Rag Trade fashion includes dance, art and music at its second annual show held on Saturday at IX Art Park. Courtesy of Rag Trade
On varying scales, Charlottesville is home to most of the cultural institutions of a much larger city: theater, opera, art galleries and film. Now we can add fashion shows to that list.
On Saturday, Rag Trade brings fashion, music and art downtown to the IX Art Park. Three local designers will be featured amid choreographed dance performances and a burlesque performance by Borgia Falvella. Local bands Synthetic Division, The Judy Chops and Ships in the Night will play after the show. Brian Schomberg will create an art installation at the event.
“My dad is a carpenter and my mom does ceramics,” says local hat-maker Annie Temmink, whose unusual headgear will be featured. “So I grew up making all sorts of things. …I had a Watson fellowship for a year studying ancient fashion and textiles. Seeing all these ways that people adorn themselves in Indonesia and Uganda and Japan, I’ve really fallen in love with that.”
In her Water Street studio, Temmink is surrounded by a riot of colors, tools and works-in-progress. Spools of thread, scraps of cloth, scissors, books, pillows, cardboard and models of human heads on sticks create an artistic backdrop. Her out-of-the-box hats could easily be mistaken for sculptures.
One completed project looks like an African textile pattern imposed on a more angular version of the Sydney Opera House. An enormous black-and-white fan ringed with eyes could have come from the set of Beetlejuice. These hats are not everyday fashion for the masses. They are objects intended to provoke reflection and conversation among the wearers and onlookers.
The hats are “things you could rent or wear at a festival or a party,” Temmink says. “Having said that, I also wear them on the trolley with friends. There’s like a 45-minute loop. In a town that has such a consistent backdrop it’s beautiful to create this weird blip in the scenery. You always start a conversation because if someone is brave enough they’ll be like, ‘What are you doing? What is this?’ It’s fun for me because it’s kind of nerve-wracking.
“I don’t need people to wear these things to Harris Teeter on Sunday,” says Temmink. “But I think [this fashion show] gives them a little inspiration to maybe wear something they’d like to wear but don’t quite feel comfortable with. Maybe it’s shiny or whatever, it’s okay. You can do what feels right to you.”
Organizer Fielding Pierce Biggs will feature his own clothing designs as well as those by Kim Schalk, whose designs are sold at her store, Chalk, on the Downtown Mall. Biggs hopes the show will help create an atmosphere of public support for local designers that will lead to the growth of a fashion industry in Charlottesville.
“When I moved to Charlottesville there was absolutely no idea of fashion or beauty here,” says Biggs. “In the past couple of years, I’ve begun to find many…Is there a huge community of designers? No, but just like Charlottesville, we are in transition. So though you can count on two hands the designers here now, we are growing. My hope is that we are at the beginning of creating fashion and design here and that one day many designers will call this place home.”
“It’s the statement that other alternatives are viable and possible and worth celebrating,” says Temmink. “I choose to use models who are not typically models but are dancers and exude a certain confidence. …In a way it’s more of a performance. I think people will be delighted by the oddity of these big sculptures that people are wearing.”
This is the second year that Biggs has produced a local fashion show and he hopes that Rag Trade will continue to be an annual event.“During the show [last year] something amazing happened,” Biggs says. “People of every demographic…felt inspired, loved and as if we could take on the world. The energy was actually palpable.
“Exposure is the first step to building any empire. If the people can see you, they will come. I want to be the one to help birth a new industry in Charlottesville.”
“I think it’s going to be really fun,” says Temmink. “We’re not in New York but we’re making it happen here. It’s going to be a visual spectacle.”
After a three-year creative stint in Portland, Greg Kelly returns to direct the Charlottesville Mural Project. Photo: Ézé Amos
If you walk or drive past the Corner in the next few weeks, you may be surprised to see people suspended from the top floor of the Graduate hotel. These aren’t aerialists or stunt doubles for a local action movie; they’re muralists painting the latest installation of the Charlottesville Mural Project. Using a swing stage, the artists will apply colors and abstract shapes to the west- and south-facing facades of the building. When finished, the mural will be six stories tall, featuring a design by Philadelphia-based artist David Guinn, and text from UVA professor and former poet laureate of the United States Rita Dove.
A collaboration with the New City Arts Initiative, the project began in February 2015, when Guinn and Dove worked together to select a poem and develop a design. “I wanted to express the emotion of Rita Dove’s poem, ‘Testimonial,’ with its beautiful exuberance and optimism, its enthusiasm for and wonder at life,” says Guinn. “In this spirit, I tried to create a space for the viewer’s mind to enter and connect with those emotions.”
The work also marks a new phase for the Charlottesville Mural Project—Ross McDermott, who has led CMP since 2011, will hand over the reins in mid-May to the project’s new director, Greg Kelly.
Kelly co-founded CMP with McDermott in 2011 as an outgrowth of The Bridge PAI, where he was executive director at the time. Inspired by the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, the pair hoped to impact the visual landscape of Charlottesville and engage community members in the creation of public art. Kelly moved to Portland after the project found its footing, and Ross embraced the singular role of the project’s director.
During his time on the West Coast, Kelly reflected on Charlottesville and its art scene. “Three years ago, I needed to get clear of my identity with The Bridge and let it all go,” he says. Time passed and he pursued his own art projects in Oregon while maintaining connections in Virginia.
“This is cheesy, but I came back [to Charlottesville] last May for The Bridge’s Revel, and the word ‘home’ came into my mind,” says Kelly. “I definitely wanted to be back in this area of the country.”
While Kelly was deciding to move back to Charlottesville, McDermott made the decision to devote more time to his business, Surface Below Media, and begin a search for a new CMP director.
To locate the best candidate, McDermott and a hiring committee reviewed applications earlier this year, narrowing the pool to four finalists, and ultimately selecting Kelly for the job. “It felt serendipitous…like a great way to come back and re-engage with the arts community,” says Kelly.
This time around, that engagement will come on his own terms. “The best part of my eight years with The Bridge was the beginning, when I wasn’t wrapped up in the politics…wasn’t thinking about what the art scene wanted or needed. It was just a group of us, coming up with ideas and doing stuff,” says Kelly. “That’s what I love, and that’s the beauty of CMP. It’s not bound to anything but creative energy and possibility.”
Embracing these qualities, Kelly already has another mural in mind, and is keeping his eyes open for additional blank walls. “I believe in Ross and in what he’s done with the project,” says Kelly. “His standards are at a level that I can really respect.” The current and future director share a similar design aesthetic and both are confident in the two-murals-per-year model that the project embraced from the beginning.
One of Kelly’s primary goals is instead to cultivate resources to pay participating artists. “I would like for CMP to set a standard in the way we take care of the artists: pay them well and respect them as professionals,” says Kelly. He also hopes to nurture outreach opportunities by engaging youth and other community groups to collaborate on mural designs. “When the community owns the work, they’re part of the process and feel like this is part of our neighborhood,” says Kelly. “I care about that and I really love that process.”
What’s your favorite mural in Charlottesville?
Tell us in the comments below.
Drive-by art: CMP locations
Testimonial
Artists: David Guinn and Rita Dove
Graduate, 1309 W. Main St.
Blue Ridge Mountains
Artists: Duncan Robertson and Hurray for the Riff Raff
5391 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet
Benevolent
Artists: CHS art students
Charlottesville High School, 1400 Melbourne Rd.
Southwood
Artists: Southwood Community youth volunteers
387 Hickory St.
Transparent
Artist: Christy Baker
1700 Allied St.
Charlottesville Bikes
Artists: Michael Powers, Charles Peale, Jeff Hill and Mark Quigg
West Market St.
Rivanna River Watershed
Artist: Kaki Dimock
354 First St. S.
I Love Charlottesville A Lot
Artist: Rick Montoya
Fitzgerald’s Tires, 408 Monticello Rd.
Garden Mosaic
Artists: Buford art students, UVA student Mary Kate Bailey (design) and UVA Student Art Council,
As Tom Tom Founders Festival Director Paul Beyer sits in the audience during Founders Summit talks and hears fellow entrepreneurs and creative visionaries speak about the early days of their startups, the successes they celebrated and obstacles they faced, he can’t help but draw a parallel to the festival itself.
The ideas for the festival (April 11-17), launched in 2012, largely came out of casual conversations in Beyer’s apartment—friends would drop by for a beer, and they would discuss his idea for a festival based on the pillars of music, art, innovation, food and, most of all, founding—a nod to Charlottesville’s own polymath, Thomas Jefferson. He says Tom Tom—a regional take on South by Southwest—had no business being as successful as it was the first year, simply for the fact that it was entirely volunteer run. But each year has brought changes and growth—not only in attendance (6,700 the first year up to 26,000 last year) but in the festival’s organizational structure. The festival became a nonprofit after its second year, and Beyer attended the i.Lab at the Batten Institute where he sketched out a five-year plan for the organization, with the end goal of becoming a national festival.
Now in its fifth year, and with the backing of three full-time paid staff members, 14 student fellows from UVA, a slew of subcontractors and an official office on South Street, Beyer says they’ve more or less reached that goal. Speakers at the festival’s Founders Summit on Friday, April 15, as well as at lunches and workshops throughout the week, come not only from the region but throughout the United States. On the bill this year are Charlottesville’s own Bill Crutchfield, who built a $250 million a year consumer electronics business with $1,000; Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, founder of Joyus and theBoardlist, who led an 18-country expansion at Google; and Jason Flom, founder and CEO of Lava Records and founding board member of the Innocence Project, among others.
But perhaps the most notable sign of growth is not in the festival’s list of speakers but in its focus. More locally centered events during the week are no longer held at various venues around town; instead The Paramount Theater will serve as Tom Tom’s home base for events from Monday through Friday. The festival kicks off this year with the Future Forum: The Creative Economy 2025, which brings stakeholders in the local community—artists, entrepreneurs, investors and elected officials—together to talk about the economic impact art could have locally.
“So much of the festival is about projects that are happening now and businesses happening now, there’s no step back and saying what does this mean for the city 10 years from now,” Beyer says. “This year it’s going to be the touchstone for the festival. What is all this dynamism that we’re highlighting actually going to turn in to 10 years from now.”
The goal of the festival is to be a creative conduit and connector for people—of all ages. One of the highlights of new programming this year at the Paramount, Beyer says, is the Youth Summit, which will host 1,000 high-schoolers from around the state to hear entrepreneurs 25 years and younger talk about their businesses and community initiatives. The Founders Summit and Youth Summit are the only ticketed events this year, but Beyer says they’re priced just to break even (the festival has also set aside hundreds of Founders Summit tickets for students that are either heavily subsidized or given away). The underlying goal is to bring out people who are interested in Tom Tom’s array of topics: the food business, innovations in athletics, a crowdfunded pitch night, gender influence in business, etc. That’s what keeps Beyer up at night—making sure they reach each niche audience so that all creative collaborators are in the same place at the same time.
“The goal of the festival is to inspire people to see themselves as creators and to inspire them to see the city in new ways,” he says.
Since its inception, the festival has awarded more than $1.2 million in its various competitions, such as the crowdfunded pitch night, to nonprofits, artists and entrepreneurs. But the winners aren’t the only ones who claim successes, Beyer says. He’s heard several people say they met an investor or collaborator or someone who has an idea on how to help them with their project. And that is what Tom Tom is all about–establishing the foundation for local founders and serving as a springboard for creative success.
“Ultimately what I hope happens is there are dozens of stories of people who look back and say, ‘I met my investor’ or ‘That’s where I met my business partner,’” Beyer says. “You just don’t know these things for these early years because collaborations will have just started–you’re not going to know what happened until three or four years from now. You’re just seeding the ground and hoping really good things are starting to emerge.”
After nearly 90 years of business, owner Harry Marshall says The Young Men's Shop will close its doors come late spring or early summer.
The Young Men’s Shop—opened by Henry Reuben on the Downtown Mall in 1927—is closing its doors after nearly 90 years of selling tailored suits and brightly colored ties.
“It’s been here basically for 89 years and I guess it’s just a part of Charlottesville,” says current owner Harry Marshall, who says he’ll miss interacting with his customers.
Marshall bought the shop from Harry O’Mansky in 1977 and, 20 years later, moved it to Seminole Square, where it was called YMS Clothiers Ltd. for a brief period.
The Young Men’s Shop was welcomed back to the mall in 2008, and Marshall says it has kept a loyal following of well-dressed men while also welcoming tourists and UVA students. Along with classic suits and ties, the store also carries popular retail brands such as Southern Tide and Southern Fried Cotton.
Marshall has plenty of retirement plans after giving his shop its final farewell later this year: golfing, hunting, scuba diving, traveling and motorcycling, just to name a few. Maybe he’ll even go after his pilot’s license, he says.
The Landmark Hotel is the only thing left standing after the apocalypse. Illustration: Max March; Photo: Ashley Twiggs
What does the future hold? We examine what has happened in Charlottesville’s past and present to make some zany predictions about what could occur years down the road. But you know what they say: Fact is stranger than fiction.
Developing our future
Growth is always an issue in both Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and there’s no reason to think that will change in the future. Those already here want things to stay the way they are—while newcomers continue to flock to our beautiful burg.
Albemarle County has incorporated the preservation of the county’s rural character into its comprehensive plan by funneling development into designated growth areas such as Crozet, Pantops and U.S. 29 North.
Charlottesville flirted with high-density development in 2003 during the tenure of then-UVA architecture professor/mayor Maurice Cox. However, once the first nine-story buildings actually were built (ahem, The Flats), citizens decided they didn’t want density quite that…dense, at least on West Main.
So what does Charlottesville of the future look like?
West Main
West Main is one of the oldest thoroughfares in the commonwealth, dating back to the 18th century when it was known as Three Notch’d Road. By the early 19th century, it was the muddy lane connecting Mr. Jefferson’s new U to the town of Charlottesville. The 20th century saw it dotted with gas stations, car dealerships and auto repair shops in the style now known as mid-century. In the early 21st century, the battle raged about what West Main would look like going forward. Would it keep its mid-century charm with the remnants of 19th-century Vinegar Hill, or would it become canyon-like with nine-story hotels and condos? Would it become even more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, with the 66-foot-wide street redeveloped into a boulevard?
C-VILLE predicts: The Downtown Mall is so successful that it seems only logical to turn West Main into a pedestrian and bike mall, a notion retailers and auto service centers fight. The compromise: no on-street parking and a city requirement that the hotels lining West Main build giant parking structures to handle at least twice their occupancy rates. And a fleet of golf carts will shuttle less-ambulatory citizens to West Main’s restaurants and shopping.
Cherry Avenue
Cherry Avenue now is best known for its Salvation Army Thrift Store and being a backed-up commute option to Jefferson Park Avenue.
C-VILLE predicts: With its proximity to downtown, those deserted storefronts are ripe for redevelopment, especially with a hotel going up on the corner of Ridge Street. And when Trader Joe’s takes over the old IGA space, Cherry Avenue becomes the new West Main.
Strategic Investment Area
Charlottesville’s boldest plan for the future is to take 330 privately owned acres south of the Downtown Mall between Ridge and Avon streets—where some of the city’s poorest residents live—and redevelop it while avoiding the pitfalls of the Vinegar Hill urban renewal of the ’60s. The plan calls for retaining low-income housing while encouraging market and work-force residences, investment in innovative business and upgrading existing infrastructure for safe and walkable/bikable streets.
C-VILLE predicts: The 17-acre Ix complex becomes the centerpiece of the SIA because of its size and its private ownership by the innovative Kuttners, which make it much more nimble than the other large tracts owned by Piedmont Housing and the Charlottesville Housing Development Authority. The area gets its first park and first grocery, and people flock to the mixed-use housing on the property with its close proximity to the Downtown Mall. Following city investment in sidewalks and bike lanes, Ix Center becomes the Belmont of the 2030s.
Oh, the Places we’ll grow
Pantops
The area east of Charlottesville has been Albemarle’s least successful growth area, where instead of the new urbanism, it looks more like the old suburbanism, with all the disadvantages of growth—traffic—and none of the benefits of density. In 2015, residents pleaded for a pedestrian bridge just to be able to safely cross multi-lane U.S. 250 to the Pantops Shopping Center. The perpetually strapped county added the bridge to its good-ideas-we-can’t-afford list.
C-VILLE predicts: Even if Amazon takes over the retail world, we’re always going to need car lots, and that will continue to be Pantops’ ace in the hole. Future Pantops residents won’t be getting rid of their cars anytime soon.
We predict Seminole Trail will receive an underpass at Rio and an overpass at Hydraulic, helping through-traffic flow much better. Photo: Jack Looney
Crozet
Crozet convened its first master plan advisory council in 2002, and for years to those involved it looked like a lot of talk and no money for implementation. But slowly, in the intervening years, Old Trail turned from a big field into a small-lot community with a walkable commercial area—although residents still have to get in their cars to go to the grocery store. The Crozet streetscape, after being torn up seemingly for forever, finally was complete, as was the long-delayed library. Jarman’s Gap was widened and is safe for walking and biking. And the subdivisions that sprouted around the small village prevented the sprawl that otherwise would stretch along U.S. 250 as a blight upon the road’s rural vistas.
C-VILLE predicts: The redevelopment of the Barnes Lumber site is the game-changer for Crozet and the best neighborhood model in Albemarle, thanks largely to Frank Stoner, who redeveloped the Jefferson School. Residents actually live above office and retail, and walk to the Mudhouse for coffee and to Great Valu for shopping, thanks to a pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks. With the Blue Ridge Mountains as a backdrop, some are calling the county’s scenic yet funky village “the new Downtown Mall.”
Seminole Trail
Seminole Trail became Charlottesville’s Main Street of the latter 20th century, geared toward the automobile. The area has been in a chronic struggle to move through-traffic without the bypass desired by Lynchburg and Danville. And while the county’s zoning has kept it from becoming a commercial eyesore like our neighbors on U.S. 29 to the south, it’s also contributed to commercially awkward spaces, like The Shops at Stonefield.
C-VILLE predicts: With the completion of Hillsdale and Berkmar connector roads, the underpass at Rio and an overpass at Hydraulic, through-traffic flows much better. However, that doesn’t appease Lynchburg, which is still clamoring for a bypass 20 years after the Western Bypass was officially killed, and local residents still continue to avoid it if at all possible.
Pay Scale
Charlottesville’s median household income of $44,601 between 2009 and 2013 was well below the state median household income of $63,907, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The higher-than-the-state median housing cost of $293,000 and 27.5 percent of city residents living below the poverty rate prove that Charlottesville is an expensive place to live and wages don’t come close to making it affordable. Albemarle’s numbers tell the same story: Even more expensive housing at $319,200 with a median household income of $67,725.
C-VILLE predicts: In 2036, Charlottesville remains a desirable place to live—for the rich. Its unaffordability creates a boom in Buckingham County, where the median home price was an almost-affordable $128,800 earlier in the 21st century.
Joining Forces
In 1982, Albemarle signed a deal with the devil, in this case, Charlottesville, promising to pay it 10 cents of its property tax rate—currently at 81.9 cents per $100 of assessed value—if Charlottesville stopped annexing county land, which the General Assembly declared a moratorium on in 1987. Between 1983 and 2010, Albemarle has paid nearly $161 million to Charlottesville, and ponied up nearly $16 million in 2016 alone, according to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
C-VILLE predicts: Although Charlottesville reaps a windfall every year from Albemarle, both budget-strapped entities realize their dollars could go a lot further if they consolidated schools, police, fire departments and redundant local governments. The result? A new municipality called Charlbemarle.
Traffic Calming
To discourage driving into town—although for many commuters from surrounding communities, there is no other option to get to work—by 2016 Charlottesville has calibrated all its stoplights so that motorists have to stop at every signal, or at least it seems that way.
C-VILLE predicts: An environmentally committed City Council finally realizes that cars spewing carbon monoxide idling at lights with no other traffic in sight is not the most sound policy, and that the ensuing road rage of citizens constitutes a very real safety concern. Council orders city traffic engineers to calibrate those darn lights to make traffic flow.
Future of downtown
Is there living room?
A well-established community already thrives in downtown Charlottesville. You can buy the essentials at Reid’s Super-Save or Market Street Market. Several salons and barbershops exist to style you, some of the best eateries in town are there, and a buffet of live theaters, movie theaters and music venues aim to feed your soul.
But will downtown Charlottesville soon face the issue of too many people and too few homes?
Realtor Jim Duncan, who has sold downtown homes for more than a decade, says the market has remained surprisingly consistent.
“A lot of people are just happy where they are,” he says, adding that while there are currently enough homes downtown, there is a historically low inventory of homes for sale in the area.
He says as the city’s population grows, and more people are looking to buy homes in neighborhoods such as Woolen Mills, Belmont and Ridge Street, it won’t be long before there are no homes left to buy.
The solution? Building up.
Duncan says the future of Charlottesville could follow the “aspirational trend” of cities such as New York and San Francisco with taller buildings and fewer cars. One of those taller buildings will be Market Plaza on Water Street, with a nine-story retail/office/residential building alongside the open-air City Market. Occupancy is expected in April 2018.
C-VILLE predicts: Oliver Kuttner’s micro apartments around the Glass Building inspire a tiny-housing boom in Charlottesville. Not only do apartments downtown start getting smaller and smaller to accommodate an influx of residents (one resident boasts living in a 150-square-foot IKEA-inspired room), but a local developer buys 50 acres of land in the county and builds a tiny-house community of 1,000 freestanding homes.
With parking spaces expected to disappear as new construction comes in, by the year 2050 we predict we will see 10-story parking structures dotting the downtown skyline. Illustration: Jason Crosby
Where will we park?
In 2012, the city’s office of economic development recorded that more than 1 million visitors parked in a downtown parking garage. As the area continues to grow in popularity and development, and more folks find themselves venturing to the mall, the manager of the Charlottesville Parking Center, Bob Stroh, says parking will become an issue. And sooner than you think.
In just two years, Stroh says the number of lost parking spaces is in the hundreds due to development in the area, including the reconstruction of Belmont Bridge, the building of Market Plaza and potentially futher development of the Landmark Hotel.
“That’s near-term,” Stroh says. “Long-term is worse.”
The city’s 2008 parking study cited 6,000 available parking spaces downtown and called for an additional 1,700 spaces needed due to increased demand. By the 2015 study, only 4,280 spaces were recorded downtown and instead of pushing for more spaces, the study called for learning how to share public and private spots.
“I don’t see any indication that that’s going to happen,” Stroh says, adding that calling for even an extra 1,700 spaces is “very conservative.”
“Now we’re at the point where if somebody wanted to build something downtown,” he says, “they really couldn’t unless they could build parking within the development.” As for the future of parking? It might have to be underground, says Stroh.
C-VILLE predicts: In the future, those living more than a stone’s throw away from the Downtown Mall will fire up their smart cars to drive toward the center of the action. But where will they park? Parking garages will have been demolished to house 20-story apartments and, as for off-street parking—not a chance. You’ll have to motor up to a 10-story parking structure you’re used to seeing in big cities and have your car placed in its designated space by a giant motorized lift.
Youthful nature
Chris Engel, the city’s director of economic development, says Charlottesville was ahead of the curve when the Downtown Mall was built 40 years ago. Not only are pedestrian malls becoming more popular across the nation, he says there’s also a notable trend regarding the people targeted to work and live on them.
Charlottesville companies such as WorldStrides, WillowTree and RKG, which employ significant numbers of young professionals, are situated downtown for a reason, he says. It’s hip. It’s cool. National trends show that youngsters want to live where they work and work where they live.
The future of the Downtown Mall, Engel says, could show an increase in professional offices. But don’t worry, if his calculations are correct: Dining, entertainment and specialty retail aren’t going anywhere.
C-VILLE predicts: Lest we forget the empty-nesters who have moved downtown in an effort to eliminate the burden of driving, just 20 years from now, the young and the old will coexist just steps away from a mall lined with offices and specialty shops. It’s safe to say The Needle Lady isn’t going anywhere. And what do we predict will be the wave of future? You can’t have enough ice cream/gelato shops. We all scream for ice cream.
Shop till you drop
By 2030, Charlottesville Fashion Square mall gives the boot to chain stores and becomes a commercial center for local boutiques, with a brewery and doggie daycare located on the bottom level and a rooftop restaurant featuring Virginia wines. Photo: Jack Looney
The opening of 5th Street Station, projected for late 2016, will tip the balance of shopping in what some say is an already oversaturated retail market. For decades, residents living south and east of town have had to travel up north on U.S. 29 to buy new shoes or school supplies. Okay, they’ll still have to go north to buy shoes, but 5th Street Station’s 465,000 square feet make it almost as large as Barracks Road Shopping Center, and having a Wegmans is a game-changer for local groceries.
C-VILLE predicts: Seminole Square and Albemarle Square, which were nearly ghost shopping centers before 5th Street Station opened, in desperation embrace mixed-use development and became new urbanism hits and actual neighborhood models. Seminole Square, with Kroger as its anchor and close to Whole Foods, is actually walkable for the affordable condos and apartments built on the site. Its bus connections and a neighborhood brewery make it popular for car-less millennials—or whatever the generation is that follows them. Albemarle Square is a tougher sell, but the growing senior population, car-less for different reasons, also embraces being able to go by wheelchair to the grocery, as well as its proximity to the Senior Center.
Despite Amazon obliterating many brick-and-mortar retailers with drone delivery, specialty shops remain because a lot of the time people don’t know what they want until they see it and can touch it. And the need for dry cleaners and convenient groceries, drugstores and hardware stores remains.
Local governments learn something from The Shops at Stonefield and Seminole Square, and decide to stop telling developers how to build shopping centers that look like awkward upscale urbanism.
Grocery stores
Again, 2016 was a watershed year for going to the store, with the opening of Wegmans, a grocery chain even more beloved than Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, if such a thing is possible. Wegmans joins Charlottesville’s Giant, three Krogers, two Harris Teeters, five Food Lions and The Fresh Market national chains.
C-VILLE predicts: Wegmans becomes the local mecca for all things food related, and decides to open five more locations in town, becoming the top chain in the area.
But not everyone can afford to shop in the deluxe markets, and two distinct trends emerge. With worsening traffic, shoppers become more fond of being able to pop into neighborhood stores such as Reid’s and Foods of All Nations, and it turns out they also like not having to navigate a massive parking lot or store.
Who will live here?
With an increase in the older population, by 2040 expect restaurants to cater to customers by offering early-bird specials from 4-6pm instead of daily happy hours. Illustration: Jason Crosby
Based on statistics from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville’s population was expected to increase 10.9 percent from the 2010 census to July 2015—up to 48,210 residents. Albemarle County was expected to see a 6.1 percent boost, to 105,051 residents. The makeup of Charlottesville in 2014 was projected to be: 69.9 percent white, 19.24 percent African-American, 7.15 percent Asian, 4.86 Hispanic and 3.2 percent two or more races. The U.S. Census Bureau 2014 projection states both Charlottesville and Albemarle are 48 percent male, 52 percent female. And the largest age group in Charlottesville is 20 to 24 years old, while Albemarle is 15 to 19 years old.
What about further down the road—2020, 2030, 2040. What will our resident makeup look like?
Investing in the future
Illustration: Jason Crosby
A group of prominent Charlottesville CEOs, led by Coran Capshaw, fund a local biotech company that invents a device that allows them to oversee their businesses long into the future.
Eat really local
If Charlottesville had an overarching theme to its restaurants, it would be eat local. Farm-to-table is a common practice, with many chefs and owners searching out the best of area ingredients to offer diners.
C-VILLE predicts: One restaurant takes the concept of eat local to a new extreme, opening a restaurant that features one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite vegetables—the pea. Pea shoots top pasta, pea greens are sprinkled on steaks, and sweet pea pies become all the rage.
Wedding experts
Charlottesville has become a destination wedding spot for couples from all over the country thanks to our perfect pairing of wedding planners and picturesque wineries.
C-VILLE predicts: Piedmont Virginia Community College will offer a two-year Wedding & Wine Expert degree in which you master flower arranging, catering, how to open a winery and event planning. You also become an ordained minister.
University of Virginia
House hunting
The real estate market surrounding the University of Virginia is known among UVA students for being particularly cutthroat. Students often sign leases for the next year as early as September, and cheap housing is difficult to find. With increases in admissions, new dorms are being built to accommodate incoming freshmen, the most recent of which opened last fall.
According to UVA’s Housing and Residence Life website, prices for on-Grounds housing are projected to increase by about $200 for the 2016-2017 school year. However, the university is also considering plans to expand upperclassmen housing in the future to popular living areas such as Jefferson Park and Brandon avenues.
C-VILLE predicts: By 2025, housing for students will have become so preemptive that first-years will be required to find housing for all four years during summer orientation.
There are currently 6,540 beds on Grounds for UVA students, and dorms see a 97 percent occupancy rate. First-years are often required to sign leases as early as September to secure housing for the next year. Photo: Robert Llewellyn
Big spenders
According to College Board, in-state tuition at public four-year institutions has increased by an average of 3.4 percent per year for the past 10 years. That means that by 2025, UVA’s in-state tuition could increase to roughly $20,505. For 2015-16, in-state tuition was $14,678, while out-of-state tuition was $43,974.
C-VILLE predicts: To help students earn extra money for tuition, UVA creates a work/study program for Cav Man and invents as many iterations of the mascot as possible. There’s
Big ’Hoo, Kind-of-Big ’Hoo and Medium-sized ’Hoo. And the Cavalier on horseback becomes a cavalry on horseback with up to 10 mascots (in both Cav Man and horse costumes) taking the field at one game. Team spirit has never been so strong.
Athletics
Football
Things haven’t looked great for the Cavaliers recently—as evidenced by cumulative statistics this year. In 2015, the Cavs were outscored by opponents 386-304, out-rushed by opponents 1,879-1,737 and received roughly 10 more penalties per yard than other opponents. Last winning season: 2011. Number of consecutive losses to Virginia Tech: 11.
C-VILLE predicts: The future looks bright. Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall didn’t have a single losing season with Brigham Young University, and we predict he won’t have one with Virginia, either. Five years of winning seasons are on the horizon.
Basketball
Head Coach Tony Bennett, in his seventh season, has led the Cavaliers to two ACC regular season titles, and his team clinched a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament in 2014 for the first time since 1983. Bennett’s paycheck this year was $2.1 million.
C-VILLE predicts: Money is key. The next seven seasons under Bennett will be full of hotly contended ACC titles and NCAA tournament runs, but that kind of success comes with a price tag.
Baseball
The men’s baseball team is hoping for a repeat of 2015, when it won the NCAA national title series for the first time in the program’s history.
C-VILLE predicts: In 2016, the Cavaliers again clinch the national title and see six players selected in the first 25 picks of the Major League Baseball draft. The consecutive winning streak continues to 2020, and UVA holds the record for most number of consecutive national titles.
This article was updated at 2pm March 15 to reflect the correct name of The Salvation Army Thrift Store on Cherry Avenue.
Show off your own ’do and see local artists’ work at HairSTYLE, a runway show based on the “Art of Hair,” at The Bridge PAI on November 14. Photo: Keith Alan Sprouse
When you woke up this morning, you probably pressed, fluffed, tucked or splashed water on a work of art—one you wear every day, whether you know it or not.
“I became a hairstylist in 1991 because I wanted to be an artist, but not a starving artist. Color became my painting, and cutting became my sculpting,” says Willow Lynch, owner of Evolve Salon. “I create art, and hair is my medium.”
Most of us don’t think to elevate our buzz cut, big waves or flat-ironed locks to the realm of art. But those who craft these looks daily have a more accurate perspective.
“Art is in the imagination of an individual,” says Pronta Anderson, a stylist who operates out of her apartment in Friendship Court. “With hair, it’s just like looking at a painting or a sculpture.” Her palette includes color or texture, curly or straight, natural or extensions. “You can paint something in your mind and bring that to life on someone’s head,” she says.
For Matthew Slaats, executive director at The Bridge PAI, stylists such as Anderson and Lynch represent an undersung cross- section of working artists in Charlottesville.
“I’m interested in making this argument about how art has socio-cultural and economic value,” he says. “I met Pronta, who was really serious about what she’s doing, and I realized she was using hair just like I would use drawing or painting or anything else. She’s an artist.”
Along with program director Serena Gruia, Slaats developed the idea to showcase the work of community hairstylists. They connected with Keith Alan Sprouse, a local photographer best known for the portrait- and-stories series “Cville People Project.”
“In addition to portraits, I wanted to do the documentary work of being in their shop and showing their process, their hands and hair and the techniques they’re using,” Sprouse says. “I set up wherever someone was working, from a tiny galley kitchen to a big airy studio across from Paradox Pastry.”
He limited his focus to hairstylists in the Strategic Investment Area, a 330-acre section of central Charlottesville tapped by City Council for potential redevelopment opportunities.
The area includes a surprising number of salons, including Bella Luna, Hazel Beauty Bar, Look, Evolve and Abrakadabra, all clustered between Belmont and Downtown. “On four blocks of Charlottesville there are a multitude of different salons and barbershops all of whom are serving different clients,” Slaats says. “Pronta Anderson’s salon is for African-American women, Elite Cuts is primarily African-American men, and Evolve is serving a more of a white Farmington/Keswick group.”
Slaats and Gruia developed “The Art of Hair,” a two-month show at The Bridge PAI, to celebrate local diversity. In addition to Sprouse’s ongoing exhibition, the nonprofit will host HairSTYLE on November 14, a runway show to allow hair professionals from throughout the community to showcase their work. It’ll be a party—complete with food trucks, drinks and audience members encouraged to show off their precision cuts, natural hair, wigs and high-art styles.
“Salons and barbershops are a moment to reflect on and value all the different strata of class and race and gender in Charlottesville,” Slaats says.
They also represent meeting spaces, the bedrock for building community. “You’re stuck in a seat for half an hour, so you engage with one another and see friends,” Slaats says. “There were massive amounts of barbershops on Vinegar Hill because men didn’t shave at home. This is the last of a really creative mode of art and business that we all connect with.”
Local hair artists often know one another, and many share work histories. They quickly become the keepers of personal stories, too; Slaats marvels at one artist’s description of a 90-year-old client who was part of the French Resistance.
Sprouse saw these deep connections in real time. “I could have made a whole exhibit about getting your hair washed,” he says. “I was struck by how intimate and lovely and almost spiritual that moment is.”
There’s magic in the process for the artists, too. “After you paint their hair and it’s been processing for 45 minutes, you go back to the shampoo bowl and pull off the foils, and it’s like opening a present,” Lynch says. “I love when the color looks natural and fresh and real, like it grew out of their head.”
Anderson seeks a similar feeling. “I love to get the creativity going. Hair weaving or extensions is very versatile. You can do different cuts, make it look as natural as possible. Someone might look and say, ‘Is that or is that not your hair?’ That puts a big smile on my face.”
“At the end of the day it’s that combination of technical skill and creative vision that makes art,” Sprouse says. “What a hair artist can do is use their technique and creative vision to help you express yourself, whether that’s dyed hair or razored hair or weave.”
That magic, everyone seems to agree, is best understood through experience. “The creativity,” Anderson says. “I can explain it to you, but to see it is totally different. It’s something that’s gonna take your breath away.”
Despite plans to destroy the giant ass cheek sculpture at the end of his tour, comedian Kurt Braunohler gladly handed the Love Butt over to the Ix Art Park as an addition to its permanent collection. Photo: Staff photo
When it comes to making people laugh, comedian Kurt Braunohler goes big. Really big. He once hired a skywriter to scrawl “How do I land?” in the sky over Los Angeles. He has donned a tuxedo wetsuit and rode a Jet Ski down the Mississippi River, doing stand-up gigs along the way.
Most recently, he drove a 1,600-pound foam-and-metal butt sculpture from Los Angeles to New Jersey, intending to insert absurdity into strangers’ lives. That butt—the Love Butt—now permanently resides in Charlottesville’s Ix Art Park. (But) more on that later.
Braunohler cracked the comedy scene nearly two decades ago, performing improv comedy with Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City, and he’s built his comedic reputation around absurd guerrilla performances.
From 1999 to 2004, Braunohler and fellow comedian Matt Murphy dressed up in homemade, mascot-esque costumes as Chunk (half chicken, half skunk, pure evil) and Chengwin (half chicken, half penguin, pure love; half-brother of Chunk). They battled in the streets of New York City, hitting each other until one of them fell over. They drew enormous crowds and shut down traffic for as long as 20 minutes. Over time, an entourage grew around each character, and for their final performance, Braunohler estimates that more than 2,000 people showed up to watch the melee.
Such moments of utter ridiculousness “can snap people out of their normal everyday routine,” says Braunohler. “We tend to get stuck in ruts, in the rote routines of our lives. So when all of a sudden something absurd—like a giant butt—hits, it reframes your perspective on your own life. And when you can see something from multiple points of view, you’re a lot less likely to punch somebody who doesn’t have your exact same perspective.”
Braunohler isn’t always the one creating the absurdity; he looks for it in the most mundane situations. On his debut comedy album, How Do I Land?, he jokes about how people behave in airports, about his skywriting stunt and about his experience sending a text message to a wrong number, then pursuing a conversation with the complete stranger.
When he’s not orchestrating large-scale gags, Braunohler works on a slew of other comedy projects. He co-hosts “Hot Tub,” an alternative and experimental comedy variety show with Kristen Schaal; voices a character on the animated series “Bob’s Burgers”; hosts the “K Ohle with Kurt Braunohler” podcast on the Nerdist network and is a frequent contestant on Comedy Central’s “@midnight” game show.
Braunohler is currently at work on “Better, Dumber, Faster,” a Comedy Central series that aims to make the world a better place through—what else?—absurdity. Each episode focuses on a thing that sucks about the world, and Braunohler will try to make that thing better. He created the Love Butt for the pilot episode, which focuses on how waiting sucks.
The butt was originally scheduled to whiz across the country in late June/early July on a freight train (hence its bizarre dimensions and noticeable flatness), so that when people in small town America were stuck at a railroad crossing, all of a sudden a butt would go by and break up the monotony of the train. “A butt is a very dumb thing, but you’d definitely know what it is if it sped by you,” he says with a laugh.
Just in case, he added the BUTT tattoo. He didn’t want the Love Butt mistaken for two big pink Chiclets.
At the last minute, the train wouldn’t take the butt, so Braunohler and his wife, “Better, Dumber, Faster” co-creator and showrunner Scotty Landes, rented a flatbed truck and drove the butt—at a top speed of 65 mph—across America, stopping in various cities for stand-up shows and visits with friends. They filmed the entire time.
Near the end of the tour, Braunohler stopped in Charlottesville to visit a friend (and former Chunk entourage member), and needed to find a large public space to seat the butt. The Ix Art Park fit the bill.
“Weird things happen at the Ix Art Park,” says park instigator Brian Wimer. “I got a call that a giant butt needed a place to park, so of course I said yes.”
Ix hosted the Love Butt the evening of July 5 and drew a small crowd of people who, to Braunohler’s delight, posed for photos with the sculpture before it hauled ass to its final destination in New Jersey. Braunohler planned to cut up the butt and toss it in a dump at tour’s end, but Ix asked to add it to its permanent collection.
Braunohler is pleased that the Love Butt has a gig surprising and delighting Ix visitors.
“Sometimes we’re presented with unforeseen opportunities that look like 8′ butt cheeks,” says Wimer. “I never anticipated having a huge ass at the park, but there it is and it’s a Love Butt, which is even better. Our motto is ‘dream big,’ and I guess the cosmos were listening.”
Braunohler is a gut-busting comedian in any format—his podcasts, his shows and his album—but he’s at his best in the street and on stage, bringing comedy to the masses. He’ll return to Charlottesville on September 14 with his Very Serious tour to deliver an hour-long comedy set that he says is “roughly based on the idea of trust.”
Nothing is off limits as far as Braunohler is concerned. It’s how he gets his audience to lighten up and consider new perspectives. “Everything goes into the machine. Everything should be joked about. If you’re going to talk about it, you’re going to have to find some humor in it. Humor is just another way of giving a perspective on a situation, so we have to make fun of everything,” he says. That’s how we can get to the bottom of things.
Benjamin Dick was photographed in his law office in 2006.
Photo Jen Fairello
Stetson-wearing James Benjamin Dick, longtime Charlottesville attorney and colorful president of the Foxfield Racing Association, died August 29 at age 67 in Winchester, the town where he was born.
Dick graduated from Virginia Military Institute and served in the Army during the Vietnam War. His penchant for Stetsons started at Fort Leavenworth, where he once told this reporter he hung out with colonels. “You had to drink their gin, smoke their Camels and wear their Stetsons,” he said. After the military, he got a law degree from the T.C. Williams School of Law in Richmond, and practiced in Charlottesville and Winchester for the next 40 years, according to his obituary.
In 1979, he became president of the newly formed Foxfield Racing Association, a position he held until his death. Dick fought epic battles with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control. Dick blamed the end of Easters in 1982 for sending students to party at Foxfield instead. Although the ABC attempted to pull Foxfield’s license in 2002, ultimately more enforcement and education of UVA students tempered the event’s notoriety.
Dick was a regular at C&O, and was once presented with the bill for a $4,000 tab. A chair at the end of the bar has a brass plaque with his name engraved on it.
Any list of tastemakers in Charlottesville needs Christy Ford’s name on it. The owner of And George, an antique and home store she started with her mom, designer Jan Roden, in 2001, Ford is also a co-founder of The Scout Guide, a high-end advertising publication that spotlights area businesses. What’s more, her own home (and shop) has been featured in magazines like Lonny and Southern Living. We asked her to tell us what she’s been up to lately.
Christy’s favorite room in her home is the gallery, which spans the back of the house and was designed by architect Bethany Puopolo. “It connects all of our rooms and has become the main vein,” she said. Photo: Eric Kelley Photography
What are you currently reading?
Not reading anything currently…don’t have the mental head space. The last book I read I adored:Where’d You Go, Bernadette? [by Maria Semple].
What are you listening to?
Taylor Swift and Adele over and over. My girls are obsessed and they kind of man the iPod.
What are you watching on TV?
Not a huge TV watcher. My family is obsessed with “Adventure Time.” I am looking forward to “Mad Men” starting up.
What are you eating/drinking lately?
In the winter, we do a lot more pot roasts and one-dish meals. We have an AGA [cooker], so we often empty the fridge into a Le Creuset and let it cook all day in the lower oven. It feels very gratifying to come home to a hot meal. As far as what we are drinking, the whole family is obsessed with Fairweather Farm herbal teas from the farmer’s market. We all have a cup of “sleepy tea” after dinner.
What are you working on?
Lots! We continue to work on our house. We are currently transforming our master sitting room into a dressing room with built-in closets. My husband is opening an abattoir in Lynchburg early this summer. A big redesign of our Scout Guide website and, of course, And George. Not to mention running around with our three children.
Hereford Residential College, designed by VMDO in collaboration with Tod Williams + Billie Tsien, served as Oakland’s homebase with wife Nancy Takahasi (UVA, Landscape Arch.) during her service as Principal of the College from 2007 to 2013. Photo: Courtesy VMDO Architects
What does it mean to make a mark on the land? That was a question posed of VMDO principal David Oakland as a first-year UVA architecture student, and one that Oakland (and, he notes, many other architects) continues to answer as best he can. The question came from Robert Vickery, his teacher at the time and the founder of VMDO, where Oakland has worked since graduating from UVA in 1978. He’s spent much of his career focusing on college and university campuses.
“The time a college student spends on campus is perhaps the only time in their lives that they live in a community designed to encourage and inspire them,” Oakland said. “Our work focuses on how these places can be strengthened, preserved and maintain their relevance and usefulness as needs and people change.”—Caite White
David Oakland. Photo: Amanda Maglione
Why architecture?
That is a question an architect will spend a career trying to answer. We know that buildings must satisfy the increasingly challenging functional and practical needs of people. But who are those people? Our client who pays for our work? The people who use the building and perhaps live there? What about the people who walk by each day? Architecture communicates with people and it influences how they live, work and see themselves. It is an art, but it is a public art. As architects we have an obligation to make the lives of the people who come in contact with our work better in big and small ways. We make them more comfortable, work more productively and live within the boundaries of a sustainable future.
I came to it more or less by accident. After my first year at UVA in liberal arts I transferred to the A-School. I was excited about the creative community of the studio experience. While it was out of my previous experience and comfort zone, I have never looked back.
Why did you choose to practice in Virginia?
I came to Charlottesville in the Fall of 1971 as a first-year at the University and have lived here since then. I have been very fortunate to be able to practice outside Charlottesville and participate significantly in many places, but I have never come across a place I would have preferred to live and raise my children.
What was your life like as a child and how did it lead you to design?
I grew up, mostly, in the suburbs of Atlanta. I think it may have been the lack of a meaningful sense of place that has had me searching for it ever since. In Charlottesville, I had immediate access to forests, mountains and lakes. This access is something many of us appreciate in living here but seems out of reach for too many.
The Virginia Military Institute. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
Tell us about your college studio experience. Was there a stand-out teacher who had a lasting impact on you?
I remember lessons learned from most of my teachers. Two stand out, Carlo Pelliccia and Bob Vickery. They came from very different places and taught different things. Carlo was Italian with what to me were urbane European and Italian values. He introduced me to many beautiful things: architectural form, witty conversation and good food and wine. Bob has been my teacher, mentor, partner and friend for most of my life. Not incidentally, he founded VMDO, where I have worked since I left UVA in 1978. Bob taught me that architecture is fundamentally about people and how they should live together in community. Architectural theory and practice can get abstract quickly. Bob has always been quick to remind us that we err when we diverge from making buildings and communities better places for people to enjoy and live in.
Much of David Oakland’s career has been focused on buildings to support student life. Among them, the Averett University Student Center. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
On process: How does it begin?
VMDO has focused on educational buildings since it was founded. For many years, I have focused exclusively on college and university campuses. For me, these schools are diverse; all are unique. We start in two places. First, we work to understand that uniqueness. How is the campus structured and how should our building be integrated? Second, what should the building be? What are the problems it is meant to solve?
Among Oakland’s past projects is the Liberty University library. Photo: Alan Karchmer
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by the places people before us have created. I understand how difficult and challenging it is to make a beautiful or satisfying place, and I want to know how it was done. I find inspiration in everyday things: the way the sun shines on the mountains in a moment or how a person might answer a daily challenge. In my work, I’m inspired by ideas. I find most of my ideas come from thinking about problems in a new way. Architectural design is iterative. Our first ideas are never the best. “Architecture is a patient search.”
Oakland designed UVA’s Wilsdorf Hall. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
What’s in the studio at the moment?
We have for the past several years been focused on a series of buildings to support student life. Six years ago we planned the reconstruction of the Core of Clemson University’s campus. Like many schools, development has been directed almost concentrically around the periphery. Our work was to redevelop the core to become the meaningful heart of campus. We have planned a replacement student union, dining hall, academic space and student housing. We are now (finally) completing design work on the first phase of the work which will include the dining and honors college. At Georgia Tech we are finishing work on the renovation of one of the oldest residence halls on campus. It will include a wide range of study and learning spaces in an addition that opens to a rejuvenated courtyard. Closer to home we are doing similar work in planning the renovation of Gooch/Dillard Residence Area at UVA. We have been working at Liberty University in Lynchburg on a mammoth redevelopment and master plan involving much of the campus. We have completed a new library and are currently working on a new school of music, science building and student center. In North Georgia we have almost finished an interesting project that combines the student center and library. In much of our work, the boundaries between learning and living are becoming blurred. We are working to understand how learning can be facilitated and encouraged inside and outside the classroom everywhere, but currently at George Mason and at the McIntire School here at UVA.
How would you assess the state of architecture in our region?
In 1976, VMDO was founded on the idea that an inventive and thoughtful architecture could thrive here. I have practiced here for over 35 years and have seen us change from a small college community attached to a dying agricultural base to a vibrant, diverse university small city. The design community has advanced even faster. The quality of life that attracted me and encouraged me to stay has had the same effect on countless others. While much of it is based on our connections to UVA and its School of Architecture, the quality of life here has brought architects and landscape architects from everywhere. I think our Central Virginia perspective is especially relevant to current design thinking about how our environment can point us toward a more healthy and livable place for ourselves and the generations that will come after.
