Cville Tomorrow News

Uncalming: Traffic bumps causing damage, anger

5/28/09 * The Hook [full story]

No one questions whether drivers should go slowly as they cross the Downtown Mall. But the speed bumps installed earlier this month as part of the pedestrian area’s rebricking are doing more than just slowing drivers down– they may be damaging the vehicles that cross and are becoming damaged themselves in the process.

“Even when you drive forward slowly, you still drag,” says J.R. Graves, who delivers prescription drugs for CVS pharmacy and drives across the Mall several times a day in either his Toyota Corolla or a Chevy sedan.

Graves says he isn’t driving fast over the bumps, and indeed, on Wednesday afternoon, May 20, a Hook reporter on the Mall handing out free CDs heard dozens of cars scrape one of the raised concrete devices.

Unpoled citizens: Closure call surprises Hatton Ferry fans

5/28/09 * The Hook [full story]

Would the state really close the famous hand-poled Hatton Ferry? Plying the James River at a site near Scottsville, it’s a one-of-kind piece of mobile history that has been operating, according to its website, since the 1870s.

But to save a $21,000 per year, the Virginia Department of Transportation will close it July 1, according to VDOT spokesperson Lou Hatter. Commissioner David S. Ekern delivered the news earlier this week among a long statewide list of cost cuts.

“We’re going to do everything we can to try to get them to reconsider,” says Steven Meeks, the chair of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, a group that serves as clearinghouse for ferry information. Meeks calls the $21,000 figure misleadingly high because it’s an annual budget.

Illegal transfer? Anti-Parkway plaintiffs make their case

5/28/09 * The Hook [full story]

Kenneth Shirley is not excited about the prospect of returning stockpiled materials for the Meadowcreek Parkway project.  A construction engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation, he told a Charlottesville courtroom that $400,000 has already been spent on supplies.

“You can’t return them like a pair of pants to Wal-Mart,” Shirley testified Tuesday, May 19, in the trial that pits his Department against a determined band of local citizens who argue that last year’s transfer of a nine-acre stretch of land from the city of Charlottesville to VDOT was illegal.

Jennifer McKeever, representing the plaintiffs, argued that the city sold the public land to VDOT illegally by evading a three-fourths supermajority vote required by the Constitution of Virginia for selling public land by settling for a 3-2 vote. The transfer was also approved by a 4-1 vote by the city’s School Board last May. McKeever argued that $43,120 VDOT gave the city represented a sale.

Crozet trying to avoid sprawl

5/28/09 * Daily Progress [full story]

The economic recession has played in Crozet’s favor by limiting new development and giving planners more time to fine-tune the rural community’s master plan, a member of the Crozet Community Advisory Council said Wednesday.

“We feel lucky,” Tim Tolson said, noting that council members had feared that sprawl could develop outside downtown Crozet, along U.S. 250. While that fear still exists, the unwanted development so far has not materialized.

Several dozen Crozet residents packed into a fellowship hall at Crozet United Methodist Church on Wednesday to kick off the five-year revision of the Crozet Master Plan. The plan aims to map development in the area, designating downtown for commercial growth while leaving the outskirts rural.

‘Good times ahead,’ Kaine tells chamber; 3 share Small Businessperson’s Award

5/28/09 * Daily Progress [full story]

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine told area business leaders Wednesday that good financial times lie ahead for the commonwealth, but warned leaders not to get too cheery.

Kaine told members of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce that there are signs that the country and state’s financial crash will soon bottom out. Leaders, he said, must begin thinking of how to recreate and rejuvenate Virginia’s economy.

“There are good times ahead,” he told the chamber, “but we can’t be too cheery. We have to be optimistic and hopeful, but it took us a while to get into this place and it will take a while to get out.”

County GOP picks Snow, Thomas for supervisor races

5/27/09 * Daily Progress [full story]

Albemarle’s Republican Party chose Duane Snow on Tuesday as its nominee for the Samuel Miller District seat on the Board of Supervisors. And Rodney S. Thomas was chosen as the nominee for the Rio District.

Thomas was uncontested at Tuesday’s Republican mass meeting, and will challenge board Chairman David L. Slutzky, a Democrat, in November’s election.

Though Ivy resident Philip Melita had also sought the Republican nomination for the Samuel Miller District, Snow won by acclamation as Melita conceded.

Sally Thomas leaves her mark in Albemarle’s Samuel Miller District

5/26/09 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

Albemarle County has six districts represented on the Board of Supervisors, and the seat from the Samuel Miller District has been dominated since 1994 by Sally Thomas, who won a write-in campaign that opposed a Route 29 “Western Bypass” through the county. Her decision to retire at the end of this term opens the race for her replacement. Whether her slow-growth legacy will be continued, however, remains to be seen.

The Samuel Miller District begins at the southwestern edge of the county and runs between the Mechum River and Route 20 until meeting Old Garth Road and Charlottesville. It thus encompasses about 10,500 registered voters in Covesville, Batesville, North Garden, and Ivy, who increasingly vote Democratic with the occasional Independent, such as Thomas herself.

In the 1980s, the county reduced the number of homes that could be built per acre but struggles to remain rural. In the time Thomas has been a county supervisor, Albemarle’s population grew at a rate 50 percent faster than the state as a whole, rising from about 74,000 people to 94,000. In an e-mail, Thomas notes, “Since 30,000 more homes could be built in the county’s rural area with existing zoning, the residents of the Samuel Miller district watch the disappearance of farms and wonder about the future of what they enjoy in the rural nature of the district.”

South Lawn project is ahead of schedule and on budget

5/26/09 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

Neighbors call UVA “responsive” on construction-related hassles

UVA officials have called the University’s South Lawn project “the most significant undertaking on UVA’s Central Grounds in a century.” It sure is massive: Stretching from the original Lawn designed by Thomas Jefferson to Jefferson Park Avenue, it includes a pedestrian terrace that connects New Cabell Hall and the new Arts and Sciences building.

Since the beginning, the project attracted controversy, but nonetheless it has gone ahead as planned. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on September 29, 2006 and construction began soon after.

“We are about 65 percent complete,” UVA Project Director James Kelley told C-VILLE last week. “We are going to complete the North and South buildings for occupancy by December 31 of this year, and we’ll have students sitting at their desks doing what students do by mid-January.”

MCP lawsuits await final judgment

5/26/09 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

After six hours of arguments and cross-examinations last Tuesday, Judge Jay Swett has yet to reach a decision in the latest Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP) lawsuit. Back in March, the judge denied an injunction filed by the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park to immediately halt work on Albemarle County’s section of the MCP.

This time, in Charlottesville Circuit Court, the coalition (whose spokespeople include John Cruickshank, Rich Collins, Stratton Salidis and Peter Kleeman, among others) contended that the city has illegally granted the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) a parcel of land for the MCP. The parcel in question was a softball field near Charlottesville High School that, according to the school’s athletic director, was left unused.

In June 2008, City Council voted 3-2 and granted construction easements for that parcel to VDOT; a deed was recorded this January. VDOT is also recorded as paying the city $43,210 for perpetual easement on the property. Because of the money stipulated in the deed, the coalition argues that the transfer was a sale obtained without a supermajority.

Habitat to ask for denser zoning for Sunrise Court

5/26/09 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

This July, the local Habitat for Humanity will submit to the city an application to rezone the Sunrise Trailer Court. Located off Carlton Avenue, the site is presently home to 17 trailers and a freestanding house, but if Habitat has its way it will begin construction in 2011 on a planned redevelopment of the mobile home park that would transform it into a mixed-income neighborhood and dramatically increase its density.

Instead of fewer than 20 residences, the new Sunrise would have between 40 and 50, including a quadriplex, a structure that would combine four residences (a duplex doubled), as well as basement walk-out apartments underneath.

“Two of those would be enough to house all the Sunrise residents,” says Dan Rosensweig, the local Habitat’s new executive director. Under its operating philosophy, Habitat will do its best not to displace any current residents of the trailer park, and more than half have signed up to remain once the new incarnation is built.