Tag: Market Street Parking Garage

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If you build it: Despite pandemic, land use projects moved forward in 2020

City Council agreed in October to contribute $5.5 million in a forgivable loan to support the first phase of the Piedmont Housing Alliance’s redevelopment of Friendship Court, the 150-unit downtown public housing complex that was built in 1978. PC: Grimm + Parker Architects

In a year where many of us followed guidelines to stay at home, the skies of downtown Charlottesville were marked by cranes building new spaces for the 21st century. In their shadow, projects to provide more affordable units moved through the bureaucratic process required to keep them below-market. Before the clock strikes 2021, let’s look back at some of what happened in 2020.

Public housing

After years of planning and complaints of decay from residents, Charlottesville’s government took steps to renovate the city’s public housing stock. In October, City Council agreed to spend $3 million to help finance the renovation of Crescent Halls and the construction of 62 new units on an athletic field at South First Street. A date for groundbreaking has been postponed several times, but officials with the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority hope it will occur early next year.

At the same meeting, council also agreed to contribute $5.5 million in a forgivable loan to support the first phase of the Piedmont Housing Alliance’s redevelopment of Friendship Court. The 150-unit complex was built in 1978 in an area cleared by urban renewal. The first phase will see up to 106 units built on vacant land along Monticello Avenue and Sixth Street SE. The loan dictates that the new homes must be made affordable to people who earn less than the area median income. As with CRHA, there’s no set date for groundbreaking yet.

Also this year, a firm hired to complete an overhaul of Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan unveiled a draft of an affordable housing plan that calls for $10 million a year in city investment in similar projects. The draft also asks “to bring diverse voices from the community into decision making structure of the City and partners it funds.”

As the Comprehensive Plan edit process continues, affordable housing advocates hope to reform the zoning ordinance to make it easier to build more housing units without seeking permission from council. This conversation will spill over to 2021, as work on the Comprehensive Plan continues and as voters prepare to elect or re-elect two members of City Council in November.

Downtown towers

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of square feet for offices and other commercial uses are under construction. The largest is the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, which is being erected on Water Street on the site of the former Main Street Arena. The triangle-shaped nine-story building will include a public courtyard, retail area, and incubator space intended to grow new businesses. Completion is expected by August 2021.

On Second Street, within sight of the CODE building, a nine-story office building called 3Twenty3 nears completion, despite a crane collapse in early January. The structure is ready for occupancy and tenants include Manchester Capital, CoConstruct, and McGuire Woods.

Not too far behind is the new headquarters for Apex Clean Energy, an eight-story timber-built structure on Garrett Street designed by Charlottesville-based William McDonough + Partners. Ground was broken in October 2019 and the building could be completed by the end of 2021.

Elsewhere in Charlottesville, Albemarle County hired Fentress Architects to design the $45.2 million renovation of the judicial complex in Court Square. The new general district court complex will be shared by both localities. Construction on the court building won’t begin until at least 2022, but the project is already drawing plenty of attention, as the city continues to move forward with the planning process for a parking structure at Market and Ninth streets to support the new facility.

A previous City Council bought the Market Street parcel in January 2017 for $2.85 million, and the current plan is to build a four-level parking structure with 300 spaces and 12,000 square feet of commercial space. Opponents have argued the structure isn’t needed and the city could invest the $10 million price tag in other projects, including affordable housing. The city says the new spaces would provide enough inventory to allow the nearby Market Street Parking Garage to be retired and redeveloped in the decades to come. The hulking parking garage is among the biggest decisions council will need to make as it hashes out a capital budget for next year.

What about Albemarle?

Albemarle County is also working on a new affordable housing plan. The draft calls for zoning changes that would allow for thousands more units to be built compared to the existing rules. This year, however, the county Board of Supervisors has not approved two projects that would have added to that number. In June, concerns about traffic left the board deadlocked on a vote that would have seen 328 units built on 27 acres at the northern end of the John Warner Parkway. In early January, super­visors are expected to take a vote on a rezoning for 130 units to be built near Glenmore. Neighbors cite traffic concerns for their vehement opposition to the project.

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In brief: Out of business, second wettest, medically deficient and more

staff photo

Knock, knock. Who’s [not] there?

Sears. Sweethaus. Performance Bicycle. And Brown’s Cleaners, just to name a few recent local closings that left community members shocked, and in at least one case, without their clothes.

The closing of Sears at Fashion Square Mall heralds the demise of one of America’s most iconic retailers, known for its mail-order catalogue more than 100 years before Amazon appeared on the scene. The Charlottesville store has been at the mall since it opened in 1980.

Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce president Elizabeth Cromwell says it’s not unexpected that companies will move away, merge, or close their doors for good—but it matters how they do it.

“There is a natural cycle for business communities,” says Cromwell. “How these organizations communicate changes to their customers is critical.”

While most of the closings were abrupt, Brown’s is of a different magnitude.

Signs suddenly posted on the doors of its four locations on Christmas Eve directed customers to check the legal section of the Daily Progress for information on where and when to pick up their held-hostage dry cleaning. It then took about a week and a half for any information to be published on how to reunite people with their belongings.

If you’re wondering, clothes can be picked up from 8am to noon at the High Street location, and 1:30pm to 5:30pm at the Preston Avenue location January 7-11 and January 15-18. Dry cleaning left at the Millmont Street and Ivy Road stores can be picked up on High Street. All furs will be at the Preston location.

And a GoFundMe has been started for the reported 34 employees who learned on that December holiday that they no longer had a job. At press time, it had raised approximately $7,000.

Quote of the week

“I didn’t want to be that person that has to see a sports psychologist … [but] it didn’t just help me on the court, it helped me in life.”—UVA basketball player and ACC Player of the Week Kyle Guy talks about anxiety and stress to SB Nation

In brief

Legal Aid roll

After persuading a judge to issue an injunction on the suspension of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines, Legal Aid Justice Center scored another victory in federal court January 2, when Judge Norman Moon ruled the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women had violated a 2016 settlement agreement to improve its “constitutionally deficient” medical care. At least four women have died since the settlement, and Moon gave the prison 45 days to correct violations.

Legendary coach dies

George Welsh UVA athletics

Former UVA football coach George Welsh, who led the Cavaliers to a pinnacle unseen since he retired after the 2000 season, died January 2 at age 85. Hall of Famer Welsh took over the Virginia program in 1982 and guided the team to 12 bowl games, two ACC co-championships, and a 9-10 record against Virginia Tech, which has since beaten UVA for 15 straight seasons.

Another A12 sentence

Daniel Borden, an Ohio man who was 18 when he came to the Unite the Right rally, will serve three years and 10 months for his part in the brutal parking garage beating of DeAndre Harris. The prosecutor and judge agreed Borden appeared “gleeful” in videos taken after the attack, but his age and guilty plea mitigated the sentence. Two others charged in the event are serving six and eight years.

‘Mass exodus’

Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney says the department is currently down 22 officers, and salary, lack of take-home cars, post-August 12 attitudes, and the demeanor of those on the Police Civilian Review Board are to blame, according to the Daily Progress. Outgoing Sheriff Chip Harding suggested Brackney could be the problem, prompting an impromptu press conference by City Manager Mike Murphy.

Election season

Three people have announced runs for open seats on City Council now held by Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, and Mike Signer. Community organizers Don Gathers and Michael Payne launched campaigns January 8 for the June 11 Dem primary nomination, and Sena Magill joined the race January 9. No word yet from the incumbents on their plans.

By the numbers

Second-wettest year ever

skyclad ap

Record-breaking rainfall made 2018 the second-soggiest year since McCormick Observatory started keeping records 118 years ago. The week before Christmas, 2018 held the No. 4 spot with 68.69 inches, but over the holiday more than three inches drenched the area to put the year’s total at 72.14 inches, barely eking by No. 3, 1937, and over two inches shy of the No. 1 year—super-moist 2003, which followed worst-drought 2002.

And in top 25 wettest years since 1900, six of those have happened since 2000. Time to invest in rain boots?

Top five rainiest years

1. 2003 74.55″

2. 2018 72.14″

3. 1937 72.07″

4. 1948 69.72″

5. 1972 66.03″

Numbers provided by Jerry Stenger, director of the State Climatology Office at UVA.

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Parental influence: Borden gets nearly four years for garage attack

Daniel Borden. Courtesy Charlottesville police

He wore a construction helmet that said “commie killer” as he joined in on a brutal beating in a downtown parking garage, striking the already downed DeAndre Harris with a stick until it broke as Harris struggled to pick himself up off the ground.

And though two out-of-town men already found guilty of malicious wounding for participating in the same beating have been sentenced to eight and six years in prison, this one—Daniel Borden, the Ohioan who was 18 years old when he hitched a ride to Charlottesville for the August 12 white supremacist rally—will only serve three years and 10 months.

“I absolutely don’t think my son did anything wrong,” testified his father, retired U.S. Air Force pilot Rick Borden, about the younger Borden’s involvement in what Judge Rick Moore has repeatedly referred to as “one of the worst beatings I’ve ever seen.”

The father, who started his testimony by saying he’d done “quite a bit of comprehensive investigation on this,” told the judge his son was separated from his friends when police declared an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone to leave what was then called Emancipation Park.

Borden joined another group of alt-righters and began making his way toward the Market Street Parking Garage. He picked up the stick along the way for protection, according to his dad.

“I’m not sure that I would have walked out of that park with anything other than an M1 Abrams tank,” said the father. He laughed at the mention of the “commie killer” hardhat, and said it was a reference to the film Full Metal Jacket.

“Back in the day, when I was a B-52 pilot, the Soviets were our mortal enemy,” he added.

A visibly frustrated defense attorney Mike Hallahan told the judge he was “on edge” as he questioned the elder Borden.

Judge Moore then called for a recess. As Borden’s father stood and left the witness stand for the break, he passed this reporter, who was seated in a back row. Making eye contact, he made an aggressive gesture somewhere in between starting a lawnmower and ripping apart a newspaper.

Returning to the stand, in an unusually tangential testimony, the father ranted about other aspects of August 12, including that Harris was allegedly seen throwing bottles of soda that day, and about how “antifa personnel” apparently specialize in “gang beatdowns.”

Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania noted that a lot of the testimony seemed irrelevant, but that he wasn’t objecting. “I think Mr. Borden has a lot he wants to get off his chest,” he said.

And Hallahan argued that everything is relevant.

“Everything is not relevant,” said Moore. “I’m not going to let this sentencing hearing be made about something else.”

Getting back on track, Borden’s father said his son had “tunnel vision” or “target fixation” during the attack. Said the elder Borden, “Dan has no recollection of anybody even around him. He was that full of fear and anxiety.”

But in a video taken after the parking garage beating, Platania said Borden appeared “gleeful,” and that he could be heard saying, “Fuck Antifa. Fuck communism. They got their ass kicked multiple times.”

Prosecutor Nina Antony noted that Borden was half a block away when he saw the beating and decided to join in.

Hallahan, who argued that Borden was drawn to the parking garage because one of the alt-righters was also being beaten in a separate fight, asked the judge to “take out all the drama” and “take out all the politics,” to see that this case is just about a “guy in the parking lot hitting somebody with a stick.”

And the defense attorney said that from the sounds of the video, Borden likely missed Harris with at least one of his swings.

“I don’t think that matters,” said the judge. “He kept swinging because he hadn’t done what he needed to do.”

The defendant’s mother, Kelly Borden, said she didn’t know her son had gone to Virginia for the Unite the Right rally until a friend sent her an article by civil rights activist and independent journalist Shaun King, which identified Borden as one of the men who assaulted Harris. She testified it was “fake news.”

Though Borden faced a max of 20 years in prison, the sentencing guidelines presented to the court that day suggested a year and six months on the low end and four years and two months on the high end.

His attorney recommended the lowest: “Get him out of this community. Charlottesville didn’t want him here in the first place,” Hallahan said.

Antony noted Borden’s young age, lack of criminal history, and voluntary guilty plea, but she still asked for at least the highest sentencing recommendation. She also said she was trying not to let Borden’s parents’ testimony sway her to ask for more time.

Moments before the judge pronounced the nearly four-year sentence, with 20 years of good behavior, and five years of supervised probation after release, Borden gave his own statement—one that seemed more remorseful than his parents’.

He said he cried in his dad’s kitchen when the photos of him on August 12 surfaced on the web. He had only come to town to protest the removal of the Confederate statues, he added.

“I did not know how overwhelmingly against the statues Charlottesville was,” he said. “If I did, I would have thought twice about coming.”

Though Harris wasn’t present in the courtroom, Borden had a message for him: “You didn’t deserve that.” He gave the prosecutor a personal letter that he wanted Harris to read.

He also apologized to Harris’ parents, his own parents, and the entire city.

Said Borden, “I’m truly sorry this has happened to your town.”

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Truce: City and Mark Brown settle parking garage dispute

The city will be in charge of the Water Street Parking Garage starting August 1, and Mark Brown will collect rent. Staff photo

Two years ago, before Nazis came to Charlottesville in 2017, the big story was the contretemps between Mark Brown, co-owner of the Water Street Parking Garage, and then-mayor Mike Signer and the city.

The escalating parking wars led to suits and countersuits, panicked meetings of downtown business owners, threats of closing the garage and of eminent domain, challenges to the hiring of a former mayor and whopping legal bills on both sides.

At the July 16 City Council meeting, as the clock approached midnight, councilors approved a settlement that gives them most of what they wanted, but the full cost is not known at the present.

“I wasn’t sure until 11:58 last night this would get approved,” said Charlottesville Parking Center general manager Dave Norris, who has seen seemingly solid deals with the city fall apart before, the day after the meeting.

In the settlement hammered out over the past two years, Charlottesville Parking Center, which Brown owns and which manages the garage, agreed to sell 73 spaces to the city for $413,000. The spaces, previously owned by Wells Fargo, have been a sore point for the city, which sued Brown for buying them from the bank when the city had a right of first refusal should any parties want to unload their spaces.

“We’re selling them at the same price we paid for them,” says Norris, a former Charlottesville mayor whose own hiring was a point of contention when the city, through Chris Engel, director of economic development, questioned Norris’ qualifications to run a parking garage.

Charlottesville Parking Center was founded in 1959 by business owners who feared the emergence of shopping malls with ample parking would be a threat to getting people to shop downtown. The Water Street Parking Garage is a jointly owned public/private entity, and CPC owns the ground underneath the garage, as well as the surface lot across the street.

Although the city had the opportunity to buy Charlottesville Parking Center when it went on the market in 2008, it didn’t. Brown bought CPC in 2014 for $13.8 million and an uneasy alliance with the city began. In March 2016, Brown sued the city, alleging it forced him to offer parking below market rate—and below what was charged at the city-owned Market Street Garage.

In the settlement, the parking center will lease its remaining 317 spaces to the city for $50,000 a month for 16 years—with a 2.5 percent annual increase after the first year. The city believes it will make more than $900,000 in net revenue during the first year of the lease, according to a city document.

“It’s really a good thing for all parties after two years of contentiousness,” says Norris. “As of August 1, they’ll have full control and can set whatever hours and rates they want.”

CPC used to manage the Market Street Garage, but during the heat of battle, the city fired CPC and hired Lanier Parking to manage that garage. Most CPC employees who run the Water Street Garage will go to work for Lanier, which will take over the management of Water Street, city parking manager Rick Siebert told City Council.

When questioned by Mayor Nikuyah Walker, Siebert said none of the Water Street Garage employees will make less than the city’s minimum wage and that they have benefits.

For Charlottesville Parking Center administrators like Norris, it’s time to dust off those resumes. “This is the end of our role as a parking management company,” he says. “I’m exploring my own options.”

Brown continues to own the land underneath the garage. He was traveling in Greece, and in an email says the settlement is a “very slightly modified version” of a proposal CPC made to the city in January 2016 before any litigation was filed, “so we eventually succeeded in achieving our preferred resolution to the problem.”

At one point, Brown tried to buy the city’s portion of the garage—and the city did likewise. He also threatened to close the garage, which totally freaked out downtown business owners. The Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville made clear to the city that it believed the garage should remain publicly owned.

“I think we’ve gained significant efficiencies,” Siebert told City Council, as well as gaining control of the garage’s operation, “which I think is so important to the public.”

At the July 16 council meeting, Signer noted that “Ms. Galvin and I have some scar tissue and war wounds from this.”

Councilor Kathy Galvin recalled “all-day long mediation sessions.”

The city hired Richmond attorney Tom Wolf with LeClairRyan, who charged the city a discounted rate of $425 an hour. At press time, the city had not provided what those legal fees added up to over two years.

“We really decided to stick to our guns and stick up for this being a public good, a public asset,” said Signer. “And it was very difficult and there was a lot of fighting from the other side, a lot of scaremongering from some of the local journalistic outlets.”

He added, “This settlement a couple of years later is a good result for the public on all fronts.”

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Guilty again: Ramos second person convicted in garage assault

Alex Michael Ramos, with arm raised, was convicted of the malicious wounding of DeAndre Harris.

 

 

In the second trial of the week for the brutal August 12 attack on DeAndre Harris, a jury deliberated 35 minutes before entering a second guilty verdict May 3 for an out-of-towner here for the Unite the Right rally.

Georgia resident Alex Michael Ramos, 34, sat expressionless through most of the two-day trial for his charge of malicious wounding. And in the sparsely filled courtroom, he did not appear to have family members or supporters present, although at closing arguments, Hannah Zarski, the woman whose offer to house Ramos a judge rebuffed during a bond hearing, showed up, and Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler sat in a back corner for most of the trial.

Even for those who have seen videos before of the beatdown in the Market Street Parking Garage, it was hard to watch, and a couple of the jurors glared at Ramos after they were shown footage of him, clad in a red Make America Great Again baseball cap and white wifebeater, run into the garage and throw a punch at Harris, who already was on the ground and being beaten by four other men.

For Harris, 20, his testimony May 2 made the third day in a row he took the stand. He previously testified April 30 and May 1 in the malicious wounding trial of Jacob Goodwin, 23, who came from Ward, Arkansas, to take part in the rally. A jury found Goodwin guilty, and two other men charged in the attack—Daniel Borden and Tyler “Boonie Hat” Davis—have trials this summer.

Harris, a teacher’s aide who worked last summer as a YMCA camp counselor, described going to the Unite the Right rally with his brother and several others that he didn’t really know, including Corey Long.

A girl dressed in black gave him a mask, and a man gave him a Maglite, he said.

After the rally in Emancipation Park was declared an unlawful assembly and the white supremacists and neo-Nazis were funneled on to Market Street where counterprotesters were massed, Harris and his party walked east on Market trading barbs with the ralliers.

Harris said he was in front of his group when he turned and saw what appeared to him to be “an alt-right guy driving his flag into Corey.”

What Harris didn’t see, said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony, was Long run up to League of the South member Harry Crews and attempt to grab his flag.

“I ran up with the flashlight,” said Harris. “I hit the pole to break up the altercation.” Harris was found not guilty of assault March 16.

He was immediately sprayed with a chemical substance, ran and fell down, he said. “I get up and try to run and I fall again,” he said as jurors watched a video of the incident. “I was just trying to get away.”

Nurse practitioner Evan Pryse treated Harris at Sentara Martha Jefferson after he’d taken a shower for chemical decontamination. Harris had eight staples for the gash in his scalp and had difficulty forming sentences, said Pryse, which he thought could be the result of a concussion.

Harris also suffered a fractured left forearm, which Pryse said is in the medical world is known as a “nightstick injury,” and typically occurs when one raises an arm to block a blow.

Detective Declan Hickey was gathering intelligence from news and social media on the third floor of the Charlottesville Police Department August 12 and saw from a surveillance camera the attack on Harris. A former combat paramedic, Hickey found Harris “covered in blood” and looking confused.

Hickey testified that he started investigating the attack and identified Ramos from social media and working with local law enforcement in Georgia.

“We stomped some ass,” Ramos posted on Facebook. “Getting some was fucking fun.”

Ramos was arrested August 28. During cross examination from Ramos’ attorney, Jake Joyce, Hickey said Ramos seemed remorseful when the detective interviewed him.

Joyce did not call any witnesses, and Judge Rick Moore denied Joyce’s motion to strike the malicious wounding charge. Joyce argued that one punch is not sufficient to establish malice, but Moore said four people were beating Harris on the ground when Ramos joined in. “It really is malice to hit someone on the ground,” said the judge.

“Out in the fresh air and sunshine, he could just have walked away,” said Moore.

In his closing argument, Joyce tried to convince the jury Ramos, who goes by Michael, was not guilty of malicious wounding. “Michael threw one punch. He had no weapon. That is a classic assault and battery.”

But ultimately the jury believed Antony’s story of “a man who joined a violent attack on a defenseless, unarmed man.” She reminded the jurors, “We saw him sprinting toward the garage, so eager to get in, he catapults himself into the fray.”

The jury took a bit longer to come up with a sentence for Ramos than it did in finding him guilty, and returned with a recommendation of six years in prison. Ramos will be sentenced August 23.

At one point during closing arguments, Harris left as Antony was describing the attack and Ramos “winding up” his arm and hitting Harris at the same time white-helmeted Borden slams him with a two-by-four.

Afterward, Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania noted the “emotional toll” the trials and testimony are taking on Harris, but added, “He’s a resilient young man.”