall says seeing Soering’s friend, now a banker in London, made her almost break down in tears.

“He [was] just such a nice, intelligent, caring, clean-cut young man,” Marshall says. “It was almost like seeing what might have been, for Jens.”

From Soering’s point of view, his incarceration has actually made him a better person. He says the overbearing intellectualism of his youth, now tempered by humility, did not serve him well during the period of the murders, or during his trial.

“I’m pretty sure that I thought [my intellectualism] made me better than a lot of people. I was a little shining, a little rising star,” Soering says.

Though Soering rebuts questions about his ego with aplomb, and displays humility in his book, he admits to being proud of his accomplishments in prison.

“Anybody who knows anything throughout the publishing industry, O.K., should be absolutely flabbergasted a convict managed to do this, because it’s so hard for you guys out there,” Soering says. He is even confident that the recent removal of his access to a word processor will not stall his publishing efforts: “I’m a resourceful young man who always finds an alternative.”

Soering has hit his academic stride 18 years after his last class at UVA. But the brief sense of belonging he felt as a Jefferson Scholar remains elusive. His father has ceased funding his efforts, and Soering writes at length about his brother Kai’s long abandonment of him. Though Soering says he has a few “associates” in his current prison (the word “friend” has an entirely different connotation behind bars), his true thrill in life is in trying to communicate with the outside world.

Soering is a prompt and helpful correspondent, and has submitted three essays to C-VILLE Weekly. Gallogly says Soering’s meticulousness and expedient response time helped her in the editing process with an author who communicated mostly through handwritten notes.

Fortunately for Soering, he has been able to enlist the help of fellow inmates and other prison visitors to help him in his writing ventures. One prisoner’s mother took the manuscript of his first book, photocopied it and helped him with distribution. Soering says his cellmate, who he says goes by the name “Lap Dog,” created and maintains his website, and also took the picture that graces the back cover of his book.

Though he may find believers in the Brunswick lock-up, and beyond its confines, Soering probably won’t find much sympathy in the Lynchburg area. Remembering the profound loathing people had of Soering, Marshall says she still “gets chills” while driving through Bedford County.

Soering traveled through the region on his last trip outside of the razor wire fences, when he was moved from the Wallens Ridge State Prison in July 2000. After a circuitous route that took him to two other prisons, Soering’s prison van headed toward the Brunswick prison, passing through Lynchburg and Bedford County. He says any memories of his murder trial were overwhelmed by another observation.

“The area around Lynchburg is just breathtakingly beautiful,” Soering says. “It was so gorgeous. It was fog and light. Man, it was beautiful.”

After wrapping up a long interview in a visiting room at Brunswick, Soering waits patiently in the sunlight of a chilly day for the gated door to let him back into the yard. He smiles at a prison guard.

After Soering is gone, I wait to cross through two different barriers, eventually to pass into the visitor’s parking lot. One of the prison guards sees me holding Soering’s book and asks if the recently departed prisoner is the author. The guard follows me beyond one of the gates, and asks for the title of the book. She says she has worked at Brunswick for five years, and though she doesn’t know who Soering is, or, presumably, that he was convicted of a double homicide, she wants to read the book “to just know how things went” for Soering behind bars.

 

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Get on the bus

I read with great interest John Borgmeyer’s article “Riders wanted” [November 11], about Charlottesville’s public transportation system. The article was well written and brings attention to one of Charlottesville’s best-kept secrets: its extensive public transportation system.

As a transplanted northerner from Philadelphia, I was amazed that Charlottesville, being a comparatively smaller city, had such an extensive public transit system.

What is good about the Charlottesville Transit System: The base fare of 75 cents, plus being entitled to a free transfer, simply cannot be beaten. In Philadelphia, simply getting on a bus costs $2, and a transfer is an additional 40 cents.

Also, CTS drivers are extremely polite and courteous. If you are unfamiliar with where to get off, they will gladly tell you when you ask, and they make sure they announce the stop when they get there. If you get a transfer, they radio ahead to make sure that the bus you want waits a few seconds.

The CTS buses are kept extremely clean and are constantly maintained. I remember in Philadelphia, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the public transit buses were bursting into flames, or at least their engines were, due to the lack of maintenance.

What could be done to make CTS better, to attract new riders?

First of all, have service on Sundays, and all legal holidays. For a City that boasts itself as a world-class city, there is no reason why the public transit system should shut down on Sundays and legal holidays. People work on Sundays and legal holidays. Those are also days many drivers have off and they may be tempted to use buses to go shopping, to go to the movies, or go to the City’s many cultural events.

Many of the bus routes run once an hour. They should be running every 20 minutes.

Lastly, the CTS has to be expanded to provide extensive service in Albemarle County. The County may be a separate political entity, but in reality it is part of the Charlottesville urban area. Most of the growth occurring in the area is occurring in Albemarle County.

It is time that Albemarle County becomes a responsible partner, together with the Federal government, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the City of Charlottesville in funding and expanding a viable public transportation alternative for the area.

 

Paul Long

Charlottesville

Categories
Uncategorized

Fishbowl

Black market birth control

As the General Assembly targets contraception, Planned Parenthood looks to Charlottesville

During last year’s General Assembly session, Delegate Richard Black (R-Louden) sent all 40 State senators a letter promising that Virginia “will lead the way in restoring the sanctity of human life.”

It’s a laudable goal for the Commonwealth, which executes more prisoners per year than any state besides Texas. Black supports the death penalty, yet he paired his letter to his Senate colleagues with a pink plastic fetus and graphic descriptions of abortion procedures. “Would you kill this child?” Black wrote.

Last year, a crop of conservative delegates introduced a litany of bills designed to limit women’s access to abortion. As the 2004 session approaches, pro-choice advocates expect Black and his cohorts will extend the hostility beyond abortion, trying to curtail access to contraception, too.

“Last year there were more anti-choice bills passed by the General Assembly than ever before,” says Ben Greenberg, who lobbies the General Assembly on behalf of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge. “The same players are back this year. Given their successes last year, we expect them to be even more aggressive.”

In 2003, the General Assembly passed a “partial birth infanticide” bill banning late-term abortions, similar to what President Bush signed into law in November. Both the Federal law and the Virginia law are currently being challenged in court, largely because neither law provides an exemption when the life or safety of the mother is endangered.

“We’d be shocked if the courts did not find this legislation unconstitutional,” Greenberg says.

Earlier this year Gov. Mark Warner vetoed another 2003 law permitting “Choose Life” vanity license plates.

Right-wing delegates last year also passed a series of bills known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) legislation that would gratuitously require all medical clinics providing abortions to conform to hospital-style building and design standards. The TRAP bills passed the House of Delegates but died in the Senate Education and Health Committee by one vote. The close call prompted Planned Parenthood to begin building a new clinic in Charlottesville that will conform to the TRAP requirements, should they eventually get signed into law [see below].

Looking ahead to the upcoming legislative session, which begins January 14, local Delegate Mitch Van Yahres (D-Charlottesville) says he expects “a lot of sex and silliness.

“It’s a smokescreen over more serious issues, like the budget.”

He expects Republicans to introduce a bill that would ban universities from distributing emergency contraception pills, which prevent pregnancy by stopping eggs from attaching to the uterine wall. Last year, Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) sent letters to James Madison University and UVA, suggesting that in prescribing the pills the schools would be violating the law by providing “early abortion to unwitting co-eds.” Marshall’s science may be wrong, but he’s a successful intimidator: JMU dropped emergency contraception. To date, UVA Student Health still offers emergency contraception.

Abortion-rights advocates also anticipate bills restricting access to contraception and establishing legal recognition of the belief that life begins at the point when an egg is fertilized. For example, Greenberg expects a bill that would create a new criminal penalty for killing a pregnant woman, even though Virginia already has three special laws penalizing actions that result in the collateral termination of a pregnancy.

“The far right is ignoring these laws, because their agenda is to establish the personhood of the fetus,” says Greenberg.

He also expects Delegate Kathy Byron (R-Lynchburg) to re-introduce a 2003 bill that would give pharmacists a “conscience clause,” so they could refuse to provide contraception if they believe it constitutes abortion.

“We’re talking about birth control pills, IUDs, Depo-Provera, emergency contraception,” says Greenberg.

“This is probably just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “We have a lot to worry about.”

A new clinic in Charlottesville  

Planned Parenthood can’t count on support from Richmond anytime soon, so the agency has turned to well-heeled Charlottesvillians. This year, the agency raised $1.3 million from individual donors between April and July. Also in April, the group purchased land in Charlottesville for a clinic that will provide sex education, pre-natal care and a range of health services for women, including abortions.

The clinic will be designed to hospital standards in response to last year’s TRAP legislation [see above], says Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge Director David Nova.

Nova predicts the TRAP bills will become law if a conservative succeeds Governor Mark Warner, who is pro-choice. If that happens, the new Charlottesville clinic would be one of only two in the Commonwealth to meet hospital standards.

“TRAP could become law in 2006,” says Nova. “Our concern is that the great majority of clinics in Virginia will close. We can’t wait until then to act on this. This new building would provide some security for the whole state.”

Nova says Planned Parenthood’s presence has grown in Charlottesville, where the agency enjoys a sympathetic and affluent donor base. The new clinic will open this spring near Planned Parenthood’s current location on Arlington Boulevard.

The clinic will be named the Herbert C. Jones Reproductive Health and Education Center, to honor the local physician and abortion provider who, when he retired this year due to illness, left a vacancy yet to be filled in Charlottesville.

“No one could give enough money to offset what Herbert Jones has done in this community for over half a century,” says Nova.––John Borgmeyer

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Spoke too soon  

In reporting on the community bike program [“Dude, where’s my bike?” Fishbowl, November 11], John Borgmeyer stated, “Last year the City of Charlottesville and Dave Matthews Band funded a project to fix up old bikes.”

The City has not provided any of the funding for this project. Most of the funding has come from Dave Matthews Band and Coran Capshaw. We also received a generous $1,000 donation from a local businesswoman. We remain grateful for the shop space which Coran Capshaw is allowing us to use in one of his buildings.

 

Stephen Bach

President and Co-founder

Community Yellow Bicycles of the Piedmont

bachs@cstone.net

 

John Borgmeyer responds: Mr. Bach is right. The City planned to contribute $5,000, but DMB stepped in and paid for the program, which is administered through City accounts. The City’s principal contribution came from the time of then-Director of Strategic Planning Satyendra Huja, who helped to organize the program.

Categories
News

SHARE – C-VILLE’S ANNUAL GUIDE TO NONPROFIT GIVING

Here’s one you might have heard: ‘Tis better to give than to receive. And in the case of local nonprofits, we all receive their gifts throughout the year. Whether finding homes for runaway animals, teaching job skills to the handicapped, or helping kids learn to read, the many good-doing agencies here work tirelessly to improve the quality of local life. Now’s a good time to give back. As you shop for friends and family, peruse the following wish lists and see what you can get—or what you might already have—that will make these social service groups’ work a little easier. If you’re really pressed for ideas, consider volunteering. Time is the best gift you can share.

Adult/Vocational

Albemarle Housing Improvement Program

2127 Berkmar Dr. 817-2447

www.ahipva.org

Deb Brown, volunteer coordinator, public relations, fundraising  

The Albemarle Housing Improvement Program provides housing rehabilitation services to area residents who have a household income at or below 80 percent of the area median income ($35,600 for a single individual) and also offers an emergency repair program, first-time home-buyers assistance, and affordable rental units, some of which are part of its Rent-to-Own Program.

Wish list:

Trucks and vans (preferably new, but also good used ones) Copy machine

Print cartridges for color printer

Stamps

Copying paper

Ladder jacks

Scaffolding

Aluminum walk boards

1/2" hammer drill

3/8" cordless drill

Jig saw

Metal break

Heavy-duty drop cords

Cash donations

 

Blue Ridge English as a Second Language Council

214 Rugby Rd., above The Prism Coffeehouse 977-7988

esltutors@hotmail.com www.avenue.org/bresl Frances Lee-Vandell, executive director

Blue Ridge English as a Second Language Council specializes in tutoring adults in the English language. Program focus is on pronunciation and comprehension, and other important skills such as the ability to pass a driver’s license test, fill out paperwork to enroll children in school and understand apartment leases. The organization also organizes day camps and other cultural events for the international community.

Wish list:

Volunteers for tutoring, office help, fundraising and more

New or gently used children’s books and magazines on various topics

Office supplies: paper, toner for printer, file folders, envelopes, etc.

Assistance with translation

Logo design

Jaunt-certified drivers to pick up children and families

Donated time from a CPA to perform annual audit

Donation of space for BRESL Day Camp (three weeks in the summer)

Cash donations

 

Comyn Hall

601 Park St.

293-8436

Shirley Black, contact person

Comyn Hall provides three home-cooked meals a day, two snacks, room cleaning, laundry services and daily activities for seniors living in its residence hall. Residents are provided with medical administration and weekly housekeeping, if necessary.

Wish list:

Christmas decorations

Deep fryer

Bread/bun steamer

Ice cream maker

Metal shelving for storage

Park benches

Artificial trees

Portable CD sound system

Digital camera

Magazine rack

Vacuum

Volunteers for entertaining seniors or performing minor carpentry

 

FOCUS Women’s

Resource Center

1508 Grady Ave.

293-2222

www.avenue.org/focus

Martha Susinno, acting executive director

A group built on the foundation of supporting women, FOCUS extends support groups, career counseling, personal and professional development and artistic community outreach for those going through a divorce, adult children of alcoholics and single mothers.

FOCUS also offers classes in its Mediation Center and conflict resolution in areas including family disputes, divorce and custody agreements, landlord/tenant problems and problems in the workplace.

Teensight, another FOCUS program, aids with pregnancy prevention and helping young mothers stay in school and acquire job skills. At-risk youth get help finishing high school or earning GEDs.

Wish list:

Office or dining room chairs (four to six) for conference table

Free/affordable office space

Baby car seats

Baby clothes

Furniture and supplies

 

Literacy Volunteers

of America—

Charlottesville/Albemarle

418 Seventh St. NE

977-3838

Anne Jellen, administrative director

Mary Mullen, program director

Literacy Volunteers of America—Charlottesville/Albemarle recruits, trains and supports volunteers who provide free basic literacy or English language tutoring to adults. Skills the LVA staff teaches students include writing checks, interpreting maps and bank statements, reading to their children and computer skills. Last year, LVA served 169 people.

Wish list:

Volunteers to train as tutors (the next workshop will be in January)

Office volunteers

Office supplies

Working printers

Working copiers

Tape recorders

Headphones

Cash donations

 

Senior Center

1180 Pepsi Pl.

974-7756

Peter Thompson, executive director

The mission of the Senior Center is to “involve, enrich and empower seniors,” according to Executive Director Peter Thompson. It serves 42,000 local residents annually, emphasizing fitness and wellness, arts and crafts, social activities, recreational travel and volunteering to promote seniors’ independence.

Many volunteers run the programs, provide customer service and help in the administrative side of the Senior Center. The Senior Center receives no government funding—Thompson says that all funds are raised locally from individuals, corporations and foundations.

Wish list:

24 matching card tables

Three quality, high-end paper cutters

Light-weight, sturdy, professional-looking display board system

Multifunction inkjet printer with scanner that can network with several computers

Laptop computers

30 nice, cushioned chairs

Funds or donated expertise in creating a larger office for Senior Center, Inc. Travel Office

Copy paper

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe PageMaker or Quark Xpress

Dreamweaver computer program

Wireless network hub and wireless network cards

Graphic/photo CDs

Automatic flushers for rest rooms

Picnic table

Funds or donated expertise in renovating the lobby

Marketing services for creation of tagline

Storage shed for garden equipment

 

Virginia Organizing Project

703 Concord Ave.

984-4655

Joe Szakos, executive director

This statewide citizens’ group strives to implement social change through locally based action. A wide range of people volunteer for the various chapters and affiliates throughout the State, lobbying the State legislature, directing petition drives, writing letters to local newspapers and circulating information about the project’s mission. Ten employees and dozens of volunteers rally interest in causes like tax reform, racial profiling, housing and gay rights.

Wish list:

Office furniture

Books on social change

Old cell phones (in any condition)

Calls to UVA President John Casteen at 924-3337 encouraging him to pay all contract workers a living wage

 

Worksource Enterprises

1311 Carlton Ave.

972-1730

www.worksourceenterprises.org

Chuck McElroy, president

Worksource Enterprises provides on-the-job training and assists with employment for people with disabilities. People can work at jobs within a large group of participating businesses including Breadworks Bakery and the Federal Executive Institute. The results: Hundreds of people have been hired through the efforts of Worksource. The organization’s training also helps clients increase their reading, writing and math skills with the aid of educational software.

Wish list:

Automatic door opener for the front entrance

Laptop computer

Lockers for clients

Picnic tables and umbrellas

Portable public-address system

Refrigerated display case for Breadworks

Scholarship funds for clients without funding

 

Animals

 

Charlottesville-Albemarle

Society for the Prevention

of Cruelty to Animals

2075 Woodburn Rd.

973-5959

Carolyn Foreman, executive director

As an “open shelter,” the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA takes in as many stray, injured or unwanted animals as possible, providing medical treatment and care to prepare them for adoption.

Thirteen full-time staff members and many volunteers receive and care for more than 5,500 animals a year. They walk, feed and clean animals, as well as perform office duties. Foster families also take in sick animals or large litters of baby animals so that they are not initially separated from their mothers.

The Charlottesville SPCA accounts for the large number of animals that they take in by the rural areas surrounding Charlottesville. Many unwanted pets are left in the SPCA’s outdoor cages overnight and the SPCA receives most calls about abused animals from neighbors. Their new facility will open in March.

Wish list:

Cat food (dry and canned)

Dog food (dry)

Non-clumping litter

Dog treats

Kongs and other dog and cat toys

Vari-kennels (all sizes)

Copy paper (8.5×11.5)

Laminate paper (8.5×11.5)

Bleach

Catnip

Hard rubber chew toys

Carefresh shavings

Latex exam gloves (all sizes)

Tennis balls

Esbilac (replacement puppy milk)

KMR (replacement kitten milk)

Kitten food

Heavy-duty three-hole punch

Paper cups, plates and plastic serviceware

Paper towels

Pencils and pens

Post-Its, pushpins and staples

Scotch, masking and duct tape

Writing pads

Chairs (stacking)

Digital camera

Evidence locker or safe

Gas-powered weed eater

Horse trailer

Two-way radios

VCR/TV combo, portable

Vehicles

Tools

Bolt cutters

Extension cords

Tool box

 

Voices for Animals

170 Rugby Rd.

979-1200

voicesvirginia@aol.com

Marianne Roberts, member of board of directors

Voices for Animals promotes the idea that all living beings have dignity and deserve respect. They encourage vegetarianism, conscious consumerism and wildlife preservation as well as discourage factory farming, dissection, use of animals in entertainment, hunting and trapping. Every year they hold the Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival and also run a feral cat spay/neuter project.

Wish list:

Volunteers to offer permanent homes

to cats with FIV and leukemia

Volunteers with accounting skills

Humane cat traps

Large cat carriers

Macintosh G4 computer

CD burner for Macintosh or PC

Canopies

Tablecloths

Cash donations

 

Children and Youth

 

Book Baskets

125 Cameron Ln.

245-2880

bookbaskets@hotmail.com

Donna Morris, chair

Book Baskets gathers donated books and distributes them to children, from infants to middle school age. Their main mission is to place books in the hands of children who would otherwise have none. Last year, 10,000 books were distributed to children in the area.

Book Baskets’ main source of book collections is through schools, where libraries and PTAs encourage parents and students to drop off books they have outgrown. Most of the distribution occurs at local service agencies, including Abundant Life and Children, Youth & Family Services.

Wish list:

New or gently used books—anything from

cardboard books for infants through books

appropriate for middle school students, dropped off at Venable Elementary

Cash donations

 

Boys and Girls Club of Charlottesville-Albemarle

Smith Recreation Center on Cherry Avenue

977-2001

www.avenue.org/bgcville

Tim Sinatra, executive director

The Boys and Girls Club offers programs in a safe, nurturing place for kids ages 6-18 to go after school and during summer vacation. The group offers activities such as sports, arts classes and academic tutoring. The club also has a computer lab where kids can surf the Internet or work on their typing skills. Both full-time staff members and volunteers teach classes. During the school year, instructors focus on helping kids with their homework.

Wish list:

Balls of all kinds

Hula hoops

Jump ropes

Large parachute

Cones

Whistles

Computers with printers

Reference books

Educational computer programs

Puzzles

Games for all ages

Notebook paper

15-passenger school bus

Field trip sponsors

Party supplies

G-rated videos

Facilities renovation

30 matching folding chairs

10 new folding tables

Bulletin board paper

Poster frames

 

Camp Holiday Trails

400 Holiday Trails Ln.

977-3781

Patricia Delany, executive director

Camp Holiday Trails is a camp for children ages 7-17 with chronic illnesses including asthma, diabetes, HIV, organ transplants and cancer. Children from all over the eastern seaboard, including New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Richmond, participate in camp activities such as horseback riding, canoeing, fishing, archery, hiking, camping and swimming. Four summer sessions last 10 days each and year-round programs include family weekends. Medical professionals are on hand for assistance.

 

Wish list:

Wheelbarrow

Croquet set

Paddle boat

Fishing poles

Shower curtain replacements and rings

Washing machines

Shelving boards

Comfy chairs for staff lounge

Battery-operated lanterns

Port-a-John for June, July, August

New mops for cabins

75-watt light bulbs

Softballs and bats

Nets for the sports court

 

Children, Youth &

Family Services Inc.

116 W. Jefferson St.

296-4118

www.avenue.org/cyfs

cyfsinfo@cyfs.org

Nancy Letteri, development director

CYFS promotes the health and well-being of children, youth and families through education. Three focus areas are parent education and support, child care and clinical support. About 20 to 25 full- and part-time staff and volunteers work in individual programs including Play Partners, for children in private daycare; Healthy Family/Family Partners, for parents to receive support in their homes; and the Good Dads program, which offers help for dads looking for jobs or further education to better support their children. Clients are self-referred or referred from courts, other agencies, or childcare facilities.

Wish list:

CD/cassette player

Diapers, all sizes

New developmental toys for children under 6

Presents for new moms and dads

HP LaserJet 2200D printer cartridges

HP 940C color printer cartridges

Clear storage bins with tops, all sizes

White copy paper, legal and letter

Color copy paper, legal and letter

Pens and pencils

Spiral notebooks

Yellow legal pads

Cabinets and countertop for refurbished work/volunteer room

New carpeting for hallway, small rooms and stairwell

Volunteer help

Host an open house for Runaway Emergency Services Program

Tumbling mats

New car seats (infant, toddler and booster)

Vinyl banquet-size table covers

Cloth tradeshow or banquet table covers,

6′ or 8′

 

Children’s Medical Center

P.O. Box 800773

Charlottesville, VA 22908

924-8432

Patrick Belisle, director of annual giving

The UVA Children’s Medical Center records more than 130,000 patient visits each year. These visits include children from all over Central and Southwest Virginia, as well as neighboring states. CMC provides specialty care in more than 26 service areas ranging from check-ups for healthy children to the most complex care—heart transplants, care for extremely premature babies, brain surgeries and long-term rehabilitation.

CMC’s philosophy of “family-centered medicine” aims to make those traumas a little easier to cope with by offering rocking chairs and cots for parents who want to stay in their child’s room and in-patient schooling to help kids maintain their sense of structure. CMC also offers opportunities for healing, through activities like the horticulture therapy program, play rooms with video games, lots of toys and CMC TV.

Wish list:

Basketballs

Bright and Easy board books

Busy Box books

Dr. Seuss/beginner books

Fisher Price Little People lift-up flap books

Magazines

Board games

Milton Bradley Memory games

Wooden and jigsaw puzzles

Large Lego sets

Dora the Explorer Electronic Talking Bingo

Music CDs

Digital camera

First Years Vibrating Star teether/massagers

High chairs/booster seats

Gliding rocking chairs

Musical mobiles

Toys that light up and/or play music

Toys with limited pieces

Nintendo or Super Nintendo unit and games

TV/VCRs

G- and PG-rated videos

T-shirts, ball caps, UVA merchandise

Wild bandanas, hip wrist bands

Velcro catch game and Wiffle bat and ball

Nail polish and body lotions

 

Computers4Kids

999 Grove St., Suite 105

817-1121

www.computers4kids.net

Kala Somerville, executive director

Computers4Kids attempts to close the technology gap between Charlottesville and Albemarle County children by providing computers for those who can’t afford them. In addition to donating computers to area youth, Computers4Kids provides free computer training and matches every youth with a volunteer mentor. Together the mentor and student creatively explore various aspects of computers and technology.

Wish list:

Mentors

56K modems (internal)

Cat 5 cables

CD/DVD burners

Laptop computers

(Pentium 300 processors or higher)

Hard drives (2GB or higher)

Hubs

Memory

Printers (bubblejet and inkjet)

Sound cards

Digital cameras

Blank CD-Rs (new)

Blank DVD+R (new)

Laser color printer

Table-top trade show display

 

The Learning Center

2132 Ivy Rd.

977-6006

Elizabeth Cottone, executive director

The Learning Center provides one-on-one tutoring for students who are enrolled in public, private and home schools in grades K-12, as well as some adults. Tutors assist with a variety of subjects, with the main focus on reading. Tutors receive Wilson language training, especially helpful for students with learning disabilities. Tutors are available for testing and evaluations as well.

Wish list:

New or recent thesauruses

Graphing calculators

Updated language arts materials

Bookcases

New phone system

Personal computer

Cash donations

 

Music Resource Center

1108 Forest St.

979-5478

Sibley Johns, executive director

The Music Resource Center was founded in 1995 by local musician Jonathan Hornsby, who wanted opportunities and a place for at-risk youth to make music. At their location on Forest Street, MRC can host about 20 middle- and high-schoolers a day. In February the organization will move to its new home at the former Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street. Students can use many different instruments and studios, including two computer-based studios and a DJ room with turntables. The center also has a CD library that students can borrow from. Staff members give vocal and music engineering courses in addition to the regular instrumental instruction. The center recently received a major donation from Dave Matthews Band.

Wish list:

Mac G4 computers for computer music lab

MIDI compatible keyboards

DVD players for media center

Flat-screen computer monitors

Drum kits

Volunteers to run check-in desk

Free or reduced copying services

Donation of bulk-rate postage permit

Brass and woodwinds instruments

Guitars

Microphones

Amplifiers

Strings for guitars/bass

Drum sticks

Music videos and movie videos

Blank CDs

Keyboards

Fax machine

Cash donations

 

Food Aid

 

Blue Ridge Area Food

Bank Network

Thomas Jefferson

Area Branch

500 Henry Ave.

296-3663

Sarah Althoff, area supervisor

The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network and its Thomas Jefferson Area Branch provides food to the needy in eight counties. Economic uncertainty and increasing job layoffs are adding to the number of people looking to the Food Bank for help. Donated food items should be non-perishable and not in glass containers. For each dollar donated, 92 cents goes toward the mission of feeding the hungry.

Wish list:

Canned meat, fish and poultry

Canned or packaged meals

Peanut butter

Cereal

Soup

Canned vegetables

Canned fruits

Pasta sauces

Baby formula, baby food

Diapers

Baby bottles

Cash donations

 

Meals on Wheels, Inc.

2270 Ivy Rd

293-4364

Mandy Hoy, executive director

Community Meals on Wheels, Inc. delivers hot, nutritious lunchtime meals Mondays through Fridays to homebound residents of the Charlottesville/Albemarle area on a temporary or long-term basis. The goal is to provide not only nutritious food but also valuable and daily social contact to people who would otherwise be hungry and alone.

Wish list:

Volunteer drivers to help with packing and delivering meals (can work throughout year or on holidays)

Volunteers to work on special events committee

Tray favors (i.e. holiday cards, napkin rings, valentines, American flags)

Canned goods in October and November for “Blizzard Bags” (sent to clients to keep on hand in case inclement weather pre- vents drivers from delivering hot meals)

Cash donations

 

General Crisis Relief

 

Legal Aid Justice Center

1000 Preston Ave., Suite A

977-0553

www.justice4all.org

alex@justice4all.org

Alex Gulotta, executive director

The Legal Aid Justice Center offers civil legal services to low-income families throughout Central Virginia and to low-wage immigrant workers statewide, while also engaging in legal advocacy for all low-income Virginians. Programs include the Civil Advocacy Program to assist with legal problems regarding housing, public benefits, employment, consumer protection and more; the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers, addressing the employment concerns of the 50,000 migrant farm workers and other immigrants who come to Virginia every year; and the JustChildren Program to ensure that at-risk youth in the education, foster care and juvenile justice systems have access to the services and support.

Wish list:

Copy machine

Laser printers (with software) Color laser printer

Scanner

Typewriter

Decent office chairs

Reception area sofa

Outdoor picnic table

Cash donations

 

United Way,

Thomas Jefferson Area

806 E. High St.

972-1701

www.unitedwaytja.org

unitedwaytja@unitedwaytja.org

Jim Fitzgerald, director of marketing

The United Way raises funds for people in Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson. The United Way also provides services including a childcare scholarship for working parents and an information referral center. Focus areas for funding include the needs of young children and their families, the needs of the elderly, individuals in poverty and those in emergency situations.

Wish list:

Financial donations totaling $1,460,000 for programs in the community

 

Medical-Disability Services

 

AIDS/HIV Services Group

P.O. Box 2322

Charlottesville, VA 22902

979-7714

www.aidsservices.org

Kathy Baker, executive director

ASG offers support services to people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS with client services including case management, crisis care, housing assistance, medical co-pays and prescription costs assistance and more. Prevention education programs reach out to more than 7,000 people annually including high-risk groups such as youth, African Americans, Latinos, men who have sex with men, and the general public, through the schools, in the neighborhoods and on the streets.

Wish list:

Pick-up truck or car for client

transportation

Light wood mini blinds, 27-28" x 36"

Network card for a Canon 2000 Printer

Flat panel LCD monitors (15")

Small loveseat and two armchairs for

client work/meeting space; must be new

Stamps

Food, including frozen or refrigerated items

Phone cards

 

Central Virginia Chapter

of the American Red Cross

1105 Rose Hill Dr.

979-7143

www.avenue.org/redcross

cvcarc@avenue.org

Lonnie Kirby, director of financial development and public relations

The Red Cross Central Virginia Chapter serves Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson counties, providing relief to victims of disasters and helping people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies.

The Red Cross provides relief to victims of disasters both natural and man-made as well as conducting training in vital skills such as CPR, first aid and water safety. Locally, the Red Cross gives shelter, food and necessary counseling to victims of the most common disasters such as home or apartment fires.

Wish list:

Televisions

VCR

DVD player

LCD projector

Fax machines

 

Charlottesville Free Clinic

1138 Rose Hill Dr., Suite 200 296-5525 www.cvillefreeclinic.org info@cvillefreeclinic.org Erika Viccellio, executive director

The Charlottesville Free Clinic provides free primary medical care and prescription medications for working uninsured adults in the greater Charlottesville/Albemarle community. All services are provided by volunteer health care professionals—physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, lab technicians, etc.—three nights a week, year-round. In fiscal year 2003, Free Clinic volunteers treated 1,164 patients with 3,224 visits to the clinic and volunteer pharmacists filled 12,095 free prescriptions.

Wish list:

Volunteers (pharmacists, dentists,

follow-up nurses, psychiatrists,

gynecologists)

New refrigerator

Hand-held vacuum

Large bulletin board

 

Pregnancy Center

of Central Virginia

320 W. Main St.

979-4516

www.cvillepregnancy.org

diane@virginiapregnancy.org

Diane McClintock, Charlottesville center director

The Pregnancy Center of Central Virginia provides confidential services to pregnant or possibly pregnant women, including limited medical services, counseling, testing and more. The center is sponsored by individual donors, families, local businesses and church organizations.

Wish List:

Baby clothes (only 0-3 months; have an abundant supply of other sizes)

Maternity tops

 

Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic

1021 Millmont St.

293-4797

Janet Ewert, production director

Angie Durand, volunteer coordinator

Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic provides oral literature for those in the community who have visual or physical impairments that keep them from being able to read easily.

A library lending service is available for a yearly fee to individuals and to educational institutions, and the organization relies on the efforts of more than 250 volunteers a year. Volunteers record educational materials ranging from 4th-grade geography and high school math books to college-level and post-grad textbooks. Readers pair off with a director in a soundproof booth to record, where they can stop and fix mistakes or discuss how to explain complicated material such as graphs or charts.

Wish list:

New Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionaries

Audio books (new or used)

Spelling Bee and Dee teams of four from your organization for April 16 even at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel ($500 per team)

Golf/tennis teams for annual golf/tennis tournament

Playback devices for blind and dyslexic students

Software playback systems for blind and dyslexic students

Satellite recording booth ($3,000) and a place in the community to put it

Scholarships to set up Learning through Listening™ sites at area schools.

 

Ronald McDonald House

300 9th St. SW

295-1885

Mary Kirwan, executive director

The Ronald McDonald House provides inexpensive housing for out-of-town families of children receiving medical care at the UVA Children’s Medical Center. The House was founded in 1981 by a group of local doctors and concerned citizens, and in 1988 it became one of more than 200 Ronald McDonald Houses all over the country. Though it is licensed by and is a fundraising partner with the McDonald’s corporation, the Charlottesville house raises most of its own funds.

Wish list:

Canned tuna, Spaghetti-O’s, Beefaroni

Sugar, creamer

Salt and pepper in disposable containers

Snack bags of chips, pretzels, cookies, etc.

Pop Tarts, cereal

Kleenex

Aluminum foil, plastic wrap, gallon-size Ziploc bags

Gift Certificates to Wal-Mart

Queen size mattress pads

Clorox bleach

Shout stain remover

Dishwasher detergent

Size D alkaline batteries

Stamps

 

The Salvation Army,

Charlottesville Corps

207 Ridge St.

295-4058

Kim Wentz, regional resource development director

The Salvation Army offers programs such as a childcare center, an emergency shelter, transitional housing, two thrift stores, soup kitchen and an emergency services program. The emergency shelter provides 60 beds to the needy for overnight stays of up to several months while at the same time providing them with three meals a day, all free of charge. Another housing program, the Center of Hope Transitional Housing Program, offers nine one- and two-bedroom apartments for small families or singles who may live there for up to two years, while paying a small fee for the furnished apartment, childcare, food service and counseling.

Wish list:

12 6′ tables

100 stackable chairs

New waiting room furniture for the social services lobby

Cash donations

 

Sexual Assault

Resource Agency

1013 Little High St.

295-7273

www.sexualassaultresources.org

Melissa Hoard, administrative office manager

SARA is a private, non-profit organization whose volunteers and staff are dedicated to reducing the vulnerability of women and children to sexual violence as well as facilitating the recovery of sexual assault victims. Recognizing the prevalence of sexual assault and abuse and the long-term impact on victims, SARA has adopted sexual assault issues as its sole agenda. In addition to a comprehensive educational and training program, SARA provides confidential emotional support, crisis intervention, support groups, advocacy, companion services, counseling and referrals for victims of sexual assault, their families and close friends.

Wish list:

Park benches for our healing garden

Donations of educational supplies (particularly a new display board to be used in public presentations)

Laptop computer and power-point projector for educational presentations

Tool box

Emergency clothing (sweats, underwear, socks, etc.)

Comfort packs for victims

Puzzles, games and toys for children who visit us

Gifts for volunteers or for fundraisers (certificates for dinners, massages, etc.)

Travel boxes for brochures and handouts (file boxes with handles)

.ash donations

 

Shelter for Help

in Emergency

293-6155

www.shelterforhelpinemergency.org

info@shelterforhelpinemergency.org

Carty Lominack, executive director

The Shelter for Help in Emergency Victims offers survivors of domestic abuse temporary shelter, free counseling and support groups as well as legal advocacy and court appointments. Those living in Planning District Ten—Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Louisa, Greene, Nelson and Fluvanna—can call the 24-hour hotline at 293-8509.

Executive director Mary Carter Lominack says that 200-250 people a year spend time in the residential facility. The shelter offers help to men and women of all economic backgrounds.

Wish list:

Calling cards

Bus passes

Activity passes (i.e. movie tickets)

Household supplies (paper towels, toilet paper, etc.)

Personal hygiene supplies (shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, deodorant, etc.)

Art supplies (i.e. construction paper, glue, markers, pencils, etc.)

Cash donations

 

Volunteer Services

 

Habitat for Humanity

P.O. Box 7305

Charlottesville, VA 22906

984-4321

www.avenue.org/habitat

cvillehabitat@nexet.net

Kelly Epplee, development director

According to the Albemarle County Housing Advisory Committee, more than 3,000 homes in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area are classified as substandard. Habitat for Humanity helps to solve this problem by offering qualifying low-income families Habitat homes with a no-interest mortgage. All labor is done by volunteers and there are no profits for builders, so most families pay less per month than they paid in rent for substandard housing.

Wish list:

Land for building Habitat homes

Volunteers with handy-person skills, able to lead other volunteers

Office volunteers on a weekly basis

Trucks in good running condition

Contributions of new or used building materials and furniture and vehicles to the Habitat Store

Cash donations

 

Monticello Area

Community Action

Agency (MACAA)

1025 Park St.

295-3171

www.avenue.org/macaa

jeff@macaa.org

Jeff Sobel, development director

MACAA works to eradicate poverty and improve the lives of people in the City of Charlottesville, and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Louisa and Nelson counties through a variety of services that provide educational opportunities, self-improvement programs and emergency help to individuals, children and families in poverty. MACAA’s best known programs include Head Start, Hope House, Jefferson Area CHIP, Project Discovery and emergency services in the outlying counties. Their programs serve about 2,000 clients each year.

Wish list:

General operating support

Furniture in good condition for Hope House

Clothes and food for thrift shops in outlying counties

Volunteers to work the Charlottesville Ten Miler (April 3)

Volunteers to read to Head Start children

Donation of cars in good shape for Wheels to Work

Volunteers to help with reception and telephones and events

Silent auction items for Men Who Cook fundraiser

Cash donations

 

Piedmont Housing

Alliance

2000 Holiday Dr.

817-2436

Karen Klick, deputy director

The Piedmont Housing Alliance creates more affordable housing and community development opportunities to improve the lives of low and moderate income families. The Alliance reaches out to families in Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson counties and the City of Charlottesville, and after joining forces with the Charlottesville Housing Foundation in 1997, the Alliance has now raised more than $2.5 million and has provided housing services and development worth over $20 million in 50 years between the two agencies.

Wish list:

Volunteers for clerical work, website management or landscaping assistance

Land and real estate donations

Laptop computer

All-in-one printer/copy machine

CAD software

Furniture for waiting room (sofa, love seat, chairs)

Cash donations

Categories
Uncategorized

Fishbowl

Against the grain

BAR chair and Downtown business owner Joan Fenton
attempts to regulate her competitors

When Joan Fenton appeared before City Council last week wearing a black pullover sweater and black pants, with her glasses and shock of dark hair, she looked more like an elementary school teacher rushing in after a yoga class than Charlottesville’s official arbiter of taste.

That is her role, however, as chair of the City’s Board of Architectural Review. Fenton also owns two Mall businesses, April’s Corner and Quilts Unlimited. On Monday, November 17, she appeared before Council arguing that the City should regulate some of her direct competitors, the Mall vendors and the merchants at York Place.

“The Mall is starting to look like a flea market,” Fenton complained to Council. “If the vendors look better, we all do better.”

Fenton was there to urge Council to adopt a list of guidelines, crafted mostly by BAR members, which would impose new regulations on Mall vendors. Many of the rules are picayune––black skirts (not dark green) around tables, umbrellas no higher than 8′ with a maximum of one dark color. The proposals that really bothered vendors, several of whom turned out for the Council meeting, however, were the prohibition of racks for hanging clothes, the $400 license fee (up from $125) and a rental fee of $2 for each square foot of red bricks they occupy.

The City says the fees would generate about $20,000 annually to cover the cost of administrating and enforcing the new rules.

James Muhammad, a 10-year vending veteran known as Cupcake, said that except for the fee hikes and the prohibition of clothes racks, the new rules aren’t that different from the current ordinance, which the City admits isn’t effectively enforced. Council will revisit the vendor question at an upcoming meeting.

“I don’t think all the other vendors should pay the penalty for that,” Muhammad said. “It would be a hardship for a lot of vendors to pay that kind of money.

“I don’t understand the problem with clothes racks,” Muhammad continued. “I don’t see how you can sell clothes without one.” He reminded Council that in the early 1990s he and other vendors pioneered Downtown at a time when the desolate Mall looked like a failed experiment.

Now the Mall mostly rocks, although as some businesses flourish others, like Sandy Ruseau’s gallery of watercolors in York Place, are, in Ruseau’s words, “just fighting to survive.”

In September, York Place owner Chuck Lewis wanted to put new signs on his building. According to Neighborhood Planner Mary Joy Scala, City development director Jim Tolbert said the signs, which protruded from the York Place façade, were probably O.K., and so the signs went up. Additionally, Scala referred the York Place signs to the nine-member BAR, which on September 16 unanimously deemed them inappropriate. According to the minutes of that meeting, Fenton said the signs were “loud and noisy with too much coloran obstacleand a precedent she did not want to start.” Fenton’s own Quilts Unlimited sign, next door to York Place, is a blue rectangle with red graphics and white letters; at April’s Corner, the sign comprises bronze-colored wooden letters. Both signs lie flat against their building fronts.

After the BAR ruling, the York Place signs came down, and on October 21 the BAR approved a plan that included signs that would sit flat against the façade. The flat signs went up, but the tenants and Lewis appealed to City Council.

On November 17, Lewis and his tenants swayed Council by presenting evidence that their business had spiked with the protruding signs in place, and showed photos of existing protruding signs on the Mall. Council seemed especially influenced by Lewis, who said, “If I had to do York Place again, I wouldn’t do it. It’s hard to get people in the building.”

After Council voted unanimously to overturn the BAR, Lewis declared, “This is so cool. We were outvoted, but we rallied.”

The current economic climate, say the shopkeepers, makes for increased competition. With businesses fighting harder to survive, Downtown business owner Fenton seems faced with a conflict of interest.

When pressed on the question by a reporter, Fenton first exclaimed, “I think Jim Tolbert had a bigger conflict of interest than me. He lives in York Place.”

Later, Fenton said she “could see how someone might think that. I’ve tried very hard to be fair. I have probably bent over backwards not to do anything that benefits me.”

Then, Fenton admitted, she plans to take advantage of Council’s ruling by installing protruding signs, just like those she opposed on York Place, on her Quilts Unlimited store. Within days of the Council meeting, a new freestanding sign appeared outside the store—a blue wooden square lettered in white and resting on an ornate black tripod.

 

Mayor Cox – one more term?

Democratic Party chair Lloyd Snook says Mayor Maurice Cox won’t seek a third City Council term next spring. “Eight years is enough. His family would like to see him again,” Snook confidently declares.

But Snook “may have spoken much too soon,” says the Mayor. Cox says he won’t resign from Council until he finds a protégé who “is passionate about the same things I’m passionate about.”

Cox says he has met with a half-dozen potential candidates, five of whom are women, both black and white. He says he wants to find a candidate who would bring not only gender and ethnic diversity to Council, but who would also carry on Cox’s vision for Charlottesville.

“I’m talking about the urban development of Charlottesville,” says Cox, “This notion of pedestrian-oriented infill development anchored by a state-of-the-art transit system.”

Karen Waters, director of the City’s Quality Community Council, says she’s “kicking around” the idea of a Council bid. “I’ve met with a lot of people,” says Waters, but she would not say whether that includes the Mayor. Waters is currently enrolled in UVA’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, which has turned out many a local politician, including Republican upstart Councilor Rob Schilling.

Cox says his search for a successor has so far proven “inconclusive.” He says he is weighing his obligations to his family and career, and that he expects to announce a decision after the New Year.

Meanwhile, other candidates are all but throwing their hats in the ring.

“I’m certainly very seriously considering running for Council,” says David Brown, a chiropractor and former City Democratic Chair. But he adds, “To get into this too soon is a distraction for Council.”

Snook says Dems will meet on December 7 to discuss candidates’ plans, and there will be a nominating convention on February 21. “We won’t run an all-white ticket,” he promises. The City election is scheduled for May 4.

On the Republican side, party chair Bob Hodus says he “has no news to announce,” but maybe he should get on the phone to Spectacle Shop owner Jon Bright, who says he’s “thinking about it daily, trying to make a decision.”

Bright, who ran in 2000, says that if his busy schedule prevents him from running this time around, he will run in two years. Another Republican, neighborhood activist Kenneth Jackson, says he will run “if the local party will endorse me as their candidate.” Republicans will likely meet in February to select candidates for the election, held in early May.

Councilor and Vice-Mayor Meredith Richards said two weeks ago she would seek a third term and is doubtlessly eager to assume the Mayorship. Councilor Kevin Lynch, meanwhile, remains uncommitted. “I’m not ready to announce yet. I’ll make a decision as soon as possible,” he says.

 

Money, principles and the Meadowcreek Parkway

The impending election is bringing a controversy over the Meadowcreek Parkway to the forefront.

Although the Virginia Department of Transportation doesn’t plan to build the Parkway until 2008, three pro-Parkway Councilors want to turn over about nine acres of McIntire Park to VDOT before the May elections that could threaten their majority. The efforts of Parkway supporters Meredith Richards, Blake Caravati and Rob Schilling will force Parkway opponents Kevin Lynch and Mayor Maurice Cox to make a tough choice.

According to State law, Council needs a four-fifths majority to sell public parkland. However, on the instruction of the pro-Parkway majority, City Attorney Craig Brown discovered that Council could grant VDOT an easement for the land with a simple three-fifths majority.

“At this point, those who are opposed to the road need to realize this is going to happen,” says Caravati (who ran as being against the Meadowcreek Parkway in 1998 and later changed his vote).

This puts Lynch and Cox in a bind. The pro-Parkway majority seems poised to ease the land to VDOT, tantamount to giving away some of the City’s most valuable real estate. VDOT has set aside more than $1 million to purchase the right-of-way, and Cox believes the City could get three times that––but only if he or Lynch agrees to sacrifice their principles and support the sale.

“It’s an open question,” says Lynch. Before he makes a decision, he says, he wants to see an appraisal for the McIntire land. He also wants to know whether VDOT would pay for replacement parkland if it gets an easement.

Cox says he’ll “think about” selling the nine acres in McIntire if VDOT offers around $3 million, a sum Cox says will allow the City to purchase replacement parkland, possibly from the nearby Wetsel farm on Rio Road.

If not, will Cox really let the City give away its last patch of countryside? When asked, Cox shifts the burden back to the pro-Parkway majority.

“Let it be their legacy,” says Cox. “That’s my attitude. I don’t want that legacy.”

 

Cox on “60 Minutes”

Mayor Maurice Cox will be interviewed on the November 30 episode of “60 Minutes.” The venerable television news program examines the Bayview Community on the Eastern Shore. Cox’s architecture firm, RBGC, helped design a “rural village” for Bayview. The mostly poor, black residents of Bayview defeated a State plan to build a prison near their town, then formed a nonprofit group that raised money to rebuild their town.––John Borgmeyer

 

Swimming with sharks

Little big shot racks up with local billiards association

Derrick “Buster” Fox moves around the table so quickly that one might think he’s being judged on his speed. Every shot seems to be determined ahead of time, before the cue ball has even come to a stop. It’s a balmy Tuesday night at Miller’s on the Downtown Mall, and Buster is running the table.

Tuesday is league night for the Charlottesville Billiards Association, a weekly ritual for the 60-some pool sharks who gather—most armed with their own cues—to compete in the City’s only local league, which holds three 15-week tournaments every year.

At 14, Fox is by far the youngest player in the league, shooting for his seven-person team “The Shot Callers” in a warm-up game against Yvette, a 22-year-old real estate broker shooting for “XLR8.” But Fox doesn’t let his age stand in his way—he is regarded by his competitors as remarkably skilled for his years, and easily defeats Yvette in only two turns before they both move on to play their designated opponents for the evening.

“I’ve been playing since I could see over the table,” Fox explains to justify his prowess. The remarkably well-mannered Monticello High School freshman grew up playing at Mutts, the restaurant/bar owned by his mother, “Mutt” Fox, who sponsors his team.

Similar dramas are being played out around town at Mutts, Rapture, Firehouse Bar & Grill and Chi-Chi’s, all of which, along with Miller’s, sponsor the league’s nine teams and provide free table space for the weekly showdowns. “I can’t say enough about these places,” says Mark Foran, who founded the local league three years ago and plays on “Ballbusters.” “We wouldn’t be able to do this without their help.”

League play isn’t just a game—a first-place team wins more than $2,000 for its $90-per-person entry fee. Because of laws that prevent awarding prize money to juveniles, Foran has only allowed two minors to play in the league so far (if his team wins, Fox will have to settle for something akin to a weekend amusement-park getaway). Since this is Fox’s first tournament with this league, he is also eligible for rookie of the year, league MVP, and a spot on one of the all-star teams that play a mid-season mini-tournament.

But Fox’s talent is a liability as much as an asset. To keep any one team from dominating the league, players are handicapped according to their level of skill and all teams must include a range of abilities. The better you are, the more games you have to win against your opponent—Yvette’s challenger will need to win six games tonight to be declared the victor, while Yvette only needs to win two.

Yvette started playing pool six months before she joined the league, and is still somewhat of a novice. Tonight she hits the occasional pretty shot, but she’s no match for her more experienced opponent, and goes down 0-6. Fox doesn’t fare much better, losing his games 1-6 despite his precise aim. But it is early in the season, and both players will have many more chances—fortunately, Tuesday comes every week.—Chris Smith