Tomas Rahal, who favored an underpass instead of a bridge, took over the former Spudnuts building in 2017 after the donut shop shuttered in 2016. Photo by Eze Amos.
Both Project Gait-Way and the Belmont Vortex created ways for planners to dream up ideas for the urban landscape around Avon Street. Since 2011, there have been many transformations while the new bridge and street layout awaited construction.
In December 2014, what had previously been used as a hair salon and then a small grocery store became one of the area’s most sought-after restaurants: Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria. The previous June, the owners of Lampo had used a crane to lower a three-ton oven from Naples into their space at 205 Monticello Rd.
At least one exhibition on potential options was held next door in the space formerly occupied by the Bridge Performing Arts Initiative. The creative center moved to the Downtown Mall last year after Lightning Properties, the real estate umbrella of Lampo and Bar Baleno, bought both properties for $800,000 in April 2022 to allow for expansion.
Lampo reopened after the pandemic in August 2022 while construction of the bridge was underway.
“Finally feels like things are back to normal,” says Lampo co-owner Loren Mendosa. “The bridge was certainly a pain, but now that it’s done we’ve noticed a bit of an uptick.”
In 2016, Charlottesville said goodbye to Spudnuts, a beloved purveyor of potato-flour donuts at 309 Avon St. that had been in business since 1969. Tomas Rahal, a former chef at Mas Tapas, took over the space in 2017 with Quality Pie. During construction of the bridge, Rahal took the city to task for not doing enough to support local businesses in the face of the disruption. He preferred the underpass option.
“The roadway, not a bridge at all, serves as a visual scar across our viewscape, instead of healing the rift between north Downtown and Belmont,” Rahal says. “They have cleaned up most of their mess, [but] the damage to us was deep, persistent, long-lasting.”
Located one block to the north at 403 Avon St., Fox’s Cafe closed during the pandemic, and the building and two adjacent lots were purchased for $1.4 million in February 2023. There are currently no plans filed to redevelop the site except for an application for a building permit for a new alcove. Daddy Mack’s Grub Shack food truck currently operates from the site.
Across the street at 405 Avon St. and 405 Levy Ave., the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority continues to operate its maintenance division on 1.1 acres now owned by the City of Charlottesville. The CRHA adopted a master plan in the summer of 2010 that called for the former auto service station to become a new apartment building with affordable units. That never happened—in part because of opposition from Belmont residents. The nonprofit Community Bikes occupied the site for many years before the CRHA began to use the property.
Earlier this year, several Belmont residents also opposed the notion of the city purchasing the property for a potential homeless shelter, while others welcomed that possibility. In January, City Manager Sam Sanders recommended that $4 million in leftover federal COVID-relief funds be used to buy the land and to allow CRHA to remain as a tenant while determining the property’s potential future. Afton Schneider, the city’s communications director, said there are no plans that can be shared with the public at this time.
There are also no redevelopment plans filed for 310 Avon St., a property under the single ownership of Avon Court LLC, which formerly housed the original location of Better Living and an old lumber supply warehouse. That building was demolished in late 2009, leaving other commercial properties on the site. One of them was the original home of Champion Brewing Company, which opened in the fall of 2012 and closed at the end of June 2023.
The construction of the bridge created new ways to get to 100 and 110 Avon St. just to the south of Lampo. The building at 100 Avon St. changed hands in December 2020 for $4.5 million, and the new owner renovated the existing structure to add several apartments. A site plan for an additional four-story building has been approved, but the units have not yet been built.
On a warm morning in late June, City Manager Sam Sanders presided over the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Belmont Bridge, a $38 million project that for a time served as another chapter in Charlottesville’s resistance to infrastructure for motorized vehicles.
“There are many who didn’t believe that this would actually happen,” Sanders said to a crowd assembled at the top of a new staircase that leads from bridge-level to Water Street. The western side of the bridge features the city’s first protected bike lane and the new bridge is much shorter at 236 linear feet.
None of those features would likely be present if not for pushback from those in the community who felt Charlottesville deserved more than just a standard replacement.
“We tend to get stuck on things and I want to get unstuck on things,” Sanders said.
Now that vehicles are rolling across the bridge and people are able to use sidewalks on both sides, reviews are mixed for the project, which still has remaining items waiting to be completed.
“It’s a vast improvement, but for all the time, angst, and money that went into getting it built, it’s a bit of a let-down,” says Carl Schwarz, a city planning commissioner who was on the Board of Architectural Review when that body approved the bridge design.
The story of the Belmont Bridge is one of what might happen when public expectations are raised much higher than what the constraints of a local government can provide.
Almost 21 years and several city managers before the ribbon was cut, the Charlottesville City Council learned of the need for $1.6 million in repairs to a 440-foot-long bridge built in 1962 that carried Virginia Route 20 across the railroad tracks. This section of the roadway, also known as Avon Street, is considered a primary road by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The minutes of the September 15, 2003, council meeting indicate the direction the city would eventually take. The mayor at the time was Maurice Cox, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and a vehement opponent of what became known as the John W. Warner Parkway.
“Mr. Cox said the Belmont Bridge is not very friendly and the best solution may not be just to replace what is there,” reads the official record of the meeting. “He asked if there is a margin to make it more attractive and pedestrian friendly.”
Cox’s desire for a replacement did not immediately take hold, and Council held a public hearing in May 2005 for an appropriation of $1.46 million in funds for bridge repairs. Jim Tolbert, Charlottesville’s planning director at the time, said VDOT asked the city to consider a replacement due to quickly deteriorating conditions, but the official plan was still to repair.
A year later, crews installed plywood underneath the bridge deck to prevent concrete chunks from falling on vehicles in the city-owned parking lots below.
In April 2009, Tolbert told Council that VDOT estimated a replacement would cost $9.2 million and construction would not happen until 2014 at the earliest. The now-shuttered architecture and design firm MMM Design was selected to develop construction documents in part because of its work in overseeing the controversial reconstruction of the Downtown Mall that was underway that year.
To pay for the replacement project, the city set aside a portion of funding received each year from VDOT and had $4.4 million reserved by May 2010. Unless the city decided to use more of its own funding, construction of the replacement wouldn’t begin until 2018.
MMM Design formally kicked off the public phase of the project in November 2010 with a presentation in CitySpace, and by this time, the city had saved up $5.3 million. Around the same time, the city had closed the eastern sidewalk to foot traffic due to a deteriorating sidewalk.
The presentation was intended to gather feedback from the community about what it wanted to see in a bridge design. Joe Schinstock, MMM’s project manager, even suggested there might be room for a pocket park on the bridge itself.
Two months later, the city was forced to transfer some of the funding it had saved up for the Belmont Bridge to replace another deteriorating railroad bridge that carried Jefferson Park Avenue Extended over a different set of railroad tracks.
Council voted 3-2 in April 2011 to spend $14,000 on permanent fencing on the Belmont Bridge’s eastern sidewalk, with two councilors asking for repairs to open the walkway to pedestrians as soon as possible. Those repairs were not made and the black fence stood until the eastern span of the bridge was replaced.
Over the course of 2011, MMM Design held many meetings with various stakeholders. The now-defunct Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville wanted an easy way for people from Belmont to access the Downtown Mall and prioritized pedestrian connectivity over bike lanes. The cyclists and walkability activists wanted vehicular activity to be secondary to non-motorized transport.
An initial design shown to Council in September 2011 showed sidewalks on both sides of the bridge, three lanes for vehicular traffic, and bike lanes on each side.
At the same time, VDOT’s cost estimate for the bridge replacement went up again from $9.2 million to $14.5 million due to a variety of inflationary factors. All estimates assumed the city would stay within the footprint of the existing bridge to avoid purchasing additional land. Studying the environmental effects on more rights of way could result in further delay.
Before the design process was over, several Belmont residents approached the Board of Architectural Review in September to critique the process. That included filmmaker Brian Wimer, who launched a contest outside official channels that challenged the very need to build a bridge at all. Wimer described this process as “creative protest.”
“Community members aren’t just waiting for results,” reads a press release from Wimer in late November 2011. “They hope to get the results themselves, even if it means finding a new design team. The solution: Project Gait-Way—an unsanctioned $1,000 design competition for the Belmont Bridge to create ‘an iconic, pedestrian-centric, bike & auto friendly gateway bringing Charlottesville into the next era of world-class cities and communities.’”
Such design contests were not unheard of during this era. In 2006, City Council funded a competition to reimagine two surface parking lots on Water Street. Both remain undeveloped with no plans on the horizon.
Court of public opinion
In January 2012, Wimer asked Council for $2,000 for the contest he was launching—Project Gait-Way—that would prioritize how the bridge improved the experience for humans rather than vehicles. Wimer’s advocacy led to the project being put on hold, and Council agreed to pay Wimer the funds to help cover the cash prize.
“Ultimately, we didn’t get an artful or very imaginative bridge,” says Wimer, who now splits his time between Charlottesville and Costa Rica. “But I think we nudged the process to try harder.”
UVA’s School of Architecture got involved in February 2012, with 29 teams of students entering the Project Gait-Way contest in what became known as the “Belmont Vortex.” In front of a crowd of students assembled in Culbreth Theatre, Wimer suggested the railway tracks would no longer be necessary as the country moved away from coal.
Those tracks are now owned by the Virginia Passenger Railway Authority and are seen as part of a future east-west service between Richmond and Charlottesville.
A design called “Belmont Unabridged” swept the competition. It envisioned no bridge at all in favor of an at-grade railway crossing. One of the team’s faculty advisors was Daniel Bluestone, a former architecture professor at UVA, who urged students to push back on automotive culture.
By this time, Cox had left Charlottesville to work as design director for the National Endowment for the Arts. He suggested to Council that the city apply for a $150,000 grant from a program he helped create called “Our Town.” The funding would pay for a study of how a new connection tied to arts and culture could transform the surrounding area.
The new Belmont Bridge features a staircase that leads from bridge-level to Water Street, as well as the city’s first protected bike lane on the western side of the structure. The replacement is also much shorter at 236 linear feet.
A divided Council rejected the idea in part due to timing and the unlikelihood of either VDOT or CSX Transportation accepting the idea of no bridge. Instead, the idea was floated to spend $150,000 on further planning of the area around the bridge, while MMM continued to work on a new design with input from the contests. That funding would end up being used for a different project known as the Strategic Investment Area. (Despite winning an award from the Congress for New Urbanism in 2018, none of the SIA’s signature ideas would be implemented.)
Mo’ money, mo’ problems
By May 2012, Sean Connaughton, Virginia’s secretary of transportation, had arranged to fully fund the $14.5 million price tag for the bridge alongside funding for the Western Bypass, another controversial road project that would ultimately remain unbuilt. The Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the funding for the Belmont Bridge, but Council remained divided about how to proceed.
By that summer, Siteworks Studios had been hired as a subcontractor who would work on its own set of designs parallel to MMM. In December, the Siteworks team, including architect Jim Rounsevell, unveiled a proposal for Avon Street to go 25′ under the railroad tracks in an underpass rather than a bridge in order to allow the surrounding area to be developed. Siteworks hired a construction firm to produce a cost estimate of $17.3 million—higher than the $14.5 million the city had reserved for a bridge replacement.
In January 2013, the now-defunct Place Design Task Force, which had been created to provide advice to Council on how to proceed with urban infrastructure, recommended the underpass option, though they also acknowledged it would be prone to flooding and may be unwelcoming to pedestrians. In a memo, they also declared what kind of a bridge they wanted.
“Attention to appropriate lighting, pedestrian walkway design, railings, and bike travel lanes will ensure that the bridge scheme serves the community as safely and appropriately as possible,” reads the memo.
In September 2013, a firm hired by the city put the cost estimate for the bridge at just under $15 million and the estimate for the underpass at $27.3 million. That same month, Council directed staff to pursue an “enhanced bridge” but did not eliminate the option of an underpass. Rounsevell launched a crowd-funding campaign to further develop the concept, which he said would build “on the success of the Downtown Mall.”
“We are hoping to also develop a market study of the immediate area similar to what was done for the [High Line] in New York,” reads the campaign’s description. “We suspect that removing a 34-foot high bridge is a superior economic alternative.”
Reviews for the completed $38 million Belmont Bridge project, which still has remaining items waiting to be finished.
Three bridge options developed by MMM Design were shown side-by-side with Rounsevell’s underpass at meetings in the spring of 2014. Finally, on July 21, 2014, Council voted 4-1 to proceed with the “enhanced” option presented by MMM. Council member and architect Kathy Galvin voted against the motion and said instead the city should hire a new firm from scratch.
Three months later, Galvin would get her way when MMM Design went out of business and could not complete their work. By this time, Bob Fenwick had been elected to Council after running a campaign in which he insisted the bridge could be repaired rather than replaced. Fenwick said he was not interested in any of the amenities associated with the enhanced bridge and tried to get Council to follow along.
Tolbert left city government and Charlottesville in February 2015 before finalizing the process to begin the bridge design all over again. That would fall to his successor, Alex Ikefuna. By the time a request for proposals was issued, the bridge’s sufficiency rating as measured by the Federal Highway Administration had dropped to 40.8 in 2015 from 47.6 out of 100 in 2012.
At that time, VDOT’s cost estimate for the bridge remained at $14.5 million but would soon increase to $23 million due to inflation. To fill the gap, Council voted to seek revenue-sharing funds from VDOT that required a dollar-to-dollar match from the city government.
The firm Kimley-Horn was hired for $1.98 million in late 2016 to resume the design work after a long period of negotiations. Its task was to complete construction documents by March 2018, which would include a plan for how to redesign the street network around the bridge. Design specifications included one lane of vehicular traffic in each direction and a 25 mile per hour speed limit.
Meanwhile, the western sidewalk was closed in early 2017 after it, too, had deteriorated. One of the existing southbound lanes was converted for bike and pedestrian use.
When Kimley-Horn took over, project manager Sal Musarra said the process would build off of what had come before but would not seek to build consensus.
To pay for their share, Council began setting aside local money in the capital improvement program, beginning with an allocation of $4.5 million in Fiscal Year 2018. There was another $5 million in FY21, even with the budget uncertainties introduced by the pandemic that year. Another $2.5 million was set aside in FY22. These allocations totaled $12 million in local funds toward the project—almost a third of its projected cost.
By the time Council approved a design in July 2018, the cost estimate had risen to $24.8 million. Council held a final public hearing on spending money on the project in August 2020; the cost estimate had grown to $31.1 million. The amount would rise slightly due to supply-chain issues that increased the cost of materials.
Caton Construction won the award to build the bridge, which contains many of the elements of the enhanced design from MMM. At the ribbon-cutting, Steven Hicks, the city’s public works director, said the final product accomplished many of the city’s goals.
“We created an innovative and architectural design and the bridge has separated pedestrian, vehicle, and bicycle lanes,” said Hicks. “Two 11-foot travel lanes, one in each direction. Seven-foot bike lanes and 10-foot pedestrian lanes. And we preserved the views to the mountains and of the railroad tracks.”
Former Councilor Galvin says she felt the process and design overseen by Kimley-Horn were good and said the work of the Belmont Vortex introduced ideas that would never have been considered otherwise.
“Some of the ideas were just too expensive and not practical from an engineering standpoint,” Galvin says, adding she is glad the project was completed, unlike a new streetscape on West Main Street that Council canceled in 2022 to free up money for the expansion of Buford Middle School.
As this is Charlottesville, the Belmont Bridge and so many others will continue to be debated.
Wimer calls the creative protest from a dozen years ago “future-bending” in that it helped create a “slight improvement” over what he had seen.
“For what it’s worth, I still favor an at-grade solution,” Wimer says. “The ‘no-bridge’ design that won the juried and the public vote.”
Schwarz said the design concept was executed in a poor manner, but he admits the bridge is now safer for pedestrians.
“But is it the gateway to downtown that we should be proud of? Let’s give it a few years and see how it ages.”
UVA closer Stephen Schoch turned in a memorable performance on the mound this week, striking out five Old Dominion batters in a crucial postseason win for the Cavs. But Schoch’s postgame press conference was even more entertaining than his pitching.
“Does anything make you nervous?” the interviewer asked. “Caves, mainly,” said Schoch, looking around the field. “Nothing really. I don’t see any caves out here.”
“I heard a fan offer free Dippin’ Dots if I blew it,” Schoch continued. Citing the high price of Dippin’ Dots, Schoch said he thought for a second about throwing the game, but quickly decided that picking up a win would be more valuable.
“This is just a game. There’s gonna be way harder things in life,” the sixth-year pitcher concluded. “I think I’m a cool guy. My dogs think I’m awesome. My teammates like me, and my friends like me. So I’m going to go out and attack and win.”
At press time, UVA was in the midst of a rain-delayed contest against Old Dominion. A win would send the Hoos to a Super Regional, the next phase of postseason play.
City reserves $4 million more for Belmont Bridge
On Monday, City Council appropriated an additional $4,280,739 for the replacement of the Belmont Bridge, pushing the project’s total cost north of $35 million. Last August, council approved a budget of $15.3 million for the long-awaited revitalization of the bridge, but rising materials and labor costs, coupled with a shortage of contractors, caused the price to spike.
The Virginia Department of Transportation has identified about $4.3 million in state funds from State of Good Repair, which provides money for “structurally deficient” bridges, to help cover the price hike from the previous budget. Federal and state funding will pay for the majority of the bridge’s replacement cost, with the city paying around $13 million.
According to the Belmont Bridge website, the current bridge is in significant disrepair, scoring 40 out of 100 in condition ratings.
An updated schedule on the website says construction will take place between 2021 and 2023. When the bridge is completed, locals can look forward to protected, 10-foot-wide bike lanes, a protected pedestrian lane, a new pedestrian underpass under Ninth Street, and opportunities for public art installations.
“It seems like every shot he shoots is going in.”
NBA superstar Blake Griffin, talking about his teammate, UVA alum Joe Harris, who is averaging 14 points per game in the playoffs for the Brooklyn Nets.
In brief
Garage nixed
City Council passed a resolution formally halting the construction of a proposed 300-spot parking garage on Seventh and Market streets. Council first initiated the project in 2019, but after significant community feedback, and a work session last week, it declared the city is no longer interested. For more info, check out last week’s C-VILLE story.
Mueller on Mueller
Robert Mueller. File photo.
Robert Mueller will help teach a class on The Mueller Report at UVA law school this fall. Mueller’s famous investigation into then-President Donald Trump found several examples of Russia interfering with the 2016 presidential election, but ultimately the special counsel did not charge the former commander-in-chief or his associates with a crime. Students hoping that Mueller assesses their papers with similar leniency should know that he only plans to appear during one of the course’s six meetings.
W&L keeps its Confederate name
Washington and Lee University will remain Washington and Lee University, as the school’s board of trustees voted 22-6 to keep Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s name atop the university’s brand. The school then released a statement saying, “Our goal is to build a more diverse community [and] enhance inclusion for everyone at W&L.” Yeah. Good luck with that.
Democracy donation
UVA received a $50 million check to kick-start a new institute for the “study, teaching and promotion of democracy,” the university announced this week. Megadonors Martha and Bruce Karsh, who made their fortune through “global asset management” and who are part-owners of the Golden State Warriors, are the namesakes of the project, which will include the construction of a new building on Emmet Street.
After nearly two decades of municipal hiccups and mishaps, the city’s plan to replace the Belmont Bridge is finally coming to fruition.
On Monday evening, City Council conducted a first reading on an allocation for the project: The state will pay $12.1 million, the federal government will pay $3.2 million, and the city will kick in $13 million. Council will hold a final vote on the decision August 17.
The city has completed right-of-way acquisition of necessary land and is now finalizing plans with the Federal Highway Administration and Virginia Department of Transportation, explained Jeanette Janiczek, Charlottesville’s Urban Construction Initiative program manager.
Last year, the Board of Architectural Review approved a certificate of appropriateness for the project. However, Janiczek said the certificate is currently being updated.
The city has been working to replace the nearly 60-year-old bridge since 2003, but has run into numerous issues. Initial designs were shot down by the public, and the consultants first hired for the project, MMM Design Group, shut their doors in 2014.
Kimley-Horn took charge of the project in 2017, and council approved a final design the following year.
The new bridge will include pedestrian lighting, benches, and bike racks, as well as a seven-foot-wide bicycle lane and a 10-foot-wide sidewalk, which will be separated from the road by a median. Ramps and stairs on the north end will connect the sidewalks to the Downtown Mall and Water Street.
Construction will begin next year, and is expected to be finished by 2023.
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Quote of the week
“Don’t create these boards and these commissions as bandaids to shut people up.”
—Police Civilian Review Board member Dorenda Johnson, speaking as a resident on City Council’s actions toward the board
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In brief
Riggleman running?
After losing the Republican primary to Bob Good, lame-duck Congressman Denver Riggleman told a Bloomberg podcast that he was “seriously considering” an independent run for governor. Riggleman said he lost his seat because he “refused to commit to supporting anything even close to racism or bigotry.” During his two-year term, Riggleman voted in line with Donald Trump 94 percent of the time.
Testing turmoil
UVA’s hopes for a hybrid semester rely on testing students at a high volume. That plan got off to a rocky start this week. The school sent an email to all students directing them to order COVID tests from the university website, but the website immediately crashed, multiple students report. Once the site came back online, other glitches emerged: The drop-down menu where students were supposed to input their home addresses omitted Rhode Island and New Jersey.
COVID outbreak
Cedars Healthcare Center, a skilled nursing facility in Charlottesville, has been devastated by a coronavirus outbreak, reports NBC29. As of July 31, 96 of the center’s 112 residents, and 44 of the 140 staff, have tested positive for the virus. Seventeen residents have passed away.
Name game
Since the resurgence of protests against police violence around the country, multiple local residents have submitted applications to the city asking for a street downtown to be named in honor of the Black Lives Matter movement. But City Council decided to hold off on voting on the name on Monday, waiting to have more “community involvement” in the matter. Council will now accept related honorary street name requests until August 31, and will consider all of the applications together before taking action.
Stormwater from the demolition site of U-Hall has polluted Meadow Creek (Photo: Sanjay Suchak)
Bridging the Belmont gap
Replacing the 1962-built Belmont Bridge was first recommended in 2003. Many plans have come and gone, as has at least one design company. In 2012, some, like former city councilor Bob Fenwick, said the bridge’s deterioration was the result of city neglect and could be repaired. At the time, the bridge replacement project cost was about $14 million.
That cost is now $24.7 million, and on August 20 the Board of Architectural Review approved a certificate of appropriateness for the new span. The design, with its 10-foot sidewalks and 7-foot bike lanes, favors pedestrians and
bicyclists, with two lanes devoted to motorists.
City officials hope that construction will begin by 2020.
Putting the “i” in infidelity
Millennials and Gen Xers are more likely to engage in “internet infidelity” than earlier generations, according to “iFidelity: The State of Our Unions 2019,” a report from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University.
UVA sociology prof Brad Wilcox has studied marriage and fidelity for the past 10 years. For this study, he partnered with BYU’s Jeffrey Dew, a family studies professor. They found:
Online sex talk: 18 percent of millennial participants did it with someone besides their partner, compared to 16 percent of
Gen Xers, 6 percent of baby boomers, and 3 percent of the greatest generation.
That’s cheating: 70 percent or more of Americans rate secret emotional affairs or sexting with a non-partner as “unfaithful.”
Crossing the generations: The number of people who cheat in real life is consistent across age groups at 15 percent, although Wilcox points out that millennials and Gen Xers haven’t had as much time to have affairs and may exceed that number by the time they’re older.
Married and cohabitating adults who don’t fool around online are more likely to be happy and committed in their relationships.
Quote of the week
“We needed to make it go away.”—Delegate Chris Head, R-Botetourt, on the GOP strategy to adjourn the special session called by Governor Ralph Northam to address gun safety after the Virginia Beach massacre, according to the Roanoke Times
In brief
Cop’s case not closed yet
Andrew Holmes, the Albemarle County Police officer who was accused in 2016 of racial profiling, is no longer off the hook after a federal appeals court ruled a previous decision to throw the case out must be revisited. No date has been set for the next hearing.
Chasing gold
Former UVA men’s basketball star Joe Harris was named to the U.S. men’s national team for the FIBA World Cup, which will be held in China beginning September 1. The roster is chock-full of NBA stars like Kemba Walker and Donovan Mitchell, but several spots opened up after many of the bigger-name players backed out to focus on preparing for the 2019-20 season.
Murky waters
Construction workers at the demolition site for U-Hall poured stormwater into a drain that ran into Meadow Creek, polluting the water and killing hundreds of fish. Although the city’s drinking water was unaffected, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said the rainwater had mixed with concrete dust prior to being dumped down the drain.
Last pet standing
Izzy the cat, who’s been missing since the August 18 Pet Paradise fire, was found Tuesday morning, and, according to WINA, appears to be okay. Izzy was among three pets who escaped during the fire. Shadow, another cat, was safely located, but a dog named Bailey was discovered dead about a mile and a half away from the building.
Perhaps the bridge design will be completed in 2017 and the new Belmont Bridge will be finished in 2019.
More than a decade after a 2003 study determined the Belmont Bridge was deteriorating and needed to be replaced, and more than six years after a company was chosen to design the bridge and whose vision was resoundingly rejected by the community, Charlottesville is again seeking bids to design the bridge.
A warning to any company considering submitting a proposal is on page 3 of the 27-page request for proposal: “One bridge design reached the 35 percent plan stage before strong community participation implored exploration of other alternative designs/concepts.”
That would be from the now-defunct MMM Design, whose plans, for which the city spent $1.2 million, were not approved in 2011 by the Board of Architectural Review and, in turn, inspired a grassroots design campaign with UVA’s School of Architecture submitting ideas in 2012. The winning design of the unofficial competition got rid of the bridge entirely.
Around that same time, a faction led by future City Councilor Bob Fenwick accused the city of neglecting maintenance of the 1961-built bridge and urged repairing rather than replacing the structure that’s the boundary for the east end of the Downtown Mall.
That’s the history the future winning bidder faces.
“We’re going to build upon that experience and move forward,” says Jeanette Janiczek, the city’s urban construction initiative program manager.
Last year, City Council officially nixed the idea of the popular at-grade structure or underpass and called for an “enhanced” urban design two-lane bridge less than half the length of the current 440-foot span that’s bike and pedestrian friendly, keeps the views and serves as a gateway to the city.
The design, says the RFP, should be “innovative, entertaining” and provide an “enjoyable pedestrian experience.” And it will require 20 meetings with myriad stakeholders and familiarity with previous bridge design decisions, the strategic investment area, the comprehensive plan and City Council goals. Janiczek says the city’s goal is to have the bridge design completed in 2017, with the new bridge construction finished in 2019.
“We shouldn’t be starting from scratch,” says Fenwick, who says a couple of things about the RFP puzzle him. “I never would have endorsed two lanes,” he says. “It’s a gateway entrance with one lane in and one lane out? That’s a major thing for me. It’s already backed up with four lanes.”
However, according to minutes from a September 2, 2014, meeting, Fenwick joined in a unanimous vote by council directing the Belmont Bridge steering committee to work with the design team on a two-lane bridge.
He concedes the minutes are accurate, but still thinks the bridge should be four lanes. “The traffic around town has gotten much worse as the McIntire intersection opened as I believed it would, so I will once again question the point of choking incoming and outgoing traffic through a gateway of one lane in and one lane out.”
Fenwick is also concerned about the cost of the bridge, now estimated at $17.2 million, according to Janiczek, of which the city has $14.5 million, she says.
Fenwick, a civil engineer, says he’s had a difficult time finding out where the money is that’s already been allocated. “That sparks my frustration when I go to the city and ask,” he says. “I’m not a rookie at this. It shouldn’t be that hard to find.”
And he’s still not convinced the bridge can’t be repaired, but acknowledges he’s lost that battle.
This fall before the election, City Councilor Kathy Galvin called out former Neighborhood Development Services director Jim Tolbert for allowing “his preferred engineering and design firm”—MMM Design—“to continue work on the Belmont Bridge…with no timeline for work products. That engineering firm went out of business a few months later and the Belmont Bridge still does not have a replacement firm under contract. The project was a campaign issue four years ago and it still is.”
In an e-mail, she says the current RFP is very clear about the scope of the project and phasing. “That tells me that this RFP is all about building a bridge, not just endlessly exploring schematic design options. I am very happy about that!”
Belmont Bridge steering committee member Lena Seville is pleased the proposal is “starting from scratch,” she says. “A lot of people in the community didn’t want a standard highway bridge.” And she says she’s happy so many public meetings are early in the process.
Belmont resident/filmmaker Brian Wimer organized the 2012 community bridge-design effort, which was called Project Gait-Wayto emphasize walkability. He’s just back fromliving in Europe for a year. “When I left, MMM Design was defunct and this was after the process had been ongoing for four years,” he says. “Finally something’s being done.”
Says Wimer, “One of the promising things I see—the original project failed because of bad assumptions.”
He notes that in the design competition, the UVA jury, stakeholders and the public vote all favored an at-grade crossing. And the CSX tracks over which the bridge looms may not be as big a factor in the future, he believes. “It’s a very established fact that coal is dead,” he says.
Steve Powell, president of Buckingham Branch, which leases the railroad line from CSX, did not return a phone call from C-VILLE.
After seeing innovations in Europe, Wimer wonders, “Why can’t we be the ones coming up with a world’s first? What if it creates great societies?”
Says Wimer, “We have the opportunity for a fresh start, to get rid of those earlier assumptions and play ‘what if?’”
