City Council (pictured here last year) has held numerous closed sessions in recent weeks after a firm retained to find a new city manager declared the government dysfunctional. Photo: Eze Amos
One of the keys to stabilizing a floundering city government is to hire a strong and competent chief executive. But in order to attract a high-quality city manager, you need a government that isn’t floundering.
That’s the paradox facing the Charlottesville municipal government at this moment. In September, City Manager Tarron Richardson resigned after less than a year and a half on the job. Earlier this month, the hiring firm retained to find his replacement fled the scene as well, with the firm’s principal telling the city he had “never seen a level of dysfunction as profound as what he was seeing here,” according to a January 4 Facebook post from Councilor Lloyd Snook.
“The plan to stabilize the organization and begin to rebuild was to have John Blair as the interim for a few months, begin a recruitment process to hire a city manager, and go from there,” says Councilor Michael Payne.
But the recruitment firm couldn’t handle the situation in Charlottesville. “They were very candid in saying that the amount of instability made it impossible for them to feel like they could be effective in recruiting a high-quality city manager candidate,” Payne continues.
The situation got so bad that Snook wrote, “In my opinion, we will not be able to hire a permanent City Manager until after the next election, in November, 2021, and we should not try.” (The next council will take office in January 2022. Mayor Nikuyah Walker and Councilor Heather Hill’s terms end in December, though both could run for reelection.)
In the last two weeks, City Council has held three closed meetings to discuss topics including “one or more prospective candidates for employment or appointment to the position of city manager,” and, ominously, “the performance of one or more city councilors.”
(When Richardson resigned in September, the announcement came at the end of a series of long closed meetings to discuss “the performance of the city manager.”)
In an interview on Monday afternoon, at the end of a five-hour session, Vice-Mayor Sena Magill was cagey about council’s plans. “We all recognize that there is a lot of fear, and tension, and unease throughout both the city government and the city as a whole right now,” she says. “We’re working very diligently to look at as many opportunities as we can to solve that.”
Some of the turnover in city government over the last few years can be attributed to the fallout of 2017’s Unite the Right rally—the city manager, police chief, and communications director all departed in the months following August 2017.
Magill thinks the problems go deeper than that, however. “This is something that’s been growing. This isn’t a single issue. We’re not looking at issues that started in 2017,” says the vice-mayor. “We’re looking at growing and changing, and growing and changing is difficult and painful.”
Certainly, relationships between some council members seem strained.
In his January 4 Facebook post, Snook wrote that an email from Walker suggested to him that “the Mayor was going to not fully engage on the most important decision that we have as a Council—the selection of the City Manager,” and that the firm’s decision to bow out was “directly attributable to the dysfunction on Council, starting with the Mayor and her e-mail of December 10.”
Snook and Walker did not respond to a request for comment on this story, and Hill declined to comment, but Walker did post on Facebook the day after Snook’s initial post.
“I am tired of my white colleagues placing the blame for everything that goes wrong at my feet and using their fragility to excuse their cunning behavior and the cunning behavior of some staff and community members,” Walker wrote. “The title of the piece that I need to write – Charlottesville: The Mountaintop of White Supremacy.”
“The problem with the written word is there is no tone of voice,” says Magill when asked if she agrees with Snook’s assertion the currently seated council won’t be able to find a city manager. “We automatically hear tone of voice based on our experience with a person, or what state of mind we’re in when we read something. And that leads to misunderstanding.”
Some citizens have begun circulating a petition asking the council to bring Richardson back as city manager. In October, when he resigned, Richardson told C-VILLE “I’ve done my best, I’ve made a significant number of changes, and it’s time for me to move on.”
For now, Magill says more closed session discussions are on the horizon, and that the group of elected officials will continue working together to the best of their ability.
Payne doesn’t think the solution lies in waiting for another election, as Snook suggests, though admits turning things around won’t be easy. “Council has been having very candid, honest conversations about substantial things that need to change going forward,” he says. “I do think the situation has gotten bad enough where it’s going to take some time to get city government back to where it’s been in the past.”
UVA detected 1,300 cases of COVID among students, faculty, staff, and contract workers this semester. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
It’s 11am on Thursday, November 19. The U.S. has reached an all-time high for COVID-19 infections in a single day. Colleges have reported record-high numbers as well, contributing to around 2 percent of national infections, according to the New York Times.
And UVA President Jim Ryan has declared victory.
In a video posted to the school’s website, Ryan said the university had accomplished “what many said couldn’t be done,” and showed the world “what being a great and good university looks like.”
It’s true that UVA has largely avoided the uncontrolled spread that worried community members in the summer, when the university first announced its plan to welcome students back to Grounds. At the time, Virginia was experiencing a Memorial Day spike in COVID-19 cases and inching out of its initial Phase 1 restrictions. After college students gathered en masse for the traditional Midsummer’s party weekend, some community leaders sounded the alarm.
“I, for one, don’t understand why the students are coming back into the community, from all over the globe, and why we’re taking that chance,” Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker said at a virtual press conference over the summer.
Some at the university also pushed back against in-person classes. The United Campus Workers union and Student Council both petitioned for an all-virtual semester. In early September, student and community activists held a die-in demonstration where 50 people protested by feigning dead on the Rotunda steps and the Lawn.
Three months later, the semester is in the books. (Students left Grounds before Thanksgiving, a little earlier than usual.) Since August, the university has identified just under 1,300 COVID-19 infections among students, faculty, and staff, a number the administration has deemed a success. Those cases resulted in zero deaths and zero hospitalizations, reports university spokesman Brian Coy.
This graph from UVA’s COVID dashboard shows cases detected at the school over the course of the semester.
“There were a lot of people who were skeptical that students, or the rest of our community, would follow those behaviors closely enough to avoid a major outbreak,” says J.J. Davis, UVA’s chief operating officer. “However, as a whole, this community showed that we were capable of coming together and doing the right things to protect each other and keep the semester on track.”
Provost Liz Magill says the university faced “impossible odds” when the coronavirus pandemic halted operations in March. She cited measures such as the high amount of isolation and quarantine beds, increased testing, and restrictions on gatherings when cases spiked. The measures “weren’t easy” but ultimately the university “overcame historic obstacles,” Magill says.
Final exams
An aggressive testing operation lies at the center of the school’s COVID prevention plan. As the semester wore on, UVA instituted a mandatory testing policy, periodically calling all students living in the area to report to the Central Grounds Parking Garage for a spit test. From November 15-21, as the semester wrapped up, the school conducted 9,453 tests. Virginia has 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students living on Grounds this fall; for comparison, Virginia Tech, a school of 34,000 students, conducted 4,910 tests during that same week in November. This semester, Tech has detected around 1,600 cases.
At the beginning of the semester, UVA created 1,500 quarantine beds for students who had been exposed to the virus. The ability to shift students into this quarantine housing proved pivotal in the early fall. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had to send students back home during the first week of in-person classes, when cases shot up and quarantine rooms dwindled to the single digits. UVA experienced a similar spike in cases during its first week of in-person classes (UNC had 130, UVA 199) but the school’s supply of quarantine beds was large enough to weather the storm.
Additionally, testing allowed UVA to monitor residence halls and identify clusters in places like the Balz-Dobie and Hancock residence halls. Regular dorm wastewater testing combined with mandatory dorm resident testing kept infections from exploding on Grounds.
Dr. Taison Bell, a pulmonary and critical care physician and graduate student who also works in the UVA hospital’s COVID-19 ICU, thinks the university learned its lesson from other colleges across the country.
“A lot of peer institutions were having issues with large-scale COVID outbreaks,” Bell says. “So maybe it was a combination of learning lessons from those institutions and effective messaging at the university.”
Laying down the law
Even with that containment structure in place, videos periodically surfaced during the semester that showed troubling scenes for those who had hoped to see social distancing.
In October, an anonymous student sent a video to CBS19 of students packing, mask-less, into the first floor of Trinity Irish Pub on the Corner. Weeks before, Ryan signaled out bars specifically in a video message sent to the UVA community, saying “If you can’t stay six feet apart, don’t go in.”
“It seems hypocritical to me that the administration tries to pretend like they’re enforcing these rules when in reality there are these events that are happening,” an anonymous student told CBS19 at the time.
Days later, students were seen waiting in long lines to enter bars on Halloween weekend.
Davis concedes there were “some issues of noncompliance,” but the school responded by laying down the law, tightening restrictions after the potential super-spreader weekend.
“There were a couple times where more strict messaging had to go out to the university community,” Bell says. “But it seems like, after that happened, the prevalence [of the virus] overall went down and the system wasn’t strained…I think overall they did a really good job.”
The Balz-Dobie and Hancock clusters prompted new gathering restrictions early in the semester, barring students from gathering in groups of more than five people. The university’s ambassadors, a school-run safety force that patrols areas on and off Grounds, enforced the rules strictly, and violations could result in academic punishments.
In a September video, Ryan alluded to several interim suspensions of students failing to adhere to social distancing policies. The university’s policy directory states that students cannot hold an event, indoors or out, that includes multiple groups from different households. The policy also outlines the face mask and social distancing requirements.
Fourth-year Hallie Griffiths says the stricter penalties had a real effect. “I know friends that would have gathered in bigger groups regardless of safety because they felt that if they got sick, they would be fine,” but they didn’t want to get expelled, she says.
The looming terror of the virus made it a strange time to be a student, Griffiths adds. In addition to the interruption of extracurricular activities, classes, and Greek life, students had to cope with ever-changing rules, the complexities of online classes, and fears of infection.
Constant safety adjustments were a whirlwind as well. The university has updated and added information to its Return to Grounds plan at least 24 times since August 4, an experience Griffiths says was “confusing and frustrating.”
“Every week there was a new email and a lot of people’s lives were turned to chaos,” she says. “And then we would adjust and then there’d be a new email.”
“It was scary in the sense that all of us came into it not really knowing what to expect and then it very quickly became very real,” Griffiths says. “All the traditions are gone. Time is stopped in one place but also going very fast. …Especially with classes ending this week, I’ve realized that time is gone and I’ll never get it back.”
Community containment
A central concern for observers in town was the possibility of community spread, especially for vulnerable communities surrounding the university. Although cases spiked at UVA in September and October, the numbers don’t suggest that on-Grounds cases resulted in large numbers of city and county residents getting sick.
But while UVA was cracking down on restrictions, the city was as well.
“Coronavirus ordinances in Albemarle and Charlottesville that were passed were aimed at being in conjunction with UVA returning,” says City Councilor Michael Payne.
In the summer, Charlottesville imposed more severe gathering restrictions than the rest of the state, in part to mitigate the effect of students returning. In Charlottesville, restaurants were unable to operate at more than 50 percent capacity and people weren’t allowed to gather in groups of more than 50.
“I think UVA was taking a huge risk in terms of having all these students come back,” Payne says.
“They have been able to prevent a massive community spread in a worst-case scenario. So in that sense it’s definitely been successful,” the city councilor continues. “But there’s no way around it: When you have that many people coming into the community, you’re going to see a big spike in cases, and that’s what we did see.”
And of course, the story is far from over. Students will return for the spring semester in February. As cold weather drives groups inside and students travel back to Charlottesville from COVID hot spots, the university could once again become dicey terrain. Referencing the cold weather and spring semester, Magill said that “vigilance will be more important than ever.”
“I’m never going to say that I feel comfortable with where things are, because there’s always the possibility that things can break loose,” says Bell. “But what I will say is that, in general, our area has done fairly well with controlling the pandemic compared to a lot of areas of the country…I think this means that, going forward, we have to keep that same diligence up.”
Charlottesville City Council recently approved new COVID-19 restrictions, which are stricter than those mandated by Governor Ralph Northam on July 1, when the state moved to Phase 3 of reopening. PC: Eze Amos / Mark Warner Flickr
By Emily Hamilton
On August 1, residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle became subject to a new set of coronavirus restrictions: in-person gatherings of more than 50 people are banned; restaurants and other venues such as wineries, breweries, and distilleries can operate at only 50 percent capacity; and face coverings are required in indoor public spaces. The state’s Phase 3 guidelines, which have been in effect since July 1, allow in-person gatherings of up to 250 people, and stores, restaurants, and bars have no capacity limits, as long as social distancing is enforced.
The new local rules, which were approved July 27 and will last for 60 days, are more strict than the current statewide guidelines, and demonstrate the power localities have been given in crafting policy to contain COVID-19.
As of August 3, the Virginia Department of Health reports 775 cases of coronavirus in Albemarle and 495 cases in Charlottesville. Much of the support for both ordinances comes from concerns surrounding the impending return of UVA students. As the community prepares for the influx, Charlottesville and Albemarle government leaders recognize the potential for a surge.
“Part of…the motivation for this is that nothing would be worse for the economy than for UVA students coming back…to be a super spreader event,” said City Councilor Michael Payne at the July 27 emergency meeting. “And to prevent that, I think, is a decision worth making.”
The Charlottesville and Albemarle County ordinances reflect the difficulty that local governments face as they mitigate the damage the pandemic has wrought upon their communities. Although Virginia entered Phase 3 more than a month ago, recent actions reflect the state’s piecemeal approach to virus control.
In late July, Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer wrote a letter to Governor Ralph Northam asking the state to impose harsher restrictions after cases surged in that area. Dyer requested that the governor mandate restaurants and bars close early, among other rules. Northam quickly assented, making the rules official the following day.
Historically, Virginia is no stranger to friction between state and local jurisdictions. Localities in Virginia generally do not have much power, thanks to the Dillon Rule, which limits the powers of local governments only to those expressed by the state government. Localities aren’t allowed to do things like ban firearms or (until this year) remove monuments.
In times of crisis, localities have a little more say. Although Charlottesville and Albemarle’s new guidelines depart from those set by the state, the ordinances are in line with the expectation for local governments to protect their citizens during a crisis. The city’s ordinance cites the continued state of emergency along with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic remains a “disaster” under Virginia Code. In Northam’s executive order declaring the state of emergency, he stated that local governments have the power “to implement recovery and mitigation operations” to fight the virus.
At the July 27 Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting, Bea LaPisto Kirtley, who represents the Rivanna District, expressed her confidence in the board’s decision to move forward with the local ordinance. “I would hope that the public, our county, our citizens, our community, would look at this as what I call a Phase 2.5,” she said. “I think we’ve made a lot of adjustments that fit our community, that fit us, and then will help us help our businesses help keep our citizens safe.”
The new bridge over Moores Creek plugs a gap in the Rivanna Trail. PC: Stephen Barling
Closing the loop
The Rivanna Trail has encircled Charlottesville for more than 20 years. Earlier this month, the trail became a little more complete, when a 140-foot-long pedestrian bridge was lowered into place over Moores Creek, closing one of the few remaining gaps in the trail’s 20-mile loop.
Local environmentalists expressed enthusiasm about the bridge, which was paid for by Albemarle County and the developers working on rehabbing the old woolen mill that overlooks the river.
“This is economic development that focuses on making the community a better place for all,” said Piedmont Environmental Council community organizer Peter Krebs in a press release praising the bridge. “By providing more places to walk and bike, and everyday access to nature, projects like this support residents’ health, productivity, and prosperity.”
PC: Stephen Barling
Photographs from the middle of the 20th century show that a wooden footbridge once crossed the creek near where the new bridge sits, but the woolen mill changed hands multiple times over the years, and the original bridge disappeared.
Because the pandemic has upended much of our regular forms of recreation, and made gathering indoors unsafe, the Rivanna Trail has had a significant increase in use in recent months. A trail counter from earlier in the spring noted that this year, the trail has seen around four times as much foot traffic as the same period last year.
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Quote of the week
“Nothing would be worse for the economy than UVA students coming back [and causing] a super spreader event.”
—City Councilor Michael Payne, on Charlottesville’s emergency ordinance
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In brief
Richmond arrests
Protests continue in Richmond, and police continue to arrest people willy-nilly. This week, journalists for VCU’s student paper The Commonwealth Times, as well as two activists with Charlottesville ties and large social media followings, Molly Conger and Kristopher Goad, were among those detained on dubious grounds. Conger was held overnight, and after her release, tweeted that the police “are trying to break our spirits, but they’re only proving our point.”
Travelers grounded
Charlottesville-based educational travel company WorldStrides, one of the larger employers in town, filed for bankruptcy last week. Meanwhile, some UVA students received mailers this week from the study abroad office, advertising future trips. That’s optimistic, as most nations have banned American travelers from entering.
Paul Harris PC: UVA
Tenure reversed
UVA made national news earlier in the spring when it unexpectedly denied two well-qualified Black faculty members tenure. Now, the school is eating crow: last week, Dr. Paul Harris, an assistant professor of education, announced that the decision had been overturned, and his tenure case had been approved by provost Liz Magill.
Mask mandate
As the number of coronavirus cases continue to rise, Charlottesville and Albemarle County both decided on Monday to revert to certain Phase Two guidelines. Beginning August 1, masks will be mandatory in public, indoor capacity for restaurants will be capped at 50 percent, and gatherings of more than 50, excluding spontaneous demonstrations, will be prohibited.
New Year’s is a time for resolutions, but this year, we decided to focus our attention on city improvements, not self-improvement. So we asked a bunch of community leaders about their hopes for Charlottesville (and added a few of our own). Here’s to a new year, a new decade, and new visions for a community that’s bigger and better than ever.
Kari Miller, executive director and founder, International Neighbors
1. That employee income increases as fast—or faster (imagine that!)—as housing costs rise.
2. That each resourced resident (most of us) connect with one neighbor in need (many of us) in order to make Charlottesville/Albemarle the best place for all of us.
3. That special immigrant visa holders, or SIVs, receive the official status of U.S. veterans of war for their service and sacrifice for the U.S. military during conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many SIVs live in Charlottesville—they are our neighbors—and deserve our respect and support. The presence of these people of unparalleled patriotism makes Charlottesville/Albemarle a stronger community, and yet they struggle to survive, despite having put themselves at great risk to protect our common values.
Deborah McLeod, Photo Amy and Jackson Smith
Deborah McLeod, Chroma Gallery
1. A pedestrian bridge across the Rivanna joining River View with the Darden trail on the Albemarle side.
2. A better designed bus system that responds to the needs of the users (present AND potential) that is hub based rather than the current over long circuits that make commuting take so absurdly long—and add more buses.
3. Create a charming enterprise business zone at the Friendship Court stretch along Second Street leading toward IX.
Michael Payne, City Council member
I love Charlottesville, but I canhardly afford to live here! Three improvements:
1. A more robust public transit system with more frequent stops.
2. Achieving carbon neutrality and local climate resilience.
3. Expanding affordable housing opportunities, including public housing and community land trusts.
Sean Tubbs, resident and public transit advocate
1. The creation of a Charlottesville Karaoke League.
2. The establishment or promotion of an all-ages social gathering space to break down generational silos.
3. More reporting from more sources on more issues. There are so many stories that need to be told.
Stephen Hitchcock, executive director of The Haven
1. More affordable housing.
2. More affordable housing.
3. More affordable housing.
Peter Krebs, community outreach coordinator at Piedmont Environmental Council
1. A Connected Community: I would love to see safe and comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure that links homes to jobs, schools, shopping, and recreation, and that supports area-wide transit. Progress to date has been much too slow and I would like to see it accelerated.
2. A Thriving Community: I would like to see everyone, regardless of age, ability, or any other factor be able to move about and pursue their dreams in a vibrant urban area that is healthy, sustainable, rich in opportunity, and surrounded predominantly by intact forests, farms, and ecosystems.
3. A Community that Works Together: I would like to see Albemarle, Charlottesville, and UVA working together systematically and methodically on transportation, housing, economic development, and environmental protection and conservation. The existing memoranda of understanding are a great start but I’d love to see a much more ambitious level of cooperation.
More than a parking lot
The City Yard, a 9.4-acre municipal works lot in the heart of Charlottesville is, as we wrote last year, “large, central, under-used and under government control”—so why hasn’t it been developed?
The yard, home to black and mixed-race residents more than a century ago, was also the site of the city’s gas works. For decades, concerns about possible contamination kept its use limited to public works vehicles and maintenance facilities.
But faced with a growing population and an increasingly urgent affordable housing crisis, the city is taking a second look.
“I think with City Yard and a few other places near downtown, you could afford to do some unconventional experimentation,” former mayor Maurice Cox told us this spring. “I think it’s too valuable to stay fallow, but it’s too big and difficult to use a conventional set of tools.”
In November 2018, City Council awarded $500,000 to New Hill Development Corporation, an African American-led nonprofit group, to study redevelopment in the Starr Hill area, which includes the City Yard. This fall, they presented their plan, proposing to develop the City Yard into a mixed-use area with 85 to 255 majority affordable housing units and flexible business/commercial spaces focused on workforce development.
It’s part of a larger push to revitalize the area and, with the proposal’s emphasis on open, pedestrian-friendly streets and the transformation of the Jefferson School into a “public square,” it feels like a way to right some of the city’s historic wrongs. After the razing of Vinegar Hill and the walling off of 10th and Page, a redevelopment of the area would reconnect one of the city’s last remaining African American neighborhoods with its increasingly vital downtown. So while many big hurdles remain—most notably whether the site needs environmental cleanup, and if so how much it will cost—it’s a vision worth pursuing. –Laura Longhine
Hunter Smith, founder and CEO, Champion Brewing Company
1. Elimination of food insecurity in the greater Charlottesville-Albemarle area. We have way too many restaurants per capita and disposable income in this community to have hungry neighbors. In 2020, I’d like to challenge myself and fellow restaurateurs to find a way to fight food waste and instability together.
2. More public/private initiatives. As long as the Dillon Rule stands, there are many things the city can’t do that residents expect it to do when it comes to affordable housing and other community priorities. With more projects like New Hill Development, the city can leverage its resources and staff to support not-for-profits that are capable of doing the work the city often cannot.
3. Dewberry Hotel (formerly the Landmark). Good lord, what an eyesore. It’s kind of amazing that the Downtown Mall is still such a destination with that hulk looming
around. There’s a lot of opportunity for a decade-old, derelict structure to be put to better use.
Alan Goffinski, executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative
My wish for the city is that Charlottesville might institute an Office of Getting Sh*t Done within city government that supports individuals and nonprofits with good ideas by identifying resources, connecting like-minded folks, streamlining procedures and application processes, and navigating the intimidating aspects of government bureaucracy.
Heather Hill. Photo: Eze Amos
Heather Hill, City Council member
1. Public meeting spaces that are welcoming and respectful of different perspectives, inviting collaboration versus division.
2. A community commitment to investing public and private resources in our schools’ infrastructure.
3. A more regional approach to taking tangible steps that address priorities, including connectivity and housing.
Walt Heinecke, associate professor of Educational Research, Statistics, & Evaluation at UVA
1. I would like to see the new City Council replace the watered-down bylaws and ordinance for the Police Civilian Review Board recently passed by council in Novemberwith the original bylaws and ordinance submitted by the initial CRB in August. The latter bylaws and ordinance provided the strongest model for community oversight and complaint review allowed by state law.
2. I would like to see all racist statues in Charlottesville, including the George Rogers Clark statue at UVA, removed.
3. I would like to see UVA establish a Center for the Study of Race and Social Justice and acknowledge that the university exists on stolen Monacan land; establish a formal and respectful relationship with the Monacan Nation; establish a fully funded indigenous studies center with adequate faculty hires, a substantive effort to increase Indigenous student enrollment, and a physical building for the center.
Jeff Dreyfus. Photo: Martyn Kyle
Jeff Dreyfus and partners, Bushman Dreyfus Architects
1. City Council devises a proactive, achievable plan for increasing affordable housing in the city.
2. The city and county begin incentivizing the production of solar energy.
3. City and county governments merge services and programs that overlap or are redundant to better utilize the limited resources we have.
Devin Floyd, founder, director, principal investigator at the Center for Urban Habitats
1. Environmental education: I would like to see schools not only put a greater emphasis on the arts and sciences, but also afford our youth opportunities to leave the classroom and learn more about local natural history. The more they get the chance to explore the plants, animals, and ecosystems that they share the land with, the more informed and compassionate they will be as stewards of the natural world. Children must be allowed the chance to get close enough to a salamander to see their own reflection in its eyes.
2. Daylighting streams: Natural springs, creeks, and rivers are the heart of our region’s biodiversity. I want the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County to ban the practice of burying streams for development. Furthermore, I call for action toward creating a strategic plan for daylighting all springs and creeks that have been buried, and restoring a portion of the wetlands, grasslands, and forests they should be associated with. This will have the effect of creating a network of urban and suburban wild spaces, with associated parks and trails.
3. The new all-American lawn: I want to see our city and county governments take more responsibility for supporting sustainable landscaping practices. To this end, I dream of a new type of lawn, one that is beautiful, handles its own storm water (slowing it and cleaning it before it reaches local streams), requires but one trimming a year, supports wildlife, keeps its fallen leaves, and inspires young and old to explore. In this vision lawns become extensions of nature, and urban areas become bastions for biodiversity. I want people to have hope again. All is not lost; not even in an urban landscape. Nature is resilient, and powerful. We can each have a positive impact on the environment, even in a tiny lawn.
Patsy Chadwick. File photo
Patsy Chadwick, outgoing president, current board member, Piedmont Master Gardeners
1. Eliminate invasive species throughout Albemarle County. As I drive around the area, I am mortified by the vast numbers of invasive species along our roads, including ailanthus trees, Russian olive shrubs, English ivy, and kudzu, among others. It would be a herculean effort to eradicate these plants and replace them with more environmentally beneficial plantings, but we could begin to address the problem with a cooperative effort of state, county, and city government, private homeowners, and groups such as Piedmont Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists, PRISM, local garden clubs, and others.
2. Greater emphasis in our communities on planting trees—particularly, native species—to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and provide more shade during heat waves. I don’t think people realize just what an impact trees can make in helping to offset the effects of climate change.
3. Wiser management of water resources, including: 1) capturing rainwater in barrels and cisterns; 2) planting drought- and heat-tolerant plants that can survive with less water; 3) using drip-irrigation systems to put water where it is most needed; 4) not wasting water on lawns that have gone dormant.
Sunshine Mathon, CEO, Piedmont Housing Alliance
This next year could have remarkable impact if we come together with common purpose. Yet this work cannot be accomplished in a single effort or a single year. The strata of power, the scaffolding that frames our systems and institutions, took us 400 years to construct. With layer upon layer of root, flesh, and stone, we have laid beaten paths of opportunity and exclusion. And yet, though we may be overwhelmed by the scale of what must be undone, or what authority we must emancipate, this work is made imaginable when we laugh and breathe together, when we sweat hand in hand as we yoke ourselves to the labor, and when we cast our gaze to what we can accomplish in this single year.
1. Redevelopment begins: For years-decades-generations, community members from historically excluded neighborhoods have called for investment in their communities…but on their terms and in their interest. Within this next year, all the activism, the tears, and the planning will culminate in a remarkable, near-simultaneous achievement—the ground-breaking of redevelopment for three communities: Friendship Court, public housing, and Southwood. By this time next year, their foundational aspirations will become manifest in the bones of buildings, the homes they themselves designed.
2. A Strategic Housing Plan: Over the coming year, Charlottesville will develop a new strategic housing plan, a community-based process that can and will dig deep into our history, preparing us for future interventions. This housing plan will inform and guide the completion of the city’s comprehensive plan and a land use zoning code revision, culminating in a plan of action. Some aspects of the implementation will require strong political will, and a willingness to look inward to fulfill our collective responsibility, reprioritize resources, and redress past trespasses. These actions cannot be incremental. The accrued legacy is too deep and pervasive. Only bold action will enable our convictions.
3. A Common Analysis: Centuries of policies, incentives, and race-based decision-making have calcified the strata of power and advantage across the nation with people of color accruing the least of it. In the coming year, if our community is to accomplish some authentic progress, we must engage the work with a common analysis—specifically, an analysis of the institutional racism that permeates our systems, by intention and by neglect. By this time next year, our community could achieve a critical threshold. Research suggests that only 3.5 percent of a population must become actively engaged on a singular goal to reach a cultural tipping point. Through shared trainings, deliberate conversations, and active partnership, just 5,000 of us could lead our community to the fulcrum of change.
The Landmark/Dewberry/Laramore. Just call it an eyesore. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
The biggest joke in town
I’ve read a lot about John Dewberry recently and, man, he is a funny guy. Not funny “ha-ha,” but funny, like, “Dude, really?” For the uninitiated, Dewberry is the do-nothing developer who owns the largest urinal in town. It’s eight stories tall and holds down the corner of Second and West Main on the Downtown Mall.
The vision for a boutique hotel on the site reportedly originated with developer Lee Danielson, all the way back in 2004. Construction ceased in 2009, and Dewberry swooped to the rescue, or so we thought, in 2012. But so far, all he’s done is change the concept from luxury hotel to luxury apartments (just what we need) and the name from The Landmark to The Dewberry and, recently, The Laramore—an insult to the late local architect Jack Laramore, who designed the black granite street-level façade.
I wasted about 25 phone calls and six emails trying to contact Dewberry so he could tell me his plans for the vacant property in 2020. A spokesperson replied on behalf of the busy boss: “Hello, Joe. No updates at this time, but thank you so much for reaching out.”
Brian Wheeler, our fair city’s director of communications, indicated that Charlottesville has given up on trying to rectify the blighted blunder. Citing Dewberry’s “personal property rights,” Wheeler said, “He can own that structure [and] as long as it’s not a harm to others, he can keep it in that condition for as long as he likes.”
Whether Dewberry will ever do anything with the downtown carcass is unknown. But history isn’t comforting: Bloomberg Businessweek chose the headline “Atlanta’s Emperor of Empty Lots” for a 2017 profile of Dewberry, who has sat on valuable vacant land on that city’s Peachtree Street for 20 years. In Charleston, South Carolina, he bought a vacant government building and waited eight years to transform it into the luxury hotel that bears his name.
It’s funny, because the Bloomberg story quotes Charles Rea, who was once Dewberry’s director of operations, as saying: “He’s not going to put his name on anything that’s not superior, in his point of view.” Another former colleague said that Dewberry “…used to talk about Dupont Circle, Rockefeller Center. He wants his projects to stack up against the best.” You see? John Dewberry really is funny. –Joe Bargmann
Wilson Richey, partner and founder, Ten Course Hospitality
1. Double down on support of local businesses: Charlottesville’s small, independently owned businesses—shops opened and operated with great passion, meaning, and thought—are collectively one of the city’s most defining and important assets. As a local small business owner, I am worried that our current leadership has not been able to grasp this as they struggle to handle the many challenges of guiding a city that is growing so quickly. I believe our elected officials must show greater support for existing small businesses, and incentivize startups, so that these entities can make our city a stronger, more wonderful place than it already is.
2. Ditto, support for local artists: I grew up in a sleepy suburb of Washington, D.C. When I arrived in Charlottesville, I quickly realized the importance of the local artists and musicians. They lift our spirits, strengthen our cultural fabric, and make our city a happier, livelier, and more colorful place. In 2020, I’d like to see more support for the arts, both by Charlottesville’s leaders and each and every one of us.
3. Double-ditto, support for local agriculture. This is such an important issue, culturally and environmentally. It is a global issue in which Charlottesville has historically been a regional leader. But I believe we need to renew and increase our commitment to supporting sustainable, local agricultural efforts. We would all be healthier and happier for having done so!
Matthew McLendon, director ofThe Fralin Museum of Art
Matthew McLendon. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
1. I’d love to see an expanded, more robust, efficient, and reliable public transport system in Charlottesville that ties the surrounding counties to the city and makes getting around Charlottesville easier. Reliable and efficient public transport is the thing I miss most from my experience living in major cities. If done right, it is an important tool for greater equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
2. Following on with this theme (holiday traffic is on my mind, I guess), I wish that there would be a wide-scale overhaul on the timing of the traffic lights. I never feel that they are synced in the most efficient manner.
3. Finally, I am continuing to work with my colleagues on the vision and realization of a new center for the arts at UVA that would include greatly expanded university art museums, co-locating The Fralin and the Kluge-Ruhe to better serve not only UVA but also Charlottesville and central Virginia. With the intellectual and creative resources of UVA and the wider communities invested in our work, we have the ability to lead in creating the dynamic museum of the 21st century—a convening space for all who are curious and want to be engaged in the discussions art and artists can help to ignite.
Jody Kielbasa, Vice Provost for the Arts at UVA, director of the Virginia Film Festival
1. I would like to see the city and the county make a greater investment in the arts so that our arts organizations and artists can continue to enrich and bring us together as a community while serving as a catalyst to drive tourism and economic development.
2. I would like to see our public schools fully embrace the acronym S.T.E.A.M. over S.T.E.M. to recognize, foster, and celebrate the arts impact on our children’s well-being, learning, and self- expression. The arts make the world a better place.
3. I look forward to the development of a creative nexus on the Emmet/Ivy corridor as part of UVA’s 2030 strategic plan that would welcome the Charlottesville community to better engage with the arts at UVA.
Beryl Solla, gallery director, Piedmont Virginia Community College
My big issue is climate change. I would love to see the city make young trees available for people to plant in their yards. I know the city is working on this for public spaces, but we need to use every space available to help turn climate change around.
I would love to see all city buildings outfitted with solar roof panels and/or green roofs.
I would love to see our city make decisions based on a better, healthier quality of life for all of our citizens, with an emphasis on inclusion and sustainability.
If allowed another big wish, I would move the questionable sculptures in town out of public parks/public spaces and replace them with beautifully made, figurative sculptures that tell everyone’s story. The agenda would be historical accuracy, racial inclusion, and fair payment for the artists.
Brian Wimer. Photo: Eze Amos
Brian Wimer, Amoeba Films
Before we start changing anything, it might help for us to understand who we are. A cohesive vision for the future would certainly be beneficial, if not just pragmatic. But not the future of five days from now. That’s parking lots and like buying stock in Blockbuster. How do we want to live 50 years from now? A hundred years? Can we use our collective imaginations and make the bold, innovative choices that bring our community closer? Sure, I can name three things we could work on: multi-modal transportation, multi-cultural programming, and a new Charlottesville identity (can we please drop the “World Class City” nonsense and try to be a world class village?).
Part of that identity is pride. Ever arrived at the Amtrak station and wondered if you were home—greeted by a concrete tunnel and a chain link fence? Not much pride there. Do I hear someone say “mural?” Something that shouts welcome.
But regardless of what projects and programs we initiate, they won’t be effective if we don’t start at the basic foundation of what makes community: trust and gratitude. I think we have a long way to go there. Some folks don’t even want to discuss such esoteric and sticky principles. But without trust and gratitude you might as well shut down this whole social experiment—Netflix and Trader Joe’s will likely not provide what our souls are searching for. Nor will more parking lots or business incubators or beer festivals. We have an opportunity to promote a new paradigm based on unifying principles. Failure to do so would demonstrate not only bureaucratic sloth and a wasted potential—but also a lack of collective imagination. If we want a better city, we need to ask “What if?”
Editors’ note: Since publication, some readers have rightly called out the fact that none of the respondents in this piece are people of color, and that there are far more men than women represented. While we reached out to a diverse range of sources, many did not respond to our repeated requests (or said they would get back to us, but didn’t). And in a shortened production week due to the holidays, I didn’t notice how skewed the group we ended up with was until it was too late.
While this was meant to be a fairly casual survey (unlike, for instance, our 8/12 anniversary feature), we regret that the responses don’t reflect our entire community. As editor, I’m particularly sorry to have made such a careless mistake, which is not typical of our sourcing or our work in general, as I would hope any regular readers would recognize. We try hard to elevate marginalized voices and stories, and we will continue to do so.
On January 1, three new Charlottesville City Council members will officially begin their terms. Michael Payne, Sena Magill, and Lloyd Snook will join current councilors Heather Hill and Mayor Nikuyah Walker as Wes Bellamy, Mike Signer, and Kathy Galvin ride off into the sunset.
Magill and Payne say their priorities continue to be the issues that they built their campaigns around—housing reform and environmental policy.
“Something that I really want to get to work on immediately is climate change,” Payne says. “The city set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target—carbon neutrality by 2050—but how do we create specific plans within each emission sector, and reach out to nonprofits in the community, to develop specific plans that can actually help accomplish that goal?”
“We need to look at how we are going to be incorporating protecting our environment and continuing our work in affordable housing,” Magill says.
That’s easier said than done, of course. “Housing is a combination of federal, state, and some local. We don’t have the control over it that people think we do,” Magill says.
Snook did not respond to resquests to be interviewed for this article.
Incumbent councilor Hill emphasizes that the first challenge facing council is getting everyone on the same page.
“I’m looking at some very foundational things that need to happen for both this council and this administration to be successful,” Hill says. “Alignment among our council is just so critical to any path forward on any other priorities that any of us individually want to pursue.”
“I think that right now, the way we’ve historically operated, nothing gets done,” Hill says. “Truly, some things are never getting done, and a lot of money and resources are being spent on them.”
Hill’s comments come on the heels of a council session that strained interpersonal relations between members. Those disagreements were put on display at a team-building retreat in December 2018, when The Daily Progress reported that the councilors “aired their grievances with each other, the media and the community members who address them at meetings.”
“No one has to be friends with each other, but we have to be committed to working with each other and hearing each others’ perspectives,” Hill says.
Magill says that all her fellow council members are “in it for the same reason.”
“There is no thought that anyone is using this as a stepping stone to something else. We’re all in this because we live in this community and want to do right by this community,” she says.
The stakes are high. Payne points out that mistrust between councilors exacerbates long-standing issues of trust between city residents and local government. “If we’re consumed by infighting, that only makes it harder for us to take action on affordable housing, climate change, all these issues,” Payne says.
For Magill, rebuilding the city’s trust in government comes down to openness and honesty. “Try not to make promises you can’t keep. Try to be clear and open with your abilities and what you can and cannot do,” she says.
One of the first tasks council members will face will be electing a mayor and vice-mayor. Walker (who did not respond to a request for comment) has just completed her first two-year term as mayor, but is eligible for another. Before her, Mike Signer served one term, but the three mayors before him each served two. The council members declined to speculate on the 2020 selection process.
“It’s historically been a pretty opaque process, a lot of behind-the-scenes discussions and negotiations and jockeying,” says former mayor Dave Norris, though Walker’s election two years ago was a notable exception. Of the new councilors, Magill received the most votes in the general election.
“I think that’s going to be very telling, who the new mayor is,” Norris says. Norris describes Payne and Walker as being “of the progressive, change kind of camp,” and Hill and Snook as “a little bit more moderate.”
“And then you have one Sena Magill,” he adds. “It’ll be interesting to see what kind of councilor she’s going to be. The vote on the mayor will be one sign of that.”
The beginning of the new session means that all five councilors who were on the board during the summer of 2017 will have concluded their time on council.
“We lose a lot of the experience of those councilors, who did sit on the dais during a very difficult time in our community, and I hope they continue to be resources to all of us,” Hill says of the outgoing group.
The fresh faces in government might help the city move forward, however. “Hopefully, without the baggage, it’s easier to trust that the decisions we’re making are in what we feel is the best interest of the community,” Magill says.
“I don’t think it’s a turning point that changes everything,” Payne says. “It’s important that we don’t fall into a mindset of, ‘Let’s go back to how things were five years ago’…There’s a lot of work to be done. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.”
From top left, clockwise: Sena Magill, Michael Payne, Lloyd Snook, Paul Long, John Hall, and Bellamy Brown.
Three seats are up for grabs on Charlottesville City Council because Mike Signer, Kathy Galvin, and Wes Bellamy are not running for re-election. (Photo: Eze Amos)
There are three open spots on Charlottesville City Council this year and three candidates who’ve won the Democratic nomination, usually a virtual guarantee of being elected. But three independents are still in the race, and as Nikuyah Walker proved with her victory in 2017, they can’t be discounted.
We asked each of the candidates the following questions: What steps need to be taken to achieve carbon neutrality in Charlottesville by 2050?; What avenues do you believe the city should take to combat the affordable housing crisis?; How far along do you see the city in the healing process following the white supremacist riots in August 2017?; and What would you want to be able to point to at the end of your term as something City Council accomplished? Here’s what they had to say:
Sena Magill (D)
Owner of Hatpindolly Vintage
Age: 47
Born: Birmingham, Alabama
Local resident: 40 years
“I’m doing this because it’s my home.”
On carbon neutrality:
We need to be looking at power-purchase agreements so that we can put solar [panels] affordably on all municipal buildings and schools. [We organize] a collective of homes that can buy into this so that they can get solar on their roofs as a power-purchase agreement. And what that is, is a company that owns the panels, and [the residents] are buying the electricity from that company…supporting the solar economy, and reducing the coal usage and carbon footprint.
On affordable housing:
We have to figure out how it is we’re going to keep our working class here—our city workers, our firefighters, our nurses, our care workers…and we’ve got to make sure it’s also quality housing. [One of my proposals is] a land strike fund, where you put like $2 million aside…for when a property comes available, the city can purchase it and hold it until a nonprofit can get its [finances] together to then purchase that from the city and keep it in affordable housing.
On the city’s healing process:
There’s still work to be done…The majority of our city suffered PTSD, different levels of it…This isn’t going to get healed until the city proves to people that it listened and is following through on its promises. Trust is given usually at the onset but once trust is broken, it takes a lot of time to re-heal.
On what she hopes to accomplish:
Really getting in place a transit system that works with Albemarle County, UVA, [and] surrounding counties…We’ve [also] adopted this great climate change goal in the city, but we need to then put into place a policy to enforce that goal…[And I want] the people in our city to believe council is going to listen to them.
Michael Payne (D)
Affordable housing activist
Age: 27
Born: Washington, D.C.
Local resident: 26 years
“I want to take a community-organizing approach to City Council.”
On carbon neutrality:
Residential, business, [and] transportation are some of the biggest areas to create specific action plans around…creating a regional transit authority is key…the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative has an initiative they’re working on to reduce emissions in homes…there’s [also] a Better Business Challenge in the city that City Council can promote and be a part of.
On affordable housing:
There’s no silver bullet, it’s a series of policies that are needed. I think the fundamental problem is the fact that, as a city, we’re landlocked in about 10 and a half square miles. We don’t have land to grow into and we’re experiencing both population growth [and] this cycle where rising land prices lead to speculative investment…So in terms of what the city can do…investing in redevelopment of public housing…finishing its affordable housing strategy [and] zoning reform.
On the city’s healing process:
There’s many community members still dealing with unpaid medical debts [and] injuries both physical and mental. The national media attention of this event has waned, but for many community members, they’re still struggling…I do think as a community we’ve been healing and we’ve been getting to a better place, but…we have to take seriously looking at creating real structural transformational change here locally [that] changes outcomes.
On what he hopes to accomplish:
No. 1, that we’ve made the commitment to begin the redevelopment of public housing process in order to provide decent conditions and wealth-building opportunities to our public housing residents. No. 2, that the city has finished its affordable housing strategy and begun to implement it and has a clear approach for how they prioritize and strategically make investments to create affordable housing. And No. 3, that we have created plans for how to achieve our emissions target reduction goal.
Lloyd Snook (D)
Trial lawyer
Age: 66
Born: Plainfield, New Jersey
Local resident: 58 years
“I’ve got experience with every major issue that’s important to Charlottesville right now.”
On carbon neutrality:
There is no one answer, there are about 50 answers and they all need to get progress on, [but] there is much more carbon being used in homes and business than by government…Ultimately, what we need most to do to accomplish that goal is to be able to influence the home and industrial uses.
On affordable housing:
I am the only candidate who has tried to put any numbers on specific things that might be done…We need to build where we can [and] more building will happen, but we’re not going to build our way out of this problem…It’s been estimated that if we could just speed up the process [at Neighborhood Development Services], we could make the process for getting accessory dwelling units approved faster, cheaper, easier all the way around and then promote it.
On the city’s healing process:
The analogy that I use is to say that August 12 was basically the ringing of a bell, and bells continue to ring for a long time, and the vibrations and reverberations persist. We’re still seeing some of that…A lot of the realizations that have taken place since that time were news to folks, particularly white people, largely because they had never been forced to confront some of the history, [and] I don’t think we’ve got a consensus yet on what our response should be.
On what he hopes to accomplish:
We have moved forward on the buildable portions of the affordable housing…That we have gone through this backlog of reports that we haven’t been able to do anything about; that we’ve finished the revision to the city code [and] the zoning code; that we have finished the comprehensive plan and we’ve got a meaningful plan for affordable housing at all levels…Simply: We’ve finally caught up to what we were supposed to have been doing all along.
Bellamy Brown (I)
Student at UVA’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership
Age: 40
Born: Charlottesville
Local resident: 15 years (left at age 14; moved back in 2018)
“I’m a service-oriented leader.”
On carbon neutrality:
The low-hanging fruit are LED lights around the city; the electric buses that are out there; [and], as they’re building and developing the infrastructure, obviously doing that in a way that takes into consideration the carbon footprint…For me, there’s no real plan and I think that’s been with a lot of policies throughout. I want action-oriented stuff and those are the low-hanging fruit I think we can take to get there.
On affordable housing:
When you get down and talk to the neighborhoods, each of them has their own fabric…To say that someone is going to put up R-6 or what have you over at Belmont or anywhere else, that’s B.S. because you need to have two other people to sign onto that. So my thing is that we have a bucket of tools [and] we work with public, private, nonprofit, and the community together to come to some viable solutions.
On the city’s healing process:
This is the first year where we didn’t have anything happen on the anniversary, so I think people got to a point where they could have a breath…[There] are scars that are going to be there for some time and people heal in different stages. So I think we have to have leadership that steps up and sets the tone for how we’re going about that.
On what he hopes to accomplish:
I would want to be further down the road in terms of our role in affordable housing, infrastructure for me is a big one…filling this gap in the low-income communities…rebranding our community as a whole, getting away from every time someone hears Charlottesville they have this negative reaction, and ideally having a more collaborative council across the board where you don’t have to agree on everything but we can do it in a mature manner.
John Hall (I)
Inventor and design engineer
Age: 68
Born: Winchester, Virginia
Local resident: 25 years
“I want to provide direction for the city.”
On carbon neutrality:
I’ve known other inventors and other people from physics at UVA, and one had what he called a ‘recuperator engine’ to recycle the exhaust and keep burning it until all you have delivered into the environment is warm air…I would also like to line the combustion chamber of an engine with ceramic material…any ceramic material could burn very, very hot so that the fuels could be burned very hot and clean.
On affordable housing:
I felt like I had a really good idea to acquire the old Landmark hotel, which is now a shell…but I think it can be refurbished and rebuilt starting with what we already have there…Just pay for the land value and maybe a little bit extra, so that Mr. John Dewberry and his Deerfield associates will be well provided for and be happy to say Okay, we’re going to help Charlottesville, we’re going to release it, no lawsuit, no questions asked.
On the city’s healing process:
I think the events of 2017 in August are reflective of what we were still debating and a polarization of people—because of the statues…Recently, people have gone across the line and defaced those statues, [but] before this all happened, I said let’s take down the orange fences, promote unity of mind among our people, so that we can go forward and put that in the past and heal.
On what he hopes to accomplish:
I think some of my ideas would be accomplished in the future. It might not be that I get credit for it but…I see it’s inevitable that the Charlottesville Area Transit buses will go to the airport. I was first to propose that. I think it will also happen that in terms of transportation…we can have fold-out stop signs on all public transportation buses, they don’t have to be school buses…what we do to protect our children…is good for our adults as well in public transportation.
Paul Long (I)
Retired
Age: 70
Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Local resident: 21 years
“I have a lot of patience and am a good listener.”
On carbon neutrality:
I believe Charlottesville needs its public transportation system to be revamped…that would be a great improvement to decrease carbon dioxide. I also think in terms of watching what’s going on in the Amazon River basin in Brazil, the city should make an effort to plant 15,000 trees, [and] we should be using solar panels as much as possible.
On affordable housing:
I think UVA is the major contributor and one of the issues that [Jim] Ryan said they’ll be doing somewhere down the line is mandating that second-year students live on Grounds and I think that would help. It would open up maybe 1,500 apartments…But having said that, a lot of the apartments’ [rent] is still too high…I don’t think the affordable housing crisis is going to be solved until the federal government takes an active role in the issue.
On the city’s healing process:
Obviously there’s a lot of racial feelings here in Charlottesville, but most of the people who came here in August of 2017 were [from] out of the city…and I think there needs to be healing in terms of the racial injustices in the city that existed way before the August disruptions that happened two years ago.
On what he hopes to accomplish:
That I was instrumental in improving the public transportation system, that I was instrumental in having a change in viewpoints towards how drug addicts are treated, [that] City Council [was] an instrument in appealing to the state legislature to change a lot of the rules that are in the books…and also that I was instrumental in increasing the services to homeless people.
It’s 10am on the Downtown Mall, and already the sounds of demolition floodthe area. Pedestrians stream past Mudhouse Coffee and The Whiskey Jar, and a few glance at the tall fence erected recently across the walkway, and the signs that read, “Do not trespass. Construction site.” Machinery looms over the area and a loud boom echoes across the mall, making a few restaurant patrons jump in their seats. If you look closely, through a crack between the fence posts, you’ll see a giant dirt pit, 10 feet away from the bustling crowd of people, on a plot of land that used to hold the downtown ice rink.
The construction is literally remaking the west end of the Downtown Mall, displacing not only the ice rink (a new one is being built up Route 29 North), but also adjacent small businesses like The Ante Room, a beloved music venue, and Escafé, a longtime center of the local LGBTQ scene. What will rise in their place is the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, a 167,000-square-foot office building dreamed up by millionaire hedge fund manager Jaffray Woodriff, that aims to be ”the nexus of entrepreneurial activity in central Virginia,” according to the building’s website.
The multi-million dollar project, which will include a green roof, podcast recording space, electric car charging, and ample bike parking, will bring a decidedly new look (and more than 600 tech workers) to the low-rise, red brick pedestrian mall. And it’s a not-so-subtle metaphor for the way a rising tech boom may reshape Charlottesville—for better or worse.
The CODE building, which will include a green roof, podcast recording space, electric car charging, and ample bike parking, will bring a decidedly new look (and more than 600 tech workers) to the Downtown Mall. (Rendering courtesy developer).
Tech businesses have flourished in Charlottesville since at least 2008, when companies like WillowTree, the mobile app development start-up, and ChartIQ, a “fintech” start-up that provides software solutions to financial institutions, were founded. An extensive network of “angel investors” and various initiatives at UVA aimed at nurturing entrepreneurship have helped other local start-ups get off the ground.
In recent years, however, what began as a gradual shift has gained momentum. In 2016, the National Venture Capital Association named Charlottesville the fastest-growing venture capital ecosystem in the United States. That same year, UVA launched its Seed Fund, a $10 million investment in UVA-based tech ventures. Start-ups, especially in biotech, have proliferated. WillowTree is reportedly one of the fastest-growing digital companies in the nation, and is expanding into a new, 85,000-square-foot headquarters currently being built at the site of the old Woolen Mills, just outside the city limits. (The company, for which former mayor and current City Council member Mike Signer serves as vice president and general counsel, did not reply to requests for comment.)
The city’s small-town vibe, pipeline of talent and resources from the university, and access to capital make it attractive to start-up businesses. “If you had a company, you’d bet that Charlottesville is the place to grow it,” says Paul Beyer, who founded the now-annual Tom Tom Festival in 2012 to celebrate and encourage innovation.
Woodriff (who declined to be interviewed for this story) is the latest tech leader who wants to see Charlottesville become a center for digital innovation. He’s offering a subsidized rate to start-up companies that rent space in the CODE building, and wants it to become a collision of creative minds. “You need to be able to get up from your desk and randomly bump into a wide variety of people who are bright and motivated,” Jaffray told Bloomberg’s Joe Nocera earlier this year. “Palo Alto has that. Bell Labs had that. And I’m trying to facilitate that in Charlottesville.”
In addition to CODE, Woodriff, a UVA alum, has given $120 million to establish a School of Data Science at his alma mater. He hopes that graduates will see the appeal of Charlottesville, and build their companies here. “I want people to come here and say, ‘I aspire to this,’ and not interviewing with Google,” he told Nocera.
Boosters say growing the tech industry will transform the economy, bringing in new jobs and revenue that could translate to better infrastructure and a higher quality of life.
But cities like Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; and Palo Alto, California, all home to explosions in tech, tell a more complicated story. In those communities, tech has brought new jobs, new revenue, and new facilities, but it’s also come with increased traffic, gentrifying neighborhoods, and a loss of longtime residents and culture.Austin, for example, repeatedly makes lists for the worst traffic in America and has massive shortages of affordable housing. These new tech cities, while bringing in wealthy residents and vibrant cultures, have struggled to provide the same opportunities for their working classes.
”I think in the last 10 years, it’s been a real struggle for Austin to keep its identity and keep its soul, as downtown is being razed and converted into condos and high-rises, and you have people like Google and Facebook and Apple taking over the town with these buildings,” Austin reporter Omar Gallaga told The New York Times. “If you have all the artists and the creative people that make it interesting move away because they can’t afford to live there, then it becomes a different place.”
Jeyon Falsini’s Ante Room provided a space for little-booked music genres like hip-hop, metal, and garage rock. Photo: Eze Amos
Jeyon Falsini, former owner of alternative music venue The Ante Room, is sitting at The Southern Café & Music Hall on a Tuesday morning. He leans back in his creaking bar chair, running a hand through his floppy hair. “This town has a way of making the news a lot,” he says, tapping the counter. “Charlottesville on the outside is all sunshine, sandals, and daydreams, but on the inside it’s as red in tooth and claw as the Amazon itself.” He laughs. “It’s cutthroat.”
Falsini has experienced the downside of the tech boom first-hand. As owner of The Ante Room for almost six years, he oversaw the most diverse range of music bookings in Charlottesville’s modern history. The venue was known for up-and-coming artists as well as genres—metal, garage rock, and hip-hop—that weren’t catered to at other area venues. Falsini likened the wide variety of artists to his own passion for music. “If you’re open-minded enough,” he says, “You can work with any genre of music.”
The dark, low-ceilinged space, with its trademark bathroom doors painted to resemble playing cards, quickly became a favorite community hang out. Since The Ante Room closed its doors in 2018 for the CODE building’s construction, music fans have felt the loss.
The demolition of Escafé, the similarly beloved restaurant/bar next door, has also hit hard. “The obvious thing Escafé added to Charlottesville was an openly gay bar, though that liberality spread to include a range of people who felt more at home there than anywhere else,” says songwriter Brady Earnhart, who hosted a monthly showcase and open mic there, and talked to C-VILLE shortly before the bar closed for good. “It was a broadly and effortlessly diverse crowd.” Owner Todd Howard said he’d initially hoped to move Escafé to a new location, but couldn’t find the right spot.
Falsini, who is now the assistant manager at the Southern, says he, too, has been unable to find a new space for a sequel to The Ante Room. “How am I going to stop it?” he says, referring to the influx of tech companies. “I’m just trying to swim above water. You can’t stop them, they’re already here.”
The closing of these two venues is one example of the kind of culture shift that can accompany the arrival of a tech boom in a small city like Charlottesville. At only 10.5 square miles, we have a fundamentally limited infrastructure, with many businesses fighting for a coveted spot on the historic Downtown Mall. The price of commercial real estate has been rapidly increasing over the last few years, and developers have expressed concerns over inventory shortages in the city. This won’t stop when the tech industry moves in—rather, it’s likely to get worse, says housing advocate and Democratic City Council candidate Michael Payne.
“If the tech industry moves in and you see land speculation, and rents and land prices start to skyrocket, soon you can’t afford your rent,” says Payne, talking about commercial real estate on the Downtown Mall. “Then you’re going to have a business that can afford [it], which is oftentimes an expensive chain, or a business owned by a wealthy entrepreneur. It’s a risk to our small businesses, too. It’s not just an affordable housing thing, it’s a small business thing.”
And it’s more than a physical space or cost issue. Wealthy individuals want businesses and buildings that cater to their interests, and that can change the culture of a neighborhood. “Think about restaurants like Mel’s or Riverside,” Payne says. “You know, these are staples of the local community that had been here for decades, that people love, but I can perfectly envision people in the tech industry moving here, and being like, ‘What is this? We want something where we can get an $8 coffee.’”
In a contentious thread on Twitter last August, some locals complained about a new luxury apartment building, Six Hundred West Main, whose “neighborhood guide” for future residents included gourmet food store Feast! and the cycling studio Purvelo, but left out local black-owned businesses, including Mel’s. “That map is basically the cheat code for gentrification 2.0,” wrote Niya Bates, director of African American history at Monticello.
“The danger is that Charlottesville itself just sort of becomes this playground for rich people working in the tech industry,” says City Council candidate Michael Payne. Photo: Eze Amos.
Charlottesville is bracing for a population boom. By 2040, the area is projected to add an additional 6,000 people in the city and 33,500 in the county, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, bringing our total population to more than 196,000. That poses a challenge for housing and other infrastructure, like transportation.
At the same time, the city is also grappling with an affordable housing crisis that’s been building for years. Since 2011, rents in Charlottesville have risen from an average of $931 per month for a two-bedroom apartment to $1,325 per month. In August, The Daily Progress reported that of 895 full-time city employees, 338 cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment without being cost-burdened.
A number of luxury housing developments, like C&O Row, 550 Water, and Six Hundred West Main, have sprung up near downtown, as the city grows increasingly wealthier. According to the Orange Dot Report released last year, the number of Charlottesville families earning more than $150,000 jumped by 96 percent between 2011 and 2018.
An influx of highly-paid tech workers could exacerbate the problem. “Wealthy people and people graduating from college in the tech industry, they will want to live on a Charlottesville property. They will want to live as close to the Downtown Mall as possible,” says Payne. “The danger is that Charlottesville itself just sort of becomes this playground for rich people working in the tech industry.”
That could push middle-class and low-income residents into surrounding counties to find housing. It’s a phenomenon that’s happened in cities like Austin, where the majority of the city’s working class has been priced out to the edges of the city.
In Charlottesville, says Payne, “This is already happening, where there’s a lot of people living in Buckingham and Greene and Nelson, who commute into the city because nothing else is affordable.”
Elaine Poon has noticed this housing change intimately. The managing attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center, she says that residents, especially in traditionally black neighborhoods, have been noticing changes for the past 10-15 years. “There is an uproar, but it’s coming from a historically silenced community,” she says.
“Provision of affordable housing and protection for existing housing most of all, if it’s affordable, is the most powerful weapon against gentrification,” she says. “But it can take a long time and we’re so behind the curve already. It’s going to be really hard”
UVA alum Jaffray Woodriff wants to help make Charlottesville an innovation hub. Photo: Eze Amos
With all the fears that an impending tech boom comes with, there’s no denying some of the obvious benefits: New, well-paying jobs and a healthy boost to the economy would bring revenue to the city and could improve residents’ quality of life across the board. WillowTree alone is expected to generate 1,412 area jobs between 2019 and 2025, according to a study by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, and spur $70.5 million of value-added economic activity for the Charlottesville metro area in 2019.
Julia Farill, director of human resources and brand strategy at the data science company CCRi, points out that growth involves jobs beyond those in tech itself. “As a tech company grows, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re hiring all really wealthy people…you’re opening up positions that are providing jobs not just for external tech-type people but also other people in the community,” she says.
Charlottesville Vice Mayor Heather Hill believes that developing and hiring local talent for these industries could also curtail some fears. She stresses education, like an emphasis on STEM in public schools, and programs at CATEC and Piedmont Virginia Community College that train community members for tech jobs. “We need our local job-seekers to be able to earn their ways to these jobs to afford to live here,” Hill says. “I don’t think we’re valuing our local resources enough.”
Hill says growth, if properly managed, could be good for the city. “I see that there could be a lot of benefits about this. There’s an opportunity for this type of growth to be a big success if we work together.”
In addition, she points to groups like Smart Cville, a newly formed nonprofit that seeks to use technology to improve local communities. In 2016, Smart Cville launched Civic Innovation Day, an annual event focused on gathering community members to brainstorm how technology can improve Charlottesville and address its current challenges. And just last month, the organization opened its Center for Civic Innovation, a space on Fourth Street that focuses on bringing people together to focus on common community problems, like transportation development and localized flooding.
“We need to be open to the fact that the community will change,” says Tom Tom founder Paul Beyer. Photo: Ryan Jones
The growth of the tech industry remains a polarizing topic, especially in Charlottesville. “Cities are really complicated,” says Tom Tom’s Beyer on a recent afternoon in his downtown office. “You have legacies of discrimination, lack of affordable housing, and criminal injustices. Those are the cities that we live in as Americans.”
Tom Tom’s offices are located in the Pink Warehouse, a local landmark on Water Street that has been home to dozens of artists over the years (Dave Matthews Band famously played its first official gig on the rooftop there in 1991). Posters of Tom Tom festival events line the walls of his office.
Beyer was born and raised in Charlottesville, and he recognizes the problems of growth in a city that has a history of displacing its African American residents. But he sees the construction of new buildings and commercial real estate as a benefit for a city that needs to expand, and argues that tech companies will bring the revenue and means to make it happen. He and others seeking to make the city an innovation hub also believe that the influx of tech companies could improve upon the city’s existing culture. “We need to be open to the fact that the community will change,” he says. “Creativity, architecture, and the population could flourish with growth.”
Chip Ransler, the executive director of HackCville, also sees the CODE building and new companies moving into Charlottesville as an opportunity for the city to change. If you love the city that you live in, he says, you’re going to want it to evolve. “It’s a transformative gift.” Ransler says. ”We like this area, there’s good and bad, it’s a great place to be. Anybody who is somewhat invested in this town is going to want to see this town fleshed out.”
But what that looks like on the ground, and how welcome it is, depends a lot on who you talk to. It could mean upheaval for residents of neighborhoods like 10th and Page, Starr Hill, Fifeville, Belmont, and Woolen Mills, all of which are within walking distance of either the CODE building or the new WillowTree headquarters, and have seen the effects of rapid gentrification over the past 15 years.
In historically black neighborhoods in particular, “If you walk around some of these neighborhoods, a lot of them do not look the same way that they looked three to five years ago,” says Legal Aid’s Poon.
Walking around 10th and Page, it’s clear that black residents are being forced out of one of the city’s largest continuous African American neighborhoods. More affluent white families have been tearing down houses and adding expensive additions, driving up property values (and taxes) and driving residents out. The community feels in flux—modest houses with lawn decorations and rocking chairs next to new, modern homes with fenced-in yards.
Advocates like Poon are not optimistic about the impact of an incoming tech population on these neighborhoods.
“When I ask the activists that I work with,” she says, “I think a lot of them think that it’s too late.”
Tech companies are not a monolith, and the potentially negative consequences of becoming an innovation hub are not inevitable. CCRi, which started out with just three employees in 1989, and now has 140, has tried to grow mindfully and sustainably, Farill says. The company was co-founded by her father, a longtime professor at UVA, and its leadership is committed to staying in the community.
But individual tech companies may not be thinking about the big picture impact of their industry on the city, she says. “The incentives of a company change, depending on what’s happening for that company.”
That may be where local government needs to step in, to protect whatever we don’t want to lose. As Farill puts it, “The doomsday scenario for having a lot of wealthy people only becomes that if you let it.”
The "Inside Out: Charlottesville" mural features photos of 120 local activists, along the wall of the Violet Crown on Second St. Photo: Eze Amos
It’s been two years since the “Summer of Hate,” and Charlottesville, to the larger world, is still shorthand for white supremacist violence. As we approach the second anniversary of August 11 and 12, 2017, we reached out to a wide range of community leaders and residents to talk about what, if anything, has changed since that fateful weekend, and how we can move forward.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What do you think of how Charlottesville, as a city, has responded in the aftermath of A12? What’s changed? What hasn’t?
It’s hard to say what’s changed in Charlottesville. Once heralded as America’s most ideal city, we’ve been outed as a place that is just as flawed as any other town. Having been forced to enter a conversation that has no easy solution, it feels like a collective healing from August 11 and 12 and its aftermath is going to take much longer than any of us want to believe. It’s a humbling and sober thought. That’s not to say there isn’t reason to hope—there certainly is—but I think that the pace of change—real, lasting change—is glacial. I think there’s a way to press on for a better future while extending grace to ourselves and each other.
—Sam Bush, music minister at Christ Episcopal Church and co-founder of The Garage art space
Charlene Green. Photo: Devon Ericksen
I think the way we tried to respond last year, from a law enforcement perspective, I think it was one of safety, we were definitely trying to assure the residents that no one was going to get hurt in the same way.
I think this year, the planning of Unity Days has definitely given community members a whole new opportunity to figure out how to be engaged about this, how to acknowledge the anniversary, and I think so far it has been a pretty successful effort.
It’s about constantly educating folks about what Charlottesville is all about, because we’re not a one-story town.
–Charlene Green, manager of the Charlottesville Office of Human Rights
I still think it’s a plantation, not a city. I feel that we should be going further with having transparency in the community to be able to work together.
The city hasn’t done anything besides make themselves look good, writing books, getting all these different recognitions for themselves, but nothing for the community.
[A lot of] the activists that were hurt…and that have been the true fighters for Charlottesville, are gone. And then you have some of us who are still left here, but I’m willing to leave, because I’m tired. Because this hasn’t just been going on for me since 2017, this has been going on for me for 13 years now. So I’m tired, because it’s like the more you’re fighting, it’s like it’s not changing.
–Rosia Parker, community activist and Police Civilian Review Board member
Rev. Seth Wispelwey and other clergy marched to oppose the KKK in July 2017. Photo: Eze Amos
It’s difficult to answer, because what people make of that weekend, whether they experienced it directly or not, is up to them, and relies so much on the stories we told about ourselves beforehand.
As a co-creator of Congregate, in our weeks of training, we always emphasized that it was about using the weekend of August 11th and 12th as a pivot point to the long, deep, hard, life-giving work we all can be a part of in dismantling white supremacy. So some people took up that call, and have continued to run with it, learning and growing along the way, and others covered their ears, and wanted to believe that this had nothing to do with Charlottesville or our collective responsibility to one another. And then still others were somewhere in the middle, believing that their ongoing efforts were sufficient, that the status quo was naturally going to lead to some sort of evolutionary progress. We’re a very self-satisfied progressive city.
I think it’s no secret that governing authorities, from City Council to the police force, in the summer of 2017 made choices that left our community vulnerable and exposed and suffering from violence. What hasn’t changed is there still has been little to no accountability for that, and so while people have undertaken their own healing processes, I still believe, even two years on, there’s a tremendous trust deficit between members of the community who saw the violent threat for what it was, and our ostensible leadership, who by and large prescribed ignoring it and left people to be beaten, and then prosecuted some people who defended themselves.
And again we saw that on the first-year anniversary, the over-militarized response. Treating the community and activists as the enemy has been the wrong direction so far. And I don’t think it would take much to repair that trust deficit. “I’m sorry” is free. But that’s going to take some work, and I haven’t seen changes there from city leadership.”
–Reverend Seth Wispelwey, former minister at Restoration Village Arts and co-founder of Congregate Charlottesville
I think in the aftermath of A12, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in civic engagement. More and more people are paying close attention to City Council and getting involved with local community groups. People are trying to understand where we’re at as a community, and how we can create real, lasting change.
The conversation around race and equity has completely changed and there’s an unprecedented level of awareness about local economic and racial inequalities. But we haven’t yet created the level of institutional change needed to fundamentally shift the balance of political and economic power within Charlottesville. We’ve planted the seeds of change, but we have a lot of work left to do when it comes to changing outcomes.
–Michael Payne, housing activist and City Council candidate
Everything and nothing. We’re still very much a city divided. There have been some efforts made…but I don’t think there’s been any real substantive change. We elected Nikuyah, but I’d like to think that that would have happened whether August the 12th ever did or not.
The city’s done a great job with the Unity Days events and that’s a huge start. But we’ve still got such a long way to go.
–Don Gathers, community activist and former Chair of The Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces
Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
“I was still new to Charlottesville when A11/12 happened; I had only been here about eight months, so I don’t have a great deal of perspective on Charlottesville before that time. The changes that I have seen, though, I would characterize as a greater urgency around the conversations that Charlottesville and the country as a whole must engage in—conversations around systemic and institutionalized racism, equity, and the historical inequalities that continue to resonate locally and nationally.
One of the things that worries me in the community is that I continue to hear people say things along the lines of, “they (meaning the white nationalists) weren’t from here…” True, some did come from other places, but I think it is dangerous not to acknowledge fully that this is our problem, too.”
—Matthew McLendon, Ph.D., director of The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA
In terms of where we are this year—with no active threat of more violence and a plan for less police presence, I do want to emphasize that there is increased possibility for the beginning of a healing journey, both at the individual and the community level. It was very hard to begin that process that year, as so many people felt unsafe around the anniversary, so that feels to me very different this year.
Mental health-wise, reflecting on the changes over the past few years, there are many more therapists and other people in our community who are prepared to respond to traumatic experiences and to facilitate healing—in particular the establishment of the Central Virginia Clinicians of Color Network.
Obviously, trauma is historical and something we’re still grappling with. On the positive side, our community is looking very explicitly at health disparity and in particular racial inequity around health outcomes for the first time. Everyone’s coming together in our community health needs assessment to say our number one priority is to address inequity in health outcomes. So I think that is a positive change. Has that disparity changed yet? No. So we have a lot of work to do, but awareness is the first step.”
—Elizabeth Irvin, executive director of The Women’s Initiative
Susan Bro. Photo: Eze Amos
I think Charlottesville is working to bring awareness to the citizens and change its image. There have been intensified efforts to shed light on the truth of the past. That’s a good beginning. But the racial divides in housing and education seem to still be just as bad as before. None of us at the Heather Heyer Foundation actually live in town or even Albemarle County. So we are on the outside, looking in.
—Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer and president of the Heather Heyer Foundation
It is always a challenge in the aftermath of a traumatic event, like A12, to move from the initial reactive state to a long-term adaptive state. The city, local businesses, organizations, and citizens responded to the events with a great deal of energy and attention. When we realized that many of us had turned a blind eye to the racism in our community, our leaders took on new initiatives and made demands for change with gusto. But the real trick is what happens in the next 5-10 years.
—Bree Luck, producing artistic director, Live Arts
What do you think the city needs to do to move forward?
One huge step would be to visibly and viably take ownership for that weekend and what happened, and the role that they actually played in it. It’s still very much a point of contention that the folks who directly lost their jobs were two men of color.
The council, whatever it may look like on the first of the year, they’ve got a huge task on their hands. The new buzzword of course is civility, and I think that we’ve got to become comfortable in the incivility for a while, because this was so very painful and hurtful for so many people. Now I’m not saying that 10 years down the road folks still should be shutting down meetings because of it. I don’t see the necessity of that. But if something triggers a person…I think we have to allow space for that, and understand it.
They’ve got to figure out how to bring about some level of trust between the city and the community and the police department. Because that’s what’s sorely lacking right now. And figuring out how to do that, that’s the E=MC squared equation.What it looks like and then how to make it happen. That’s something that’s vital to the renaissance, if you will, of Charlottesville, and getting us to a point where we’re not recognized as just a hashtag.
—Don Gathers
We certainly have issues in this community that we’re working on, but there’s also a lot of great things that are happening. The Chamber of Commerce is in a great position to help with that.
It’s not surprising that the business community [and tourism have] taken some hits from the events that happened in the last couple years. Nobody wants to minimize some of the tough conversations and hard work that’s going on here to build equity, but you can work on those things and also highlight the things that are going really well-—companies that are launching and doing world-class work here, opportunities that are opening up for new careers, that’s the piece that the business community thinks needs to be out there more.
It would be helpful if there was cooperation between elected officials and the business community and others, trying to get toward some shared goals.
—Elizabeth Cromwell, President & CEO, Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce
We have to commit ourselves to the work of making Charlottesville a more equitable city, not just in word but in deed. And we have to hold space to celebrate and document who we are as community and what we’ve accomplished. Fundamentally, we care about this community because we love the people in it. We can’t be afraid of acknowledging that.
—Michael Payne
I was fortunate to hear Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, speak earlier this year, and I was moved by his insistence on the need for “proximity.” He stressed that we must be close to, and by extension listen to, those who are not like us.
The Fralin Museum of Art joined the larger national conversation on social justice by participating in the “For Freedoms” project with “Signs of Change: Charlottesville.” Working with our community partners, most importantly Charlene Green from the Office of Human Rights, we convened a series of workshops to bring people together to first learn about the histories of marginalized people in Charlottesville and then talk about ways we could help to stop history from repeating itself. There must be continued opportunities for proximity, education, and dialogue.
—Matthew McLendon
What the City of Charlottesville I believe needs to do in its various official capacities is apologize and take ownership for the exposure and violence that came. At its root, it was a failure to take the inherent violence of white supremacy seriously: these were terrorist groups who threatened violence, the city was adequately warned, and we know for a fact that the police were more interested in what “antifa” was going to do, or [suggested] that we should just ignore them. No one can tell me that if this had been an ISIS free speech rally that it wouldn’t have been shut down immediately. So it starts with that.
Honest and sincere apologies are not weakness, they’re a sign of strength, and I think what Charlottesville is fighting to do and what the city could help do is stop continuing to gaslight people and say yeah, we were wrong, we will take the threat of white supremacy seriously, and I think the temperature would cool across the board.
—Rev. Seth Wispelwey
Rosia Parker outside the courtroom after the James Fields verdict, in December. Photo: Eze Amos
One, you gotta listen to the community. Don’t just listen at the community, listen to the community. [Be] willing to be transparent, willing to create ideas together, that will make a thriving community.
—Rosia Parker
As a city, I think we have an obligation to help provide opportunities for folks to be engaged and for people to see that we’re trying very hard to walk the talk. At the Office of Human Rights, if we say that equity and social justice are important for residents, then we need to show it.
—Charlene Green
Photo: UVA
Moments of adversity and heartbreak sometimes give us an opportunity for collaboration and progress. Since August 2017, UVA and the local community have been working together in unprecedented ways. The UVA-Community Working Group that came together last fall identified the most pressing issues that we can begin to work on together—jobs and wages, affordable housing, public health care, and youth education—and efforts are under way now to address those issues through UVA-community partnerships grounded in equity and mutual respect.
So many of us love Charlottesville. I think the best way we can express that love, and the best way we can move forward after August 2017, is by working together to make our community stronger, more united, and more resilient than it’s ever been before
—Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia
We need to continue our efforts to rebuild the bonds that unite all of us, with the understanding that a community dedicated to issues of social justice and racial equality is a place that we can be proud to call home, and a place that more people will want to come visit.
—Adam Healey, former interim director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau
Addressing racism at the structural and institutional level remains the highest priority. In particular being able to give the mike to people of color, black people in particular, who have historically not had a voice, would be at the top of that list. From a mental health perspective that’s important because healing can’t occur without first acknowledging the trauma of people who’ve experienced this, and I think we still have a lot of work to do. Some of these events of Unity Days are beginning to give voice to that, and I think there’s a lot more room to do more.
—Elizabeth Irvin
My heart goes out to the city officials since they’re the ones who are publicly shouldering what is actually each of ours to carry. I hope that they will continue to serve humbly, to keeping listening and asking questions. I’ve found that bringing small groups of people from different backgrounds together can be an effective way to get people to speak honestly and calmly in a way that inspires others to listen.
—Sam Bush
Someone besides me to say what we need to do to move forward. People like me who have been in leadership positions for many years ought to create the space for other people living and leading quietly in our community to say what needs to happen.
—Erika Viccellio, executive director of The Fountain Fund
Don Gathers and others at the official unveiling of the Inside Out: Charlottesville mural. Photo: Eze Amos
What do individual people need to do to move the community forward?
If you see a need, don’t wring your hands and hope someone does something about it. Step up to see what you can do to move things forward. And then actually do it. Don’t play armchair quarterback. Put feet to your intentions and get involved. If you don’t step up and out, who will?#StepUpStepOut.
—Susan Bro
I’m not sure the public speaking platforms of our age are as effective as we think they are. Many of us are speaking to people who already agree with us which, in turn, merely helps us feel better about ourselves while vilifying those who disagree with us. As a result, we seem quick to anger and slow to listen. The alternative, I think, is much more difficult but more effective. I think we’d each be better off by getting to know someone who couldn’t be more different from us and then befriending them. Easier said than done, of course.
—Sam Bush
There’s no magic pill here that’ll fix this. We’ve got to begin to have those tough and difficult and hard conversations. And we’ve got to stop talking about race and start talking about racism. We can’t just talk about white supremacy, we’ve got to actually have the difficult conversations about white privilege and white advantage. And once we embrace those conversations…then we can move forward and start talking about unification.
I’m not sure there’s a mediator or moderator in the world that could handle that, because in so many instances we’re still talking at each other instead of to each other. We’re still talking about each other instead of trying to handle and solve the problem as it presents itself. How it’s handled, what it looks like, I’m still trying to envision it, but I know that it’s got to happen in order for us to move that needle.
—Don Gathers
Lisa Woolfork and members of the Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County, who fought for a ban on Confederate imagery in county schools. Photo: Eze Amos
People can support community members who are already doing the work to build a better Charlottesville. City councilors need to respect and support Mayor Walker’s leadership. Voters need to vote for strong racial justice supporters. School administrators need to respond with deep policy changes to address concerns about racial equity raised by students and families. We need to stop protecting Confederates and their white supremacist legacy. We can create a brighter future if we do the difficult, sometimes uncomfortable, yet necessary work of liberation, learning and unlearning.
—Lisa Woolfork, UVA professor and community activist
Listen! We are each, as individuals, responsible for change. I am clear that as a white male, I need to listen to people of color and other marginalized communities with lived experiences different from mine. By listening we can understand what we need to do to be active allies. My fear for our whole society is that far too many people want to speak and too few have the self-discipline or awareness to listen.
—Matthew McLendon
Choose to live in community. In an age of climate change, neoliberalism, and tech-mediated communication, we are encouraged to remain fearful and isolated. To paraphrase bell hooks’ essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom”, the road to healing our wounded body politic is through a commitment to collective liberation that moves beyond resistance to transformation. We all have a positive role to play in healing and transforming our community. Yes, that means you too!
–Michael Payne
As individuals we just need to get involved, and stay aware. Because we can’t depend on one agency or one entity to handle it all; we need to all step up as a community, and in whatever way you feel the most comfortable. Hopefully you’re able to push yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s when we stay in our little circles of comfort that we tend to perpetuate stereotypes and assumptions about people in different groups. So to push ourselves to get involved and be challenged, and to challenge each other, I think are some of the things we can do.
–Charlene Green
Photo: Nick Strocchia
First and foremost is that self-reflection and working around issues of race and privilege. And within that, being willing to take care of ourselves and recognize what we need to do around our stress and anxiety so we can continue to have uncomfortable conversations and meaningful dialogue, but also continue to challenge ourselves moving forward.
Relative to the traumatic aspect of the anniversary itself, people who were more directly impacted still may be experiencing a lot of traumatic stress, so I just encourage those people in particular to reach out for support.
—Elizabeth Irvin
My own perspective shift came from new and growing relationships in Charlottesville, thanks to a lot of grace and space afforded to me by people who have been working on anti-racist advocacy for a long time here.
The truth is we all have space and grace to grow forward, and so what individuals can continue to do, and I’m talking about cis-hetero white individuals particularly, is not just listen to voices and perspectives that are threatened and crushed by white supremacy, but start to foreground their asks and desires. It will be costly for a lot of the privilege we carry, but it’s a cost that liberates, and is really life-giving in the end.
We can’t all be responsible for all the things all the time, or we’ll burn out, so get plugged in and focus where you feel most called and led. There’s a multitude of opportunities, but life’s too short and racism is too strong in this country to not try a bit harder to show up in embodied solidarity, somewhere.
—Seth Wispelwey
For those of us who weren’t born and raised here I think we need to be committed to better understanding the community we live in. It is only recently that I started regularly attending events and tours at the African American Heritage Center. I have a new, and essential, emerging understanding of the community I’ve been “serving” all these years.
—Erika Viccellio
One thing that we can do as individuals is to extirpate the systemic racism that plagues our culture. At Live Arts…we have begun to explore the systemic barriers to [theater] participation, including obvious issues like cost and content representation—and not-so-apparent barriers like architecture, language, food, and transportation. With the help of community partners this year, Live Arts offered more “pay what you can” tickets and scholarships than ever before. Also, we are diversifying representation on our stages by making more stories written and directed by and about persons of color and women.
Education is the key to effecting change. At Live Arts, we discussed micro-aggressions, unconscious bias, and workplace discrimination each month in board and staff meetings. This summer, we invited volunteer directors to join a diversity, equity, and inclusion workshop so that our creative teams have the tools to create a safe space to work and play.
We are far from perfect. But the aim is not to create a utopian society where we all say and do the right thing. Instead, the goal is to have an equitable culture of belonging, prosperity, community, and creative exploration.
Rick Jones, a local property manager, believes it’s a myth that there’s pressure for students to sign leases early. (Photo: Eze Amos)
Every college student knows it’s coming. Do it right, and you’re securing an enjoyable experience for two semesters of your college career. Mess it up, and you may be looking at a 12-month sentence of living with that guy who never learned how to do the dishes.
Signing that first lease, even if it’s only to rent a shoebox apartment a few blocks away from campus, is a momentous decision. It’s one most UVA students start fretting about not long after they arrive at the university, hoping to secure a spot off Grounds for their second year. But now, as part of President Jim Ryan’s 2030 Strategic Plan, the Board of Visitors is considering a proposal to require students to live on Grounds for their first two years. It’s already getting some pushback.
The goal would be to alleviate the pressure that students—first-years in particular—feel to sign a lease before fully settling on a group of friends or potential roommates. It’s also part of a larger effort to create a residential community that students can stay connected with throughout their college careers.
One property manager estimates that 2,700 second-years currently choose to live off Grounds, and he believes this plan is a way of hand-holding an already over-protected generation.
Rick Jones is the vice chairman of the board for Management Services Corporation, a property management firm that owns dozens of student-housing complexes around Charlottesville, including Ash Tree Apartments and The Fred.
He wrote a letter to Ryan on June 18, calling the perceived pressure to sign a lease in September a “myth,” noting that even in June, Jones was able to find 29 units owned by his company alone that were within walking distance of the university and still available for the upcoming school year.
“I have been in the rental housing business for almost 50 years,” writes Jones, a ’70 alumnus. “I am very concerned about what I see as a great deal of misinformation about the availability of housing for students, as well as non-students…I can assure you that no one is forcing anyone to make a housing decision any earlier than they need or want to.”
While Jones admits the apartments and houses in higher demand do go quickly, he stresses that a large percentage of housing is still available well into the year. He sees this initiative as an effort by the university to coddle its students, many of whom are “just not as mature and able to handle life on their own,” he says.
Ryan has mailed a letter in response to Jones, but he hadn’t received it at press time.
Rising third-year Emily Hamilton, who moved off Grounds for her second year, says there’s a “social pressure” for students to finalize their living arrangements early so that they’re not left on the outside of a group of people trying to live together. The longer first-years wait to discuss with fellow classmates where they want to live and who they want to live with, the less likely they believe their chances are of securing a favorable housing situation.
“I think it’s more listening to what your peers are doing than feeling pressured to get on it before other things run out,” Hamilton says. “It’s created by the students and I know that you can find housing later in the year, like May or June for the next year.”
Hamilton also thinks most students would oppose being required to live on Grounds their second year.
Yet a residual benefit could be an increase in the availability of affordable housing. Michael Payne, one of the Democratic candidates for City Council, is a vocal proponent of taking an active approach to solving the local affordable housing crisis. He believes UVA’s decision would be a step in the right direction to opening up more opportunities for low-income residents to secure homes.
“You have a dynamic where a lot of students who are living off Grounds are purchasing homes and using them as rental properties that otherwise would be properties rented by residents of the Charlottesville community,” Payne says. “You just see the available housing stock restricted because it’s taken up by students.”
There are still several kinks to be ironed out before the university takes any sort of action. Jones notes that he’s open to starting a dialogue with UVA to work out an alternative solution. The Board of Visitors won’t cast any votes on the proposal until August at the earliest.
