Placemaking: Ruth Kastenmayer

 

Our 2012 annual community conversation took a look at the concept of placemaking and the  findings from the Knight Foundation's Soul of the Community project which reveal how attachment to place drives economic vitality – and how understanding those attachments can direct the ways in which a place chooses to change and grow.

This series features reflections from community members who attended the event. We hope their stories will inspire you to define your version of this community’s narrative and use it as a lens through which to view decisions that will impact the character of this community.

Name: Ruth Kastenmayer
Age: 69
City/County resident? City
Occupation: I am a retired college webmaster and instructor in Web Design and Development. I am currently a Web/WordPress volunteer for several Charlottesville schools and nonprofits, as well as a volunteer tutor/mentor for ESL students at Jackson-Via Elementary School.

How long have you lived in Charlottesville? My husband and I came to Charlottesville for a weekend in the summer of 2006 to celebrate our anniversary and left the city having signed a contract on a new home, much to the surprise of our family and friends! We got organized, downsized, and moved here in January 2007.

Why did you come here?  
We met here in the early sixties as graduate students at UVa so we were familiar with Charlottesville, but the impact of staying at a downtown motel and walking through the Grounds, exploring the Corner and then walking down West Main past the impressive UVa Health Center and on to the Downtown Mall and the Pavilion was huge. We both knew that this was the PLACE we wanted to move to for retirement - IF we could find a walkable neighborhood, near a grocery store and pharmacy, on the bus lines, and close to both UVa and the Downtown Mall.

We located a realtor and were very fortunate to find one of the last units available in our townhome community on Fifth Street Extended. We have loved it here from the start! Malcolm Gladwell in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking describes this kind of spur-of-the-moment decision as often better than those made with a lot of forethought, and in this case, I have to agree. "Spirit of Place" probably influences our decisions more than we might realize at the time.

What do you love most about where you live?
There are so many things we really enjoy here! Our Saturday morning bus trip to the City Market and Downtown would be high on the list as would our involvement in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UVa and the Senior Center. My two days a week as a JABA FISH volunteer at Jackson-Via Elementary School have given me a new intergenerational "family" to work and play with as well as an impetus to start learning a little Arabic to be more in tune with the Arabic-speaking ESL students I help. Though fairly new at the school, I am catching up with the past as I help teachers and staff remember Jackson-Via in cvillepedia. In addition, my position as webmaster for OLLI at UVa has put me in touch with a community of Web and IT enthusiasts of all ages and makes it possible for me to enjoy workshops and classes both downtown and at UVa so that I can keep up with the latest and greatest in those areas.

We have found everything we wanted in a neighborhood, including the convenience of the Willoughby Square Shopping Center across the street and our two bus routes. We enjoy exploring the unique Fry's Spring neighborhood as we walk to get pizza or ice cream on Fontaine Avenue, but we can also forego the 10-minute bus ride and walk downtown for all that is offered there. The Jefferson School City Center will be a very attractive new addition to our Charlottesville PLACE as will the proposed botanical garden in McIntire Park East and proposed market district. Since CAT expands our neighborhood to include the whole city, I am hoping in the future to see more frequent service that is also available on Sundays and holidays.

I expect my answers will change and my list of things I love will continue to expand as the years go by and my attachment to our wonderful Charlottesville PLACE grows.

Any takeaways from the Placemaking event?
I was impressed by the diversity in ages of the attendees and their obvious devotion to helping to make this city the very best that it can be. Overall, the attendees with whom I spoke were very positive! I heard many ideas and very few complaints.

City moving ahead on parkway interchange following lawsuit resolution

By Sean Tubbs
Charlottesville Tomorrow
Friday, June 1, 2012

The City of Charlottesville is proceeding quickly with plans to construct the Meadow Creek Parkway interchange following the dismissal of a legal challenge in federal court.

“Construction should be visibly underway toward the end of this year or the beginning of next year,” said Owen Peery with RK&K, the firm hired to design the interchange.

On Tuesday, Judge Norman K. Moon dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park claiming the Federal Highway Administration had violated federal law when it authorized the $33.5 million project.

“I was not surprised by Judge Moon's ruling, the lawsuit was a long shot but one worth taking,” said City Councilor Dave Norris, an opponent of the parkway. 

Members of the Coalition are still deciding whether to appeal the case.

“We don’t have any decisions about what we’re going to do,” said Coalition member Peter Kleeman. “Some of us are leaning towards an appeal and some of us are not.”

Peery said the plan is to advertise the project for construction bids sometime this summer and to award a contract in October.

However, the city must first complete right of way acquisition and obtain formal authorization from the Federal Highway Administration.

“The design is nearing final completion and the necessary right of way acquisition is ongoing and has been ongoing over the last several months,” Peery said.

Brothels shaped Charlottesville’s history

By Courtney Beale
Charlottesville Tomorrow
Friday, June 1, 2012

The Garrett Street neighborhood, just south of Water Street, was once well known as Charlottesville’s very own red-light district. Daniel Bluestone’s History Week presentation, “The Other Side of the Tracks: Charlottesville Prostitution and Environmental Justice,” revealed the impacts that the brothel industry had on neighborhoods and architecture in Charlottesville.

Daniel Bluestone at a February 2012 briefing to the UVA School of Architecture. Photo by Sabrina Schaeffer, The Daily Progress.

Bluestone, a professor of architectural history at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, connected the history of prostitution in the now redeveloped Garrett Street neighborhood to the present day efforts to redesign the Belmont Bridge. He spoke Wednesday in City Council chambers, as part of Celebrate 250.

Bluestone said he noticed that the approaches to the bridge separated a predominately white neighborhood from a black neighborhood on the west side of the bridge. He then began to research the history of those neighborhoods before Charlottesville’s urban renewal program, which demolished Vinegar Hill and the Garrett Street area in the 1960s and 1970s.

“I started looking around that neighborhood on the west side of the bridge approach and I noticed [in photos that] there were a few rather large houses and I started throwing myself into the task of how we could explain that,” Bluestone said. “How we could explain those larger houses?”

The answer was brothels. So-called “houses of ill fame” were common in this area during the 19th and 20th centuries and their presence shaped the design of the neighborhood.

Legacy of Vinegar Hill remembered in film

By Sean Tubbs
Charlottesville Tomorrow
Thursday, May 31, 2012

This week’s celebration of Charlottesville’s 250th birthday shone a spotlight on the 1964 demolition of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood.

 

“What has never been the same since that time has been the economic footprint African-Americans had,” said former City Councilor Holly Edwards in a film screened Tuesday before a packed house in City Council chambers.

 

Edwards and others appeared in the 2010 short documentary “That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town,” which tells the history of the neighborhood and its importance to those who were displaced.

 

“Vinegar Hill was the center of the African-American community,” said Scot French, one of the film’s producers. “After the Civil War, you have a very large population of formerly enslaved people looking for places to live and looking for places of employment.”

 

French, who spent many years as a historian at the University of Virginia, said Booker T. Washington encouraged former slaves to empower themselves by becoming business owners.

 

“People living in and around Vinegar Hill needed services,” French said. “They needed groceries. They needed laundries. They needed insurance. A whole dual economic system emerges here with African-Americans providing services to the black community.”

Judge Moon rules against Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park; Parkway Interchange to proceed

By Sean Tubbs
Charlottesville Tomorrow
Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Another legal hurdle blocking completion of the Meadow Creek Parkway appears to have been cleared.

 

Judge Norman K. Moon of the U.S. Western District Court has dismissed a lawsuit from the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park that claimed the Federal Highway Administration unlawfully split three components of the roadway in order to evade environmental scrutiny.

 

“The FHWA properly followed the required procedures,” Moon wrote in a 53-page ruling that was filed Tuesday. “I find that the requisite consideration of the Interchange Project’s cumulative impacts on the environment was adequately undertaken.” 

Download Judge Norman K. Moon's 53-page ruling

 

A rendering of a design shown to Council in late 2009 depicting  how the interchange would look heading south towards downtown Charlottesville.(Source: RK&K)

Under the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Six-Year Improvement Program, the parkway is considered three projects with separate funding sources.

 

The grade-separated interchange with the U.S. 250 Bypass is the only one of the three projects scheduled to receive funding from the federal government.

 

The FHWA issued a “finding of no significant impact” allowing the interchange to proceed in September 2010.

 

The Coalition filed suit against the FHWA in February 2011. One of their claims was that the agency should have reviewed the entire parkway and not just its interchange. They also argued that an environmental impact statement was required and not a less rigorous environmental assessment.

 

During an April 25 hearing in the U.S. Western District Court, Coalition attorney James B. Dougherty argued that the FHWA should have not dismissed interchange options that would have entirely avoided McIntire Park.

Placemaking: Ann Marie Hohenberger

 

Our 2012 annual community conversation took a look at the concept of placemaking and the  findings from the Knight Foundation's Soul of the Community project which reveal how attachment to place drives economic vitality – and how understanding those attachments can direct the ways in which a place chooses to change and grow.

This series features reflections from community members who attended the event. We hope their stories will inspire you to define your version of this community’s narrative and use it as a lens through which to view decisions that will impact the character of this community.

Name: Ann Marie Hohenberger
Age: 34
City/County resident? City
Occupation: Freelance business writer; server at Hamiltons’ downtown
How long have you lived in Charlottesville? 17 years

Why did you come here? 
I went to UVA as an undergrad. I visited on a spring day and immediately fell in love with the natural beauty here.

What do you love most about where you live?
I love “small city” life. I can bike almost anywhere I need to go, but I can still live on a tiny, quiet street with a view of Carter’s Mountain. Every day there’s an incredible variety of events - music, theater, community meetings, clubs & activities - and no matter what I choose, I’ll probably run into someone I know.

My favorite thing about this area is the enthusiasm for local food. As an aspiring urban homesteader, I’m so grateful to talk with farmers at the market and start learning all the things I missed growing up in the suburbs. Then I can go to a restaurant and glean ideas for cooking with pastured meats and seasonal produce.

Any takeaways from the Placemaking event?
One statistic that particularly stood out from the Soul of the Community studies was that, on average, 40% of people felt no attachment to their community. That sounds like a massive, widespread failure to serve everyone’s needs, rather than just the needs of certain segments. What a loss for the community to have so many people uninvested in the well-being of their neighbors and neighborhoods.