Tag: Fifeville

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Get out of the zone: Outdated zoning in Rose Hill leaves some lots vacant

A property at 902 Forest St. in Rose Hill (above) was put up for auction in 2003, and eventually demolished. It’s now one of 18 vacant lots in the neighborhood. PC: Staff Photo

Back in 2013, Julie (who asked that we not use her last name) bought a house in Rose Hill, a small, historically African American neighborhood roughly bordered by Preston Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Harris Street. The house had gone into foreclosure during the housing market crash, and had been neglected for a while. 

After determining that bringing the house up to code would be too expensive, Julie considered demolishing it and turning it into a small brewery. But the property was zoned B-3, a type of intensive commercial zoning that would require her to provide more parking than seemed feasible for the mostly residential neighborhood, along with other requirements like making retail sales and staying open till 1am.

While a majority of Rose Hill is zoned for single-family residences, and parcels along Preston Avenue are zoned for mixed-use, others are still zoned B-3 for major commercial uses—what planning commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates calls “our worst zoning.”

Business zoning “is the least efficient…and least useful for the city,” says Solla-Yates. “It’s been thought for a long time that mixed-use is the better way to do cities. If you have housing above and businesses below, that’s more pedestrian-friendly, welcoming, [and] prettier. And it gives you housing in areas where you need housing.”

That was the intention of another owner in the neighborhood, Julie says, who originally submitted a site plan for an office space below, and residential above. “But his site was not zoned for that,” she says, “so he went back to [Neighborhood Development Services] with an office space.”

Julie ultimately decided to submit a site plan for a small warehouse, but after learning from a neighbor that the site planning process could take months to complete, she called it quits.

Lately, she’s noticed more and more houses like hers being demolished in Rose Hill—“and the lot just sits there.” There are currently 18 vacant lots in the neighborhood, six of which are zoned B3. 

“I’ve attended a couple of [site plan reviews],” she says, “and it just seems like they don’t go forward.”

Some projects run into issues with sewer and property lines, Julie says, but others, like hers, have faced restrictions with zoning. 

Since the ’90s, the city has gotten rid of “almost all of its B zoning,” Solla-Yates says. He guesses that it kept B zoning in Rose Hill because “it was small.”  

He adds that the city “hasn’t given a lot of love and attention to Rose Hill.” Like 10th and Page and Fifeville, two other historically African American neighborhoods, “there’s some pretty serious social justice issues with [Rose Hill] not getting infrastructure and services at the same level as the rest of the city for decades,” Solla-Yates says. “Which is also part of why we’re a little bit slow to think about [its zoning] seriously.” 

The city’s upcoming zoning overhaul will get rid of business zoning, as well as other out-of-date zoning practices, Solla-Yates says, and will have an “integrated look at zoning and housing.” While consultants are still in the process of reviewing the zoning, he predicts that business zoning will be replaced with mixed-use.

“Business-only zoning doesn’t have a future in Charlottesville,” Solla-Yates says. “We are not fine-tuning the existing zoning. We are replacing the zoning. We want something better, and we’ve waited long enough.” 

Read Brodhead, a zoning administrator with Neighborhood Development Services, agrees that mixed-use zoning is generally more practical, but doesn’t think the city should get rid of business zoning entirely, as “there’s traditionally been a lot of commercial uses of it.” He points out, for example, that MarieBette Café & Bakery, on Rose Hill Drive, is zoned B-3, and that the four vacant parcels across the street from it (also zoned B-3) could also be used for a business “that’s significant for the neighborhood.”

But until any type of new zoning is approved, Julie remains concerned about the future of Rose Hill. Every week, she receives phone calls and postcards from developers wanting to buy her property, and is ultimately concerned that a large developer will come in and buy up all of the vacant lots and create a large commercial business, since a developer would have “the time and resources to go through the whole approval process.”

“That would just be out of scale with the neighborhood,” she says. 

And as for the other property owners with deteriorating houses or vacant lots, “they are sitting there and wondering what other people are going to do,” she says. 

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The figs of Fifeville: The neighborhood’s secret bounty ripens in the summer heat

A fig tree sprawls to the edge of the sidewalk on Sixth Street in Fifeville. Photo: Eze Amos

My first intoxicating taste of a freshly picked fig took place in the formal garden at Villa Vignamaggio, in Tuscany. Frozen in Renaissance times, the setting had a surreal beauty to it, the kind you see in period pieces—like 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing, which was filmed at Vignamaggio. The villa’s owner, a lawyer from Rome, reached up into the tree, plucked a ripe fruit, and asked, “Would you like a fig?”

Following his example, I held the stem with my fingertips and bit into the flesh of the green-skinned bulb. I had grown up on Fig Newtons, with their chalky pastry wrapped around a too-sweet gummy filling, and I had sampled figs in fancy New York restaurants, usually with a bit of goat cheese and a balsamic-vinegar reduction. But the musk-and-honey flavor that filled my mouth at Vignamaggio made my eyes roll back in my head. I knew the experience could never be replicated. I feared no fig would ever taste as good.

Then I came to Charlottesville. And on a typically steamy summer day, I sat with my sister on the back porch of her house in Fifeville, drinking cold white wine in the hot air.

“Wanna go pick some figs?” she asked.

“Where, in Italy?” I replied.

“Nope,” she said. “Right up the street.”

I took the last swig from my glass, my sister grabbed a little wire basket, and within minutes we were gently pulling soft little orbs from the branches of a sprawling tree near the corner of Fifth and West Main streets. I looked around furtively, afraid that we’d be arrested. Even though the tree stood on the property of a shuttered restaurant, the angel on my shoulder told me we were trespassing and stealing.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Just pick.”

As I have discovered since then, fig trees thrive in Fifeville. The one near Fifth and Main became a popular community resource, but the owners of Little Star removed it last year because it was crowding their outdoor dining space (bummer). Walk along Fifth, Dice, Sixth, Sixth-and-a-Half, and Seventh streets, and you will see at least a dozen fig trees, tucked up against houses, looming by sidewalks, peeking over fence tops. Out of public view, in residents’ yards, even more figs grow. In mid-July most of the fruit is green, hard, and no bigger than your thumb. But as July stretches into August, the figs swell and ripen—the green skin showing a little purple—and the Fifeville fig harvest commences.

Devin Floyd, founder and director of Charlottesville’s Center for Urban Habitats, confirms that the fruit trees thrive in certain pockets of the city, including Fifeville and Belmont, where “marginally Mediterranean” growing conditions exist. This may be because of the sparse shade and sloping terrain, which drains well. “[Fig trees] need a dry and hot microclimate to do best,” Floyd wrote in an email. “I planted one in a south-facing lawn in Belmont. Ten years later, it is still kicking.”

Floyd is quick to point out that figs are a non-native species. Many sources cite California as the birthplace of the fig industry in America, but the fruit’s history there is rocky. In 1881, thousands of cuttings of the Smyrna variety were imported to the Golden State from Turkey. However, the trees bore no fruit until 1899, when the fig wasp, shipped in from the Middle East, performed the pollination that the Smyrna requires in order to produce.

Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, figs were already growing, thanks to—you guessed it—Thomas Jefferson. Touring the south of France in 1787, he wrote, “The most delicate figs known in Europe are those growing about this place.” Two years later, he received and planted 44 cuttings from France—including the Marseilles variety, which is the most common in Fifeville and does not require pollination by a wasp to bear fruit. Through sharing with local and out-of-state friends, Jefferson became the Johnny Apple Seed of figs.

Having collected about five pounds of fruit from the Fifth Street tree, my sister and I scurried home. She pulled a disc of Pillsbury pie dough from the refrigerator and set it on a cookie sheet. She smeared the dough with several tablespoons of apricot preserves (she said she sometimes uses lemon curd, instead), cut the figs into quarters, and arranged them in concentric circles atop the jam. After crimping the edges of the dough, she baked the galette (oh, so French!), and mouth-watering aromas wafted out of the kitchen.

The experience was unexpectedly moving. My body was in Fifeville, but my mind traveled to a villa in Tuscany.

Fig trees thrive in certain pockets of the city, including Fifeville and Belmont, where “marginally Mediterranean” growing conditions exist.

Through sharing with local and out-of-state friends, Jefferson became the Johnny Apple Seed of figs.

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News

The gunfire next door: Police response uneven in Fifeville neighborhood

The sound of gunfire and the arrival of SWAT teams are unnervingly frequent within a few Fifeville blocks. Photo by Skyclad Aerial

In the early morning hours of February 10, Julie Bargmann woke up to the sound of gunshots. She laid still.

“Unfortunately, I’ve gotten kind of used to it,” says the Fifeville resident who’s lived on Sixth Street Southwest for four years. Over the last two, there have been multiple shootings and other incidents that drew a massive police response.

Every time it happens, she says, “I hunker down low and I stay in my bed.”

Police presence in the immediate area of Sixth, 6 ½, and Dice streets, in the neighborhood across Cherry Avenue from Tonsler Park, seems to be all or nothing. While community members say they don’t usually see any cops patrolling, when law enforcement does respond to the area, it’s quite a show—multiple squad cars line the narrow, one-way roads and driveways, and at times that’s been accompanied by a heavily militarized SWAT team that has terrified residents.

Bargmann and other neighbors say they’re aware that the Charlottesville Police Department is currently understaffed, and they’re sympathetic to its officers, who are currently down 18 co-workers, according to police spokesperson Tyler Hawn. But residents say a regular patrol is necessary in a neighborhood that has seen drug dealing and gunfire—and that a steadier police presence would make those SWAT raids unnecessary.

On this particular February morning, Bargmann waited until she saw the red and blue lights reflected onto her bedroom walls, then watched as the apparently naked victim of the shooting was hauled off in an ambulance.

Back in 2017, she’d witnessed a SWAT raid at the same house. An officer in military-style gear popped out of the top of a BearCat, a tank-like armored vehicle. He scanned the area with his gun drawn as other cops climbed a ladder leading to a window above the front door, bashed it in, and hurled a flash grenade through it, she recalls. 

“And then I saw Sam, my neighbor, being taken away in handcuffs,” she says. Court records show that Sam Henderson, who owns the house, was arrested November 16, 2017, for possession of a controlled substance and found guilty seven months later.

But she and other neighbors still see him come and go, and they’re wondering why police don’t shut down this known “drug abode”—or the other known drug operation in the immediate area. “You’d think it would be a pretty high priority,” she says.

At Henderson’s house on a recent Thursday morning, the front door is cracked open and there appears to be a bullet hole in a window next to the door. No one answers when this reporter knocks multiple times, nor did Henderson respond to a note left by the ashtray on his porch.

Police spokesperson Hawn didn’t respond to an inquiry about Henderson or the house, but says the department “actively patrols and engages the members of the Fifeville neighborhood on a continual basis.”

Edward Thomas, a longtime Fifeville resident with properties on Sixth and 6 ½ streets, says many residents are wary of talking to police, but he and Bargmann met with an officer in December to air their concerns after their houses were paintballed. He was left “flabbergasted” when the cop suggested they start a community watch.

“Community watch programs can be a resource multiplier and a system of support for the community and the CPD,” says Hawn.

Says Thomas, “I remember saying, half joking, ‘This week it’s paintballs, next week it’s going to be real bullets.’ Well, sure enough.”

About a week later, on December 29, Thomas woke up to the sound of gunshots on 6 ½ Street. Six days after that, around 6am, neighbor Stephanie Bottoms says Charlottesville police deployed another SWAT team to arrest the culprit.

As she watched from a window, she counted 30 officers, approximately 20 of whom carried what appeared to be automatic weapons. They broke down the front door of the house in the 300 block of 6 ½ Street. With two BearCats surrounding the home, they also busted through second-floor windows on its front and back sides, she says.

That day, Ernest Anderson was arrested and charged with shooting in a public place, a misdemeanor, and felony possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

“Thank God they got the guy that shot up the neighborhood,” says Thomas, because that isn’t always the case. After the February 10 shooting, police say a gunman in a black ski mask got away.

Matt Simon, who lives on Dice Street where it intersects Sixth, recalls hearing “a ton of gunshots” back in December 2016, when two people were injured by gunfire. Two weeks later, he pulled a record out of the bin he keeps in his living room and found it broken. He realized one of the bullets had barreled through six of his discs.

“I think we warrant a patrol car coming through every now and again,” says Simon, who says things haven’t improved.

“Nothing happens until it gets really bad, and then all of a sudden, it’s like a war zone here,” says Thomas. “It’s the scariest it’s ever been.”

He says he saw a kid shot to death several years ago, which was undoubtedly frightening, but now with the somewhat regular militarized SWAT response, “it’s like we’re scared of the police.”

This type of showing from the cops “makes the neighborhood even less desirable and scares people away from buying and potentially leasing the vacant property,” Thomas adds. Three people interviewed for this story mention neighbors who have moved or started renting their properties because they don’t feel safe.

“There is definitely an overuse of SWAT teams and military vehicles [in town],” says local attorney Jeff Fogel, who’s been known to criticize the cops. “They are incredibly intimidating, not only to the occupants of the house being attacked, but the neighborhood as well. I suspect they are used for that very purpose.”

Says Hawn, “The Charlottesville Police Department takes concerns about safety in the Fifeville neighborhood and throughout the city seriously. While we understand the presence of a SWAT or tactical team may feel overwhelming, we are committed to providing a safe response to incidents for our officers, the public, and any persons involved.”

The city’s general upkeep of the neighborhood also leaves much to be desired, Thomas notes. On any given day, neighboring lots are overgrown, and beer bottles and other trash can be found strewn across the lawn of the historic Benjamin Tonsler House, which was built in 1879 for Tonsler, a prominent African American teacher and principal in town. His friend Booker T. Washington once stayed there, according to the city’s website.

There have also been cables lying on the ground since a storm last spring, complemented by a nearly-collapsed telephone poll in front of Thomas’ house. He says some crime in his area could be attributed to the broken windows theory, which suggests visible signs of disorder and crime can lead to more of it.

“I used to worry about the gentrification destroying the character of the neighborhood,” Thomas says. “Now, I kind of want the gentrification to happen, because I’d rather have gentrification than bullets and trash everywhere.”

 

Updated February 28 at 3:54pm with an addition comment from CPD spokesperson Tyler Hawn.

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News

Fifeville fumes: No parking after 7am

Dawn Woodford says Fifeville parking suffers because of UVA employees. Staff photo

By Mary Jane Gore

Fifeville is a neighborhood of new avenues and narrow side streets. Some curbs are permit parking only; others are open. The well-positioned neighborhood, near West Main Street and adjacent to the UVA Health System and other university buildings, is now fighting to preserve its streets for resident parking.

“It’s getting worse and worse,” laments Dawn Woodford, who’s lived in Fifeville for 20 years. “Someone visiting a resident can’t find parking space. Sometimes someone parks so you can’t even get in the driveway.”

Empty spaces fill up quickly, mainly in the morning between 7 and 8am as people leave their cars and head to work. There is “no place to park,” says Woodford, and in her view, the expansion of the UVA Emergency Department area will lead to worse congestion.

“The issue of parking in our neighborhoods that surround the university and the university hospital is certainly one that is of concern given the impact it has on the quality of life of our residents,” says City Councilor Heather Hill, who recently became one of two councilors representing the city on the Planning and Coordination Council.

UVA Health System does provide parking options, though employees must pay more for nearby garage slots. “All health system team members have options to park in university-owned parking lots or garages,” says Eric Swensen, public information officer for UVA Health System. “Some of those parking areas are within walking distance of the UVA Medical Center.”

Employees also may park at satellite locations, such as U-Hall/John Paul Jones Arena and Scott Stadium, and then ride a bus. The contractor for the hospital expansion project has rented parking spaces for construction workers, Swensen notes.

Related problems also are evident. “As I observed while visiting a neighborhood off of Cherry Avenue, beyond parking is the issue of individuals walking through private property, crossing the railroad line, and then climbing over the fence to get to their place of work,” Hill says of an early April visit.

One solution would be more UVA employee parking in the area. “There are no park-and-ride locations near the hospital, and no new parking areas are planned at this time,” Swensen says.

UVA Health System is making plans that could help to alleviate the crowding. By realigning and relocating its ambulatory care sector by 2024, the footprint of care near the hospital would shrink from a current 413,000 visits to about 200,000 visits annually. The Fontaine Research Center could double its visits—from 182,000 per year now to about 400,000 in the future.

Permit parking is another idea that could keep nonresidents off the Fifeville streets.

“I would encourage those streets that have not implemented zone permit parking to evaluate it with their neighbors and communicate back to the city what hurdles may be preventing alignment,” Hill suggests. “Is it cost, which we can likely work through some options to address? Is it convenience, as permits make it difficult for guests to visit residents depending on the time of day? Other reasons?”

Woodford says the police don’t always come. Hill agrees that “enforcement can be a challenge given the relatively limited resources.”

Woodford’s bottom line is clear: “Why should we pay to fix UVA’s broken parking situation” as rents rise in Fifeville?

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Arts

BeCville announces community art project winners

Residents of the Fifeville, Belmont and Ridge Street neighborhoods selected four BeCville creative community projects, including planting cherry trees along Cherry Avenue, which are aimed at improving their surroundings. Courtesy of BeCville

BeCville, a community arts project centered on the city’s Strategic Investment Area (the intersection of Ridge Street, Belmont and Fifeville), has been more than a year in the making, led by Matt Slaats, executive director of PauseLab. Slaat’s premise for BeCville, funded by an NEA Our Town Grant called Play the City, is to use art to address community needs in thoughtful ways and put the whole process in the hands of residents.

“I’ve been inspired by this thing called participatory budgeting,” says Slaats. “The idea is that a chunk of public funding is set aside from a public budget and then residents decide how that funding is spent in their neighborhood.”

The process began with a survey. “We were looking at three things,” he says. “What’s important to people about this neighborhood? How are people engaging in this neighborhood? And the final thing was creativity. So, how are you creative?” What they found was a love for the community, and a fear of gentrification and rising taxes. When it came to engagement, people responded that they were too busy or uncomfortable but also, Slaats says, “people felt like their voices weren’t going to be heard.” And he says, “The top thing that people thought was their creative outlet in the neighborhood was gardening.”

Next, the BeCville group went door-to-door with one question: How would you improve your neighborhood? The team gathered the answers and distributed them as a newspaper to the neighborhood. “We wanted to make sure they knew we heard them,” Slaats says. Finally, BeCville asked artists to submit proposals based on the community’s ideas. They received 24 proposals, narrowed it to 16 that were feasible, and then opened a two-week voting period to residents. After tallying up the votes, four winners were announced on June 10 at the Cville People’s Summit.

Janet Mitchel says when her proposed South First Garden project won she was ecstatic: “I even put my tiara on when they gave me the award.”

The next winner was the Cherry Avenue project proposed by Cathy Cassety, Gregg Early and Daniel Katz. Cassety explains, “The idea is to plant cherry trees along Cherry Avenue and Elliott to link these two neighborhoods of Fifeville and Belmont. Then when the trees bloom, to have a street festival each year to celebrate the community.”

To answer the call for better lighting, Kate Tabony and Amber Ovitt proposed Luminarea, a light installation project along Sixth Street that will incorporate words chosen by the community to illuminate the dark and slow down traffic.

And finally, the fourth winner was the Memorial to the Unknown, proposed by Edwina St. Rose of The Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, which will honor those in the historic African-American cemetery with missing or displaced headstones. St. Rose writes in an email, “We are over the moon. We hope that when the memorial is completed, we can have a community celebration!”

And just because the winners have been announced doesn’t mean community engagement ends. “Our big hope for the projects is that as they move forward,” Slaats says, “people have ownership in the process.”