Cville Tomorrow News

Party of one: Who will be the next mayor of Charlottesville?

12/27/2011 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

Before City Council can dive into the complexities of the budget process, it will have to choose a new mayor. Although the jury is still out on who will become the city’s de-facto spokesperson, and it will remain out until Council’s first meeting in early January, it is customary that the post goes to the councilor with the most seniority.

Custom, then, leaves either Satyendra Huja or Kristin Szakos as the most likely candidates, but the job could go to any of the five council members.
“Anybody can be mayor as long as you have three votes on Council,” said Huja, who has been open about his desire to hold the position. “I think I have the experience and I think I can represent the community well.”

... Sources close to Council members have said Huja has his sights on the jobs and so does Szakos.

New winery under way in White Hall

12/25/2011 * Daily Progress [full story]

... Busching has served as vineyard manager at two area wineries and winemaker for Pollak Vineyards. Now he’s taking over White Hall’s Mount Juliet Farm vineyard, a 50-acre vineyard with 10 varieties of grapes that has been selling its fruit to other Virginia wineries for more than 10 years. Busching hopes to have Grace Estates Winery — named for the farm’s owners — up and running by 2012 with as many as six wines for the offering.

... It says a lot about the quality of grapes produced by the vineyard, just down Route 810 from White Hall. The property is a 600-acre former dairy farm and orchard. Grapes were first planted on the farm in 1999. The fruit has never been bottled on site, but has been sold to various wineries to help augment the yield of other vineyards.

Verdant Parkway: County's part likely to open in January

12/22/2011 * The Hook [full story]

With no opposition– only advice– from Charlottesville City Council and with the Albemarle Supervisors having resolved to open the Melbourne-to-Rio Road portion, the county's stretch of the two-mile Meadowcreek Parkway is poised to welcome drivers in January. While the exact date is undetermined, the Virginia Department of Transportation appears unlikely to reject City Council's December 5 request for tweaks such as turn lane-striping and lower speed limits near schools.

City Council bids farewell to Edwards and Brown, but not to arguments about water

12/20/2011 * Daily Progress [full story]

The Charlottesville City Council began its last meeting of 2011 on a friendly note, but before the council bid farewell to two of its members, longstanding disagreements over the 50 year water supply plan emerged one more time during a discussion of the recently proposed cost-sharing agreement with Albemarle County.

Mayor Dave Norris, one of the council’s most vocal critics of the plan to build a new earthen dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, probed City Attorney Craig Brown on the details of the cost-share agreement, while supporters of the plan pushed back against criticism that the council had neglected city interests in negotiating the water plan.

Councilor Kristin Szakos refuted the notion that the city is giving away its resources to the county.

"We’re not," Szakos said. "The part of Ragged Mountain that we’re looking at inundation in, we’re actually being compensated for. And the rest of it will still be for recreation. ... I don’t think we’re giving that up, but it will certainly change. And I know that there are people who don’t like those changes."

Crozet school unveils $300,000 Renewable Energy Center

12/20/2011 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

... Last Friday, Henley students, teachers and a throng of representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy and local government met outside the school to christen its Renewable Energy Center, funded in part by federal stimulus dollars.

... The Renewable Energy Center has four facets: the wind turbine, more than 100 solar energy panels that blanket Henley’s roof, a solar thermal collector that will warm about 60 percent of Henley’s hot water, and a Web-based tracking system that will broadcast the school’s renewable energy output on a TV monitor in the school’s lobby. The tracking system is the same one used by almost 50 other wind turbines throughout the U.S., so students can compare a trove of data and glean meaning from it.

When Henley’s center is fully functional in January, it will account for 6 percent of the school building’s annual energy usage.

Redevelopment partnership will hinge on "radical approach"

12/20/2011 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

... The group, made up of housing and grant specialists for the city and the director of redevelopment for the Housing Authority, found that a partnership between private and public entities was the best way to make the redevelopment of the 376 units, as highlighted in the existing master plan, become a reality. Since both scenarios of the plan are pricey and federal funding is limited, could a local developer become the missing link?

... According to the master plan created by Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT), a Philadelphia consulting firm, the first redevelopment scenario would cost $116 million and calls for a total of 558 units. As part of the Residents’ Bill of Rights, a document approved by City Council in 2008, residents are guaranteed one-to-one replacement of the number of public housing units and will spend no more than 12 months in temporary housing.

The second scenario is much more expensive, $151 million, and denser at 719 units. In its estimates, the master plan also heavily relied on Hope IV funding, which is currently being replaced by a different U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program known as Choice Neighborhoods. The program criteria have changed also, and CRHA will not qualify for Choice Neighborhoods.

The Tavern closes; building's fate to be determined

12/20/2011 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

... This week, however, one of the city’s biggest small spaces closes its doors for good. A sign posted on the door thanked customers for their support, and noted the December 24 closing date. “Miss Clarabelle [sic] Wheeler says it’s time to close,” read the sign, in reference to The Tavern’s landlord. “Bye bye, Miss American Pie. This will be the day that we die.”

... Gordon told C-VILLE that his rent had increased for each of the last five years. He also said that, a few months ago, he met with Wheeler to discuss his lease and was offered an extension, but didn’t accept. “I thought it was an insult,” he said.

Wheeler and Gordon do not necessarily share perspectives on the rent increases, although both agreed that Gordon turned down a short-term lease extension. Where Gordon has tradition and nostalgia on his side, Wheeler has the building’s location, in a prominent business corridor near UVA’s entrance, and practical considerations about the structure itself to consider.

From the Editor: Back to the Barricades

12/1/2011 * Crozet Gazette Editorial [full story]

... Introduction of industrial uses, even though the County assures us they will be “low impact,” will open a Pandora’s box and likely release pressures to expand to more intense uses, and likely commercial ones, once the public is resigned to its defeat.

... The effort to bust open new uses for Yancey Mills is an end run on the master planning process by some anonymous forces that did not get what they wanted out of the public process. If it is accomplished, it will be a flat-out sabotage of the Crozet Master Plan and a defacto enlargement of the growth area into unprotected watershed for the Charlottesville water supply. That will make a cynical mockery of the whole concept of growth areas.

Group Forms To Push Construction of Crozet Library

12/1/2011 * Crozet Gazette [full story]

Nineteen area citizens turned out for a meeting at Crozet Library Nov. 28 to volunteer as organizers for a campaign to bring concerted public pressure on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to fund construction of the new Crozet Library without further delay.

The need for a new building got more acute earlier in the month when the Albemarle County fire marshal ruled that no more than 50 people may be in the library at any one time. Some events at the library, such as the Soiree evenings and kids’ programs, routinely draw more participants than that.

Jane Kulow of Ivy, who stepped forward this fall to lead the effort, told the group that she believes “We are closer now than ever before [to getting a decision to fund the project].

County Contemplates Development of Interstate Interchanges

12/1/2011 * Crozet Gazette [full story]

The Crozet/Yancey Mills exit on Interstate 64 could be developed if Albemarle County adopts ordinance changes that would allow formerly untouchable rural area zoning to include “low impact” industrial uses. County planning staff held a “stakeholders” meeting Nov. 28 to get public reaction to the idea and heard from proponents who want cheaper industrial land with highway access and opponents, including members of the Crozet Community Advisory Council, who fear that introducing new types of uses at the interchange would eventually lead to full-scale commercial development.

County planners called the meeting “an important listening opportunity for staff,” and said the goal of the ordinance changes would be to introduce more “flexibility” among allowable uses. Each type of industrial zoning, light and heavy, has by-right and by-special-permit uses, with those available by special permit under light zoning typically becoming by-right in the heavy designation.

... Crozet had 63 acres of unused light industrial land to build on at the time the Master Plan was being revised in 2010. The revisions to the plan added 13 acres, eight contiguous to the Starr Hill/Acme properties and five downtown on the 18-acre Barnes Lumber Company parcel that is now for sale. The designation for the downtown property was intended to give potential developers of the lumberyard the flexibility to attract light industrial users who offer employment, such a high-tech companies, to locate there.