Tag: Dewberry Hotel

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In brief: Nonprofit supports refugees, reproductive rights march, and more

Ukranian refugee Hanna, center, and her young son were reunited with her mother in Prague after nine weeks’ separation. Photo courtesy Kimberly Bianchini.

Refuge for refugees

Twelve years after moving from Charlottesville to Prague, Kim Bianchini had built a real estate business with her husband when war in Ukraine broke out and refugees began flowing through Poland and into the Czech Republic. 

“The families that were arriving were having a very hard time signing leases and finding places to stay for several reasons,” Bianchini says. “One being that landlords were very skeptical to rent to them because they weren’t sure how long families would stay.”

With her husband, Bianchini, who formerly owned the Petit Bebe boutique on the Downtown Mall, was able to place several mothers and children from Ukraine in vacant apartments they owned, but the need for additional housing grew more urgent as a growing number of refugees arrived in Prague.

“This is when I decided to form a nonprofit organization and reach out to the community and try to find properties for these families,” says Bianchini.

The organization she founded, Amity, has nonprofit status in the Czech Republic. Bianchini is working on acquiring 501(c)(3) status in the U.S. She has already secured 21 furnished apartments and has placed 75 women and children—but with an estimated 300,000 Ukrainian refugees already in the Czech Republic, the need for affordable housing is mounting. 

The nonprofit’s website, amity.ngo, has an option for making donations in American dollars, and Bianchini says the money goes directly to assisting refugees. 

“No one takes any salary or anything,” says Bianchini, who invites interested parties to contact her for more information about the people her charity is assisting.

“I can directly connect you with a specific family so you really know where the money you’re giving is going,” she says.

Amity co-founder Kimberly Bianchini embraces two children who fled a small town outside Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo courtesy Kimberly Bianchini.

March for reproductive rights

Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Charlottesville on Saturday to protest an impending decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade and decades of constitutionally protected access to abortion.

The Bans Off Our Bodies event led marchers from the federal courthouse to the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall, and was part of a nationwide response to the draft opinion that leaked earlier this month. 

Speakers included UVA Law Professor Anne Coughlin, Deborah Arenstein of the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund, and Josh Throneburg, Democratic congressional candidate for Virginia’s 5th District.  

In a release announcing the event, attorney Andre Hakes warned that “the demise of Roe should be of concern to everyone who loves freedom. The rights to contraception, interracial marriage, and gay marriage are all based on the same interrelated legal concepts of privacy, due process, and equal protection… all these rights, and others, are at risk if Roe is overturned.”

In brief

New hires

After more than a year without a director of human resources, the City of Charlottesville has appointed Mary Ann Hardie to the position. It has also promoted longtime employees Misty Graves to director of human services, and David Dillehunt—who has been serving as the city’s interim communications director since January, following Brian Wheeler’s resignation last fall—to deputy director of communications. 

Union bust

In a 4-2 vote, the Albemarle County School Board rejected a collective bargaining resolution proposed by the Albemarle Education Association during a meeting last week. Board members who voted against the resolution—which has received support from more than two-thirds of the division’s teachers, transportation staff, and school nurses—claimed the new state legislation allowing public employees to unionize did not provide adequate guidance, and wanted to see how other school divisions engage in collective bargaining before moving forward. Instead, the board unanimously voted to allow Superintendent Matt Haas to look into alternatives to collective bargaining, and report back in 90 days.

Matt Haas. Staff photo.

No more Dewberry

The Dewberry Group, owners of the half-finished Dewberry Living building, will have to give the downtown eyesore a new name—and pay $43 million in damages. In 2020, Dewberry Engineers filed a lawsuit against the Atlanta-based real estate company for violating a 2007 confidential settlement agreement that prohibited it from using the name Dewberry, reports The Daily Progress. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Dewberry Group breached the trademark agreement when it changed the vacant building’s name from The Landmark Hotel to The Dewberry Hotel, after purchasing the abandoned project in 2012—and again when it changed its name from The Laramore to Dewberry Living in 2020. 

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Wrap it up

A collection of private citizens pooled cash to pay for a vinyl wrap on the exterior of the abandoned Dewberry Hotel. Photo: Eze Amos

Charlottesville’s gargantuan downtown eyesore, the half-finished and abandoned Dewberry Hotel, got a face-lift last week—the front and back of the building have been sheathed in a colorful nine-story vinyl wrap showing an abstract pattern of musical instruments. 

The art installation was funded by Friends of Cville Downtown, a new nonprofit working on “an array of projects that can invigorate the downtown environment with lights, art, paintings, seating, events, banners, sanitation,” and more, said Michael Caplin, co-chair of the group, at a Monday press conference in front of the artwork. 

The wrap, which leaves the building’s sides exposed, “demonstrates the power and the glory and the value of art,” Caplin continued. “We thank the Dewberries for allowing us to use their giant easel.”

Those hoping for answers on the long-term future of the building left the press conference disappointed. The owners of the property, Atlanta-based developer John Dewberry and his wife Jaimie, were scheduled to attend the event but did not appear. Caplin said the couple had been exposed to a positive COVID case over the weekend and were in quarantine. 

The building bearing the Dewberry name has stood dormant since 2009. The project was initially conceived as the Landmark Hotel by developers Lee Danielson and Halsey Minor, but financial difficulties and litigation ground progress on the building to a halt. Dewberry purchased the half-finished building skeleton at auction for $6.25 million in 2012, and no construction has taken place since then. 

The Dewberry Group’s website says the building “is poised to become the city’s premier luxury mixed-use retail, office, and residential property,” and will be called Dewberry Living.

Caplin said the idea for the art installation came from local businesspeople, and when he presented the idea to the Dewberries, they enthusiastically green-lit the project. Two paintings from artist Eric Waugh were enlarged and printed on 13-foot-wide vinyl mesh rolls, which were carried to the top of the building and then affixed to its exterior by workers rappelling down the side of the tower. The wrap is scheduled to remain in place for 14 to 16 months.

Mayor Lloyd Snook was in attendance to pull a tarp off the sign on the front of the building. “It is really exciting for me to know that we have such commitment from the private sector to match the kind of commitment we’ve been trying to display from the public sector,” Snook said.

The mayor admitted he doesn’t have any “inside information” about the future of the building, but “the fact that we’re here with the Dewberries’ support” makes him hopeful that more news could follow.  

The installation is comprised of 12 banners and a 130-foot wrap around the building’s base, and cost $45,000 in total.

The project’s “anchor donors” include major Charlottesville developers Ludwig Kuttner, Hunter Craig, Keith Woodard, and others. Many of those donors sit on the executive committee of Friends of Cville Downtown, along with other local entrepreneurs like Joan Fenton, owner of J. Fenton Gifts, and Alex Bryant, executive director of IX Art Park. The group absorbed the former Downtown Business Association, a collection of merchants and restaurateurs with a similar mission to the new organization.  

Caplin says the group plans to unveil more murals near the Dewberry in the coming days, and is also financing a new coat of paint for the chipped-up exterior of Oyster House Antiques. 

The Dewberry Foundation, the charitable component of Dewberry’s business, has made a $10,000 donation to the nonprofit, says Caplin, and is listed on the building’s exterior as a sponsor of the project. 

As a percentage of its annual budget, $10,000 is a major outlay for the Dewberry Foundation. According to the company’s 990 IRS returns, the only contributor to the foundation in 2019 was John Dewberry, who put in $100,000. The only employee listed is Dewberry, who apparently devotes five hours per week to the position. The foundation’s donations totaled $106,323, with the largest chunks headed for Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theater ($25,000) and the Children’s Museum of Atlanta ($16,000). The 2018 return tells a similar story, listing Dewberry as the sole contributor to the foundation, having given $125,000. 

(For comparison’s sake, we glanced at the 990s of a few other local big shots—John Grisham’s Oakwood Foundation gave $5,041,440 to charitable organizations in 2018, and the Chris Long Foundation dished out $1,852,376 in 2019.)

Kuttner was also in attendance at the event on Monday. (Caplin introduced the fedora-wearing developer as “the true mayor of Main Street,” which got a chuckle out of Lloyd Snook, the elected mayor.) “We, the citizens of Charlottesville, want to get the mall back,” said Kuttner. He expressed optimism about the state of affairs, and praised Dewberry’s work on a recently completed hotel in Charleston. 

Caplin says he hopes Dewberry will see his plan through to the end—“The energy at the Quirk [on West Main] shows you what a cool boutique hotel can generate.” In the meantime, a steel and concrete shell half-wrapped in vinyl will have to do.

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In brief: Carter joins race, Dewberry gets sued, and more

Northern Virginia Delegate Lee Carter announced his gubernatorial candidacy on New Year’s Day. PC: Supplied photo

Jump in

The 2021 race for the governor’s mansion in Virginia got a little more complicated last week, when northern Virginia Delegate Lee Carter declared his candidacy for the office.

In his campaign announcement, Carter emphasized economic stratification as the driving force of discontent in the commonwealth. “[Virginia] is not divided between red and blue. It’s not divided between big cities and small towns. Virginia is divided between the haves and the have-nots,” he said.

Carter identifies as a democratic socialist and was a Virginia co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. He made headlines last year when he spearheaded a bill to cap insulin prices at $50 per month. With the 2021 General Assembly session approaching, Carter has already introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty.

Outside the halls of the state capital, the former Marine and electronic repairman has been active on social media. He’s got more than 100,000 followers on Twitter (six times as many as House Majority Leader Eileen Filler-Corn), and just before his 2018 election he made headlines after tweeting out a memorable self-initiated “oppo dump,” sharing that he was “on divorce number 3” and that “just like everyone else under 35, I’m sure explicit images or video of me exists out there somewhere,” though “unlike Anthony Weiner, I never sent them unsolicited.”

Carter joins former governor Terry McAuliffe, current lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, state senator Jennifer McClellan, and state delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy in a crowded Democratic field.

McAuliffe, a career Democratic Party insider, announced record-breaking fundraising numbers this week—“the Macker” raised $6.1 million as of December 31. The rest of the candidates will share updates as a campaign finance filing deadline approaches in the coming weeks, but The Washington Post reports that McAuliffe’s haul surpasses any previous total from a candidate at this point in the race.

Spending hasn’t always translated to victories for McAuliffe, however. In his first run for governor in 2009, he outspent primary opponent and then-state delegate Creigh Deeds $8.2 million to $3.4 million, but wound up losing to Deeds by more than 20 percent. In 2013, McAuliffe beat Ken Cuccinelli in the general election, outspending him $38 million to $20.9 million.

The Democratic primary will be held on June 8.

PC: Supplied and file photos

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Quote of the week

“He said that in his many years of doing executive searches, he had never seen a level of dysfunction as profound as what he was seeing here.“

—City Councilor Lloyd Snook, in a Facebook post, relaying the comments of the firm retained to find a new city manager

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In brief

State senator killed by COVID

Virginia state senator Ben Chafin passed away last Friday at age 60 after contracting coronavirus. The southwestern Virginia Republican served in the legislature for six years, and was one of four GOP state senators to break rank and vote in favor of Medicaid expansion in 2018. Governor Ralph Northam ordered state flags lowered in Chafin’s honor over the weekend.

You Dew you

The steel and concrete husk of a skyscraper that’s been languishing on the Downtown Mall for more than a decade is now facing further legal trouble, reports The Daily Progress. Last year, the Dewberry Group, which owns the building, changed the building’s name from the Laramore to Dewberry Living—but the Dewberry Living name violated a trademark agreement between the Dewberry Group and a northern Virginia firm called Dewberry Engineers, Inc. Now, Dewberry Engineers is suing the Dewberry Group for copyright infringement. The building itself remains empty.

The Dewberry Living building continues to stir up legal drama. PC: Ashley Twiggs

Eyes on the road

As of January 1, it is illegal for drivers in Virginia to hold a phone while operating a vehicle. If you’re caught gabbing while driving, or skipping that one terrible song, you’ll be subject to a $125 fine for a first offense and a $250 fine for a second offense. Opponents of the law are concerned that it will open the door for more racial profiling by law enforcement, while the law’s backers cite the dangers of distracted driving.

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In brief: Rice reactions, RBG ruling, TJ’s party over, and more

Paige Rice at a City Council meeting following the KKK rally in July 2017. eze amos

‘Odd’ indictment

The felony embezzlement charge against former City Council clerk Paige Rice, 37, for an iPhone and Apple Watch valued at more than $500 has many scratching their heads.

“It seems very unusual it got to this point without a resolution,” says attorney Scott Goodman. “It seems like something that could have easily been resolved without a felony indictment.”

A former city employee who spoke only on the condition of anonymity says, “It seems kind of odd to me someone didn’t call her and say, you need to return the phone, rather than sneak around and charge her with a felony. Particularly with her husband working there. It’s very odd.”

Rice is married to Joe Rice, deputy director of communications for the city. Neither responded to C-VILLE’s phone calls.

Rice was a fixture at council meetings for eight years. Last July she was named chief of staff to manage two new employees at the disposal of councilors. The job came with a salary bump from almost $73,000 to $98,000. The larger council staff had been touted by then-mayor Mike Signer, but was criticized by Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who call for a guest audit of the position and its pay.

Rice’s resignation letter came barely two months later on September 12. She took a job at the Focused Ultrasound Foundation as chief of staff.

Attorney Dave Heilberg says embezzlement is a crime of taking property with which one has been entrusted, but Rice’s case “is not as clear cut” as that of an accountant who writes herself a check. What Rice was told about the equipment could be a factor in her defense, and he points out that “technology goes out of date really fast” when assessing its value.

A grand jury from both Albemarle County and Charlottesville—which is also unusual, says Heilberg—indicted Rice June 7. And court records show the date of the offense as October 5, Rice’s official last day.

Goodman says the indictment could have consequences that “could be ugly,” particularly if Rice has information about other people in the city in similar circumstances who didn’t get indicted.

A city release announcing Rice’s resignation said, “The City Council appreciates the service of Ms. Rice over the last eight years and wishes her the best as she moves on to the next exciting phase in her professional life.”

Her next court appearance is August 19.

Quote of the week

“The House [of Delegates] has no prerogative to select its own members.”—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upholds a lower court ruling that Virginia’s legislative districts were racially gerrymandered

In brief

B’day non grata

At its June 17 meeting, City Council took steps to remove the birthday of local icon Thomas Jefferson, April 13, as a paid city holiday and to replace it with Liberation and Freedom Day, March 3, which commemorates the arrival of Union forces and the emancipation of the area’s 14,0000 enslaved people. Albemarle will discuss ditching Jefferson’s birthday at its June 19 meeting.

Are luxury condos in the Dewberry’s future? Skyclad Aerial

Dewberry condos?

Not much activity has been seen on the ground at the site of the alleged Dewberry Hotel, now celebrating its 10th anniversary as a wraith towering over the Downtown Mall. But the Progress reports some movement on the Dewberry Group website, and renderings of the hotel have migrated from its hospitality to its living section, with a new name: the Laramore.

Deadbeat guv pays up

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice finally paid the  $311,000 in back taxes his company owed to Albemarle County, plus the current tax bill, reports the DP’s Allison Wrabel. The county had started the process to sell 52 of Justice’s 55 parcels because of the large arrearage.

AG okays THC

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring spoke out in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana in an op-ed published in both the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot on Sunday. The General Assembly has yet to pass any measures on the issue, but decriminalization has been an issue generally shot down by Republicans in past sessions.

Rural broadband access

Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s subsidiary, doing business as Firefly Fiber Broadband, will receive $28.6 million of FCC funds to provide 1 gigabit internet speeds for over 11,000 homes and businesses in central Virginia over the next 10 years.

Election turnout: Not great

Off-year elections traditionally have lower turnout, and this year’s June 11 primary was no exception. With no presidential or gubernatorial candidates at the top of the ballot, many voters chose to sit out the primary, despite several local General Assembly races.

  • The 57th District, which includes Charlottesville and the Albemarle urban ring, had the highest turnout—15.7 percent—in state General Assembly elections, according to Virginia Public Access Project.
  • The 17th Senate District, which had both a Democratic and Republican primary, brought in a much lower 5 percent of the electorate in each race.
  • Total Charlottesville turnout (including City Council primaries) was 19 percent, compared to 27 percent in 2017.
  • Total Albemarle County turnout (including races for sheriff and Rivanna supervisor) was 10 percent.
  • In 2017, county turnout was 19 percent for the Democratic primary for governor and .05 percent for the Republican primary.
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YOU Issue: We wish we had a better Dewberry update

We're approaching the 10th anniversary of when construction ceased on the Landmark Hotel in January 2009. Photo by Ashley Twiggs

Here’s what readers asked for:

Landmark Hotel…I would like to see someone address each City Council meeting with the question, “What have you done this week to move this project forward?”—Ida Simmons

Ah, the Dewberry Hotel. Somehow we knew there’d be inquiring minds, and while there’s not much new to report, we can tell you where it stands now.

This winter, we’re approaching the 10th anniversary of when construction ceased on the Landmark Hotel.

The last time we wrote about its Downtown Mall skeleton, we said the Board of Architectural Review had approved more height in March—for a total of 117-and-a-half feet, with an additional 16-foot rooftop structure —for Waynesboro-born and Atlanta-based developer John Dewberry, who bought the derelict Landmark in 2012 and promised to put it out of its misery. It has obviously taken longer than he (and the city) imagined.

City spokesperson Brian Wheeler had no updates to offer. Dewberry, who dodged multiple calls during our last report, again did not respond to an interview request.

The developer had originally said he’d start building the Charlottesville hotel after finishing one in Charleston, South Carolina. But that happened in the summer of 2016, and we still haven’t seen any progress. Dewberry, dubbed “Atlanta’s emperor of empty lots,” by Bloomberg Businessweek, also holds an extremely valuable piece of land in Atlanta.

But if you ask the multitudes—presumably locals—who have left gag Google reviews for the uninhabited hotel, the place clearly has its quirks.

“Located in the heart of the historic Downtown mall, the Dewberry Charlottesville offers a unique opportunity for the adventurous traveler,” writes reviewer Lindsey Fogle. “You can experience the fine cuisine, art, and shopping of this celebrated area while also getting that once-in-a-lifetime feel of falling nails. The attention to detail cannot be overstated, from the beautiful patina of rusted steel to the incredibly lifelike rodents scurrying through dilapidated plywood. My only advice to management is to offer complimentary tetanus shots in lieu of a pillow.”

Adds Fogle, “This fine establishment stands alone among Charlottesville’s amenities, and likely always will. It’s truly the crown jewel of the Dewberry line of hotels.”

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In brief: Soviet-era propaganda, a landmark vote and a grisly death

The Rotunda at UVA. Photo by Ibn Batuta

Dollars and sense

A story published December 7 in UVA Today boasted that minimum wage for the school’s new hires has increased by more than 16 percent since 2011, and President Teresa Sullivan and Chief Operating Officer Patrick Hogan presented this milestone to the Board of Visitors earlier this month.

The current minimum wage for newly hired, full-time staff at the university is $12.38 per hour, which beats the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and an estimated $11.86 living wage in Charlottesville, according to the report.

“This article reads like classic Soviet-era propaganda,” writes former mayor Dave Norris on Facebook, citing what he called a gross mischaracterization of a living wage in the city.

While, sure, data collected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that $11.86 is the living wage in the city, Norris points out that that’s for a single adult, when “many hard-working and low-wage UVA employees have children.”

According to MIT’s living wage calculator, that number for a household with one parent and one child is $25.40 an hour and $30.06 for an adult and two little ones.

Norris says no one’s asking the university to raise its minimum wage to 30 bucks an hour, “but maybe stop patting itself on the back so vigorously when the best it chooses to do for the workers who make the university function is $12.38.”

Concludes the former mayor: “Try harder, UVA.”

Landmark vote

The Landmark Hotel. Photo: Ashley Twiggs

City councilors voted 3-2 at their December 18 meeting to not give John Dewberry a $1 million tax break over 10 years on his planned reconstruction of the Downtown Mall’s derelict Landmark Hotel. The Atlanta-based developer has promised Charlottesville he’ll turn the eyesore into the luxurious Dewberry Hotel.

Song of August 12

Southern rockers the Drive-By Truckers released “The Perilous Night” in November, with the lyric, “Dumb, white and angry with their cup half-filled, running over people down in Charlottesville.” Proceeds from the single will go to Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, according to the Roanoke Times.

What’s with West2nd?

The Planning Commission okayed higher density for the Keith Woodard project that will be the future home of the City Market December 11, but refused to approve new designs for the L-shaped building, reports Charlottesville Tomorrow. Woodard won a competition for the project in 2014, but earlier this year said that design was financially unfeasible.

Parking petition

At press time, 738 people had signed an online petition written by Jennifer Tidwell to nix the new parking meters installed around the Downtown Mall over the summer. “Plain and simple, we do not need them,” it says.

Grisly death

Police say Bethany Stephens, a 5-foot and 125-pound Goochland native, was mauled to death by her two pit bulls over the weekend as she was walking them through the woods near her home. When her father found her body, it was being guarded by the canines, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Quote of the Week:

The weight of the urn in my arms was about the same weight she was when she was born… I flashed back to the day they put her in my arms when she was born, and I sat and held her for a long time. —Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, in a December 14 Daily Beast interview

Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, walks into Charlottesville Circuit Court to see the man charged with killing her daughter for the first time. Photo by Eze Amos