Planning & Development – Page 29

City of Promise settles in

The next round of federal funding for City of Promise is up in the air, but it looks like the cradle-to-college outreach program that came to Charlottesville’s low-income neighborhoods a few months ago is here to stay. Director Sarad Davenport’s team of staff and community members is growing, and last Monday, City Council passed a resolution to commit funds for construction of a home for City of Promise in the middle of the neighborhood it serves.

Charlottesville was one of 15 communities nationwide to receive the $470,000 Promise Neighborhood grant from the Department of Education in 2011, from which City of Promise was born. The program is based on New York City’s Harlem Children Zone, which serves more than 10,000 children with goals in academic excellence and social and character development.

The mission of City of Promise is to break the cycle of poverty in Westhaven and the 10th and Page and Starr Hill neighborhoods, and ultimately in all of Charlottesville, by helping families keep their kids in school and on track from birth to high school graduation and beyond.

“We’re holding the adults accountable for the outcomes of the children,” Daven port said. “It is our responsibility to do whatever it takes to make sure the kids are successful.”
Davenport said the program’s ultimate goal is for college graduates to return to Charlottesville and share their experiences and serve as role models for younger kids.

“If Harlem can do it with 10,000 kids, we should definitely be able to make some differences in Charlottesville,” he said.

City of Promise has been in the planning stage since February. Davenport and his team have had more than 140 one-on-one conversations on public housing to assess what the community needs before moving forward.

“We’ve been doing a lot of listening,” Davenport said. “These conversations have been instrumental to whatever pathway gets constructed, and we’ve learned a lot about what’s important to people.” The discussions were designed to be inclusive and avoid alienating residents who may already be weary of groups trying to fix their neighborhood, and Davenport held public meetings for folks to respond to the information gathered.

The next step is putting the plans into action. Davenport and his team are applying for an implementation grant from the Department of Education, a highly competitive grant of $4-6 million for three to five years. Because the funding is not guaranteed, he said they are pursuing other grants and alternative sources as well.

Essential to helping the community, Davenport said, is getting the community involved. Four low-income residents have joined the steering committee, and more than 15 neighborhood kids are on the Youth Council, a group that meets bi-weekly to set and evaluate academic, personal, and service goals.

At its July 2 meeting, the City Council voted to allocate $20,000 from its housing funds to construct a house at 204 Eighth St. that City of Promise will use for office space, meetings, and community gatherings. If the program ceases operation or no longer has use for the building, it will then be converted into a single-family home for low-income residents.

Councilor Dede Smith, who describes herself as “a bit of a fiscal conservative,” cast the only vote against the resolution because she felt it was an inappropriate use of the city’s finances. “We have a limited amount of housing funds,” she said, “and I would like to see them used to maximum potential.”

But Davenport said proximity is an integral part of the work City of Promise does in the neighborhoods it serves, and the building will give residents more accessibility.
“We want to be close to the community and make sure they’re able to access us at any time,” he said. “It’s going to make a difference when people are looking for resources and they can just walk down the street.”

Public housing resident and mother of two Sabrina Allen, who was recently nominated and elected onto the City of Promise steering committee due to her involvement and outreach in the public housing community, thinks the house is an “amazing idea,” and has been “hoping and rooting for it” after seeing a similar model in Harlem.

Last month, Allen traveled to New York City with a group that included five other public housing residents to explore the Harlem Children Zone. The program’s vast impact hit close to home, she said.

Since 2010, Allen has been leading a small social dance group for young girls. Every Monday through Saturday afternoon throughout the summer, she teaches the girls dance skills, provides snacks, and encourages the girls to discuss issues going on at home and at school.
“It was really hard to get them to open up in the beginning,” she said. But with the help of City of Promise organizers providing occasional snacks, transportation, and other support, and her 16-year-old daughter serving as a group mentor, Allen has created and maintained a welcoming environment for girls who might otherwise fall through the cracks.

“It gives them something to do so they don’t get lost in the summertime,” she said. Having grown up in Charlottesville, Allen said she had nothing to do during the summer as a girl, and designed the group to keep neighborhood kids busy and stimulated.
It was because of her community involvement and outreach that Allen was elected to the City of Promise steering committee, which she said was both an honor and a surprise.

“I was nominated sooner than I thought,” she said, “but I’ll work for the City of Promise to the fullest because I think it’s going to work.” This summer, Allen will have the opportunity to witness firsthand one of the first implemented programs. City of Promise has partnered with the School of Architecture at UVA to form the Community Planning and Design Institute, a two-week summer program for kids in eighth grade and up with an interest in architecture. Allen’s 16-year-old daughter will take introductory architecture classes, stay on Grounds, eat in the dining hall, and even participate in community design at the end of the program.

The two-week program, Davenport said, is designed to invoke excitement about college in youth growing up in “families that might not necessarily have a college-going culture.”

“This is our first cohort that will give the community tangible ideas of what City of Promise could be,” he said.

Bypass opponents study plans, await environmental assessment

After decades of controversy and an unexpected revival, the Route 29 bypass project hit a key milestone earlier this month with the Virginia Department of Transportation’s release of contractor Skanska-Branch’s detailed plans for the 6.2-mile route around the traffic-clogged arterial. And while the road is closer than it’s ever been to becoming a reality, bypass opponents are putting the plans under a microscope, and waiting for what may be a last chance to stall the project.

Jeff Werner, the Piedmont Environmental Council’s land-use field officer, has spent much of the last week-and-a-half poring over the plan, printing out and taping together the Skanska engineers’ detailed drawings of the road to get a better idea of what the project will look like.

A key concern is the northern terminus, he said, where the bypass will join up with Route 29 just south of Ashwood Boulevard and the Forest Lakes development. VDOT’s initial concept for a grade-separated interchange at the north end of the bypass, released in September of 2011, provided for more lanes of travel than the current plans, and that raises concerns of bottlenecks at one end of the roadway, Werner said.

The Skanska proposal provides two lanes for through traffic approaching the intersection from the south on Route 29, instead of three, as the original concept plans show. Vehicles exiting the bypass join northbound cars in a third lane, but the three abruptly become two north of a stoplight at Ashwood Boulevard. And the on-ramp for southbound bypass traffic is down to one lane instead of two.

“Given that saving time is the issue here, the question is, ‘What’s the clock running now for this trip?’” Werner said.

That concern and others will help fuel a continuing push to shift public opinion about the project, Werner added. But when it comes to a policy fight, opponents have only one real foothold: a pending environmental assessment.

Morgan Butler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Charlottesville office, said it’s been 20 years since VDOT conducted an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, on the complete project —a thorough examination mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

Since the project roared back to life last summer, there’s been an expectation that VDOT will reevaluate all the documentation from the EIS, in a process called an Environmental Assessment, or EA. The agency will have to determine if its old data still applies, and make its case for carrying on to the Federal Highway Administration. If the review shows there are a lot of new factors affecting environmental impact of the road, it’s back to the drawing board for VDOT.

“If FHWA determines that to be the case—and we think it clearly is, considering how outdated parts of the earlier studies are and how much work the community has put into developing less damaging alternatives for improving 29—then the project cannot proceed until the new information is thoroughly analyzed and considered,” Butler said.

If there’s a true revisiting of the impact of the project, agencies will have to use a whole new set of metrics, said Butler. “A lot of what we know about the environmental impacts of a project like this has changed,” he said, including the compounding effects of urban sprawl on the environment and human health.

Butler was careful to point out that legal action from his group and its allies is far from a given. Opponents can’t raise their shovels until the EA currently underway is complete and the FHWA has given its opinion on whether or not the old data is acceptable, he said.
“It would be like grading a test before it’s been turned in,” he said.

VDOT spokesman Lou Hatter said there will be a public information session* once the EA is completed, but it hasn’t yet been scheduled. The Commonwealth Transportation Board has indicated it will likely be in September.

In the meantime, many in Charlottesville will keep scrutinizing the plans, trying to make sense of the pages of maps and grade diagrams. To Werner, the picture that’s emerging is one of a project that’s going to cause more problems than it solves. But he’s worried the wheels of bureaucracy will keep grinding.

“You would hope people at the FHWA would say, ‘This isn’t a good way to spend $200 million in federal dollars, and we need to take a hard look at this,’” he said. “But on the other hand, there’s this tendency to say, ‘Well, they’ve checked off A through Z.’”
Whatever the outcome of the EA, Butler said a close to the seemingly endless controversy is probably near. “I think this whole saga is about to reach a critical stage,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to drag on for years and years.”

*This story originally reported that there would be a public hearing on the Environmental Assessment once it’s filed. VDOT actually plans to hold a public information session, not a hearing.