Madison Hall – C-VILLE Weekly

City responds to proposed land-use changes

In May and June, the consulting group hired to rework the city’s land-use policy received more than 2,000 comments, through a variety of mediums, on its most recent draft of the city’s Future Land Use Map, a document that would guide the city’s rezoning process in the coming months and years.

The submitted responses to the draft map capture a divided community.

“Most people seem to agree that affordability is an issue, but there are varying opinions on how to best address this issue and what levels of housing development and intensity may be appropriate and where,” says Jennifer Koch, project manager for the Cville Plans Together initiative.

“I do not like the idea of changing the tenor of neighborhoods,” wrote one Lewis Mountain resident, aged 55-64, who did not support the planners’ vision. “I do not want low-income housing in my neighborhood.”

But one of that person’s younger neighbors did support the idea of increasing residential density, especially in neighborhoods where single-family homes are the dominant housing type. “Charlottesville needs to place a significant focus on not only allowing but encouraging housing density, especially through the construction of more multifamily and affordable housing,” the neighbor wrote.

The consulting firm, Rhodeside & Harwell, received 498 emails through an organized effort by the Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition to encourage adoption of a Comprehensive Plan that encourages development of apartment buildings. Meanwhile, a new group called Citizens for Responsible Planning submitted a petition with 401 signatures asking that the process be delayed for another six months.

In a report published last week, Rhodeside & Harwell attempted to tease some key themes out of the data.

According to RHI, 46 percent of respondents called for more residential density in “historically exclusionary, majority-white communities.” Other general themes with high levels of support were 43 percent of commenters who want even more density in “general residential” areas and the 46 percent who want a plan that stops “displacement of Black and low-wealth residents by protecting low-wealth and majority-Black communities.”

Some Charlottesville residents are skeptical of the plan, however. Fifteen percent requested more time, 14 percent had concerns over the effects larger residential densities would have on infrastructure, and 14 percent were suspicious about what developers really want from the plan.

Cville Plans Together also cataloged 429 responses submitted through a multiple-choice feedback form.

The poll’s fifth question asked, “Do you think this Future Land Use Map can lead to an increase in housing options and housing affordability throughout the city?” A third of respondents answered “Yes Completely” or “Yes Mostly,” whereas 39 percent responded “Mostly Not” or “Not at All.” Another 18 percent responded “Unsure/Maybe” and 11 percent left the response blank.

An additional 225 people left comments on an interactive version of the map. Many took this opportunity to comment on the placement of medium-intensity residential plots in areas currently set aside for low-intensity development. A section of the Greenbrier neighborhood between Keith Valley Road and Meadowbrook Heights Road is designated as Neighborhood Mixed-Use Node on the new map, which would allow up to five stories with a mixture of uses.

“This is among the most mean-spirited of your proposals,” reads one of about two dozen comments in this area.

“Currently, Greenbrier feels very isolated,” reads a different comment. “Can imagine kids in this neighborhood getting to walk to do something in this mixed-use area, or people in the neighborhood getting to grab something easily from the local market.”

On Tuesday, June 29, the Charlottesville Planning Commission met for a work session to discuss the community’s input. That meeting ended too late for this issue, but watch this space for more coverage of the Comprehensive Plan process.—Sean Tubbs

“Racist!”

—an unidentified speaker, interrupting a congressional hearing as Congressman Bob Good explained why he feels Virginia high schools should not teach critical race theory

In brief

Suspect arrested after Madison Hall break-in

On Thursday morning, a break-in was reported at UVA’s Madison Hall, which houses the Office of the President and the Office of Major Events. Two days later, a Charlottesville resident was arrested and charged in connection with the crime. There have been five other break-ins off Grounds over the past week, according to UVA police. They have occurred on University Circle/Court, Grady Avenue, Virginia Avenue, and Preston Place. UPD has not said whether the break-ins are connected.

Nelson will celebrate pipeline demise

You might have July 4 circled on your calendar, but in Nelson County, they’ll be celebrating on July 5, too. Earlier this month, the county’s Board of Supervisors resolved to officially recognize the one-year anniversary of the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile natural gas pipeline that would have bisected the scenic county. “We should celebrate that we all got together to stand up to something that didn’t make sense,” said Supervisor Skip Barton at the meeting, reports the Nelson County Times.

Hoos fall in Omaha

The Cavaliers ended their College World Series run on Thursday, falling 6-2 to the No. 2 Texas Longhorns. The Hoos started the season 4-12 in the ACC, but put together an improbable postseason run that featured a string of elimination wins, a no-hitter, and a large delivery of Dippin’ Dots, thanks to a viral interview from closer Stephen Schoch. Though it ended in defeat, this baseball season won’t be forgotten by the UVA faithful any time soon.

Of all the changes COVID has brought to the arts world, one of the most significant has been to big-screen entertainment. Charlottesville theaters and moviemakers have done their best to adapt, whether it’s drive-in film festivals or rent-a-theater evenings, but the pandemic has undeniably sped up the trend of people consuming entertainment alone and on decidedly smaller screens.

Jeff Dobrow, a visual and technology artist based in Charlottesville, has given a lot of thought to this. “We are so used to consuming amazing experiences in small ways,” he says. “Our laptop screen is 17 inches. That’s our new world.”

He argues that it doesn’t have to be that way. Brighter Together, Dobrow’s ongoing series of visual shows through UVA Arts, is his solution to the small-screen problem. Since late March, Dobrow has been using projection mapping technology to display a variety of images on various buildings on Grounds, starting with the chapel and concluding on May 14 and 15 with Madison Hall. The intended result is to inspire both awe and hope—awe at the dazzling, enormous images transforming iconic architecture, and hope about the ability to safely draw crowds of art lovers together in the same space.

Creating such larger-than-life projections may seem like a daunting task, but it’s business as usual for Dobrow, who’s been working in technology since he was a teen. (“It’s been my entire life, since I started programming computers for RadioShack in 1983.”) Much of his early career was devoted to the commercial side of the field, but he says that one day he woke up, “did a 180,” and immersed himself in the arts instead.

Dobrow had been living and working in Charlottesville for several years when UVA Arts reached out to him about the Brighter Together project. “I’ve known Jody [Kielbasa] for probably five or six years,” he says. Back in 2017, he and Kielbasa, UVA’s vice provost for the arts, had “chatted about the bicentennial”—an event that heavily utilized projection mapping on the Rotunda, displaying a visual history of the building—“but that was not my kind of show.” When Dobrow gave up commercial art, he also shifted away from chronological storytelling in his visuals, opting for more loosely conceptual work. His style didn’t mesh with the bicentennial’s, but it proved to be perfect for Brighter Together.

True to form, Dobrow consciously chooses not to tell a story with his work on these buildings—either of the university at large or of the pandemic year. “I didn’t want to create a piece that contemplated…the horrible reality [of 2020],” he says. “We’ve had enough of that. Let’s dance, let’s have some fun.”

Fun doesn’t begin to describe the sublime projections. Some of the images are recognizable and taken from the animal kingdom, like a tiger prowling across the surface of the chapel or a butterfly visiting flowers on the Rotunda—a decidedly more peaceful image than the bicentennial’s flaming Rotunda, itself a callback to the disastrous real-life fire of 1895. Other Dobrow images, rippling and morphing shapes and patterns, are less rooted in reality. Everything is connected by different selections of EDM music that can be heard at each of the Brighter Together events.

Dobrow identifies these soundtracks, and how they interact with the visuals, as the most important relationship in his artwork, aside from the relationship between the art and the building onto which it’s projected. For Brighter Together, he enlisted the help of Red Flower Lake, a local husband-and-wife group. The duo’s otherworldly tunes pair nicely with Dobrow’s trippy visuals, creating a product that might be commonplace at a music festival, but is considerably more remarkable when projected onto UVA’s historic buildings.

Projection mapping is still a new art form, particularly in the U.S. “It’s huge in the rest of the world and has been for years,” says Dobrow. “Like most things in the United States, our first exposure to it was…through revenue-generating advertising.” He’s advocating for it to become a more accepted medium, both for patrons of the arts and for aspiring creators. “A huge part of what I do is education, especially for at-risk kids. No one has heard of [projection mapping], but a lot of it is accessible.”

Not only is the concept relatively recent, Dobrow says it’s also constantly in flux thanks to continual technological improvements—or, in his words, “basically everything that’s going to turn us into Terminator 2.” It’s already incredible, he stresses—the GPU technology he’s used for Brighter Together enables the images to interact with the music in real time—and it’s becoming more advanced by the day. He contrasts the canvas and brush process of traditional painting with the more complex world of projection mapping. “With technology, we are experiencing things we didn’t think we could do.”

What Dobrow wants to emphasize most—and what’s hardest to convey in a newspaper article—is the sheer magnitude of his projects. He says the creation of his projections often gives him small-screen fatigue, hunched over “my little laptop for endless periods of time…but when I go and put it back on the building, it’s huge. It’s everything. The transformation hits me every time.”

Brighter Together is a partnership between The Division of Student Affairs, UVA Arts, and the office of the Provost and Vice Provost for the Arts with generous support from the AV Company.