City Council approved 4-1 a financial assistance package estimated at $1.1 million over 10 years to assist John Dewberry in finishing the derelict hotel that’s loomed over downtown Charlottesville for the past eight years. The folksy owner of the Landmark Hotel appeared before the council dais March 6. “I’m not used to people seeing my […]
Charlottesville is no stranger to protests. The city’s Free Speech Wall is a testament to the First Amendment and a frequent gathering spot for citizens exercising their right to assemble. That said, we’ve never seen anything like this. Since the election of Donald Trump as president, at least seven new groups have sprung up, and […]
It was no secret that today’s hearing on a petition to remove Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy from office was going to be continued, but that didn’t prevent more than four dozen people from showing up in Charlottesville Circuit Court, most of them Bellamy supporters. The petition with 527 signatures gathered by right-wing activist Jason Kessler was filed […]
While Tom Garrett carried the 5th District with 58 percent of the vote, his popularity didn’t seep into the Dem-majority Charlottesville area. In office less than a month, the new congressman has had hundreds of protesters show up every week at his Berkmar Crossing office, to the consternation of some of the business park’s owners […]
When Charlottesville decided to keep the historic Jefferson School and its prime real estate as a community center rather than selling it for condos, a complicated financial structure was required to make the $18 million rehab of the 1926 high school possible. Four years after the renovated school reopened in 2012, fundraising that was supposed […]
Ruling that the search warrant that led to the arrest of former UVA film studies professor Walter Korte was invalid—and that the two images used as the basis for the warrant in fact weren’t child pornography—Judge Cheryl Higgins nonetheless allowed the admission of the photos, citing a “good faith” exemption for police seeking warrants. Korte, […]
Not in attendance at a civil case hearing February 2 in U.S. District Court were the four plaintiffs who are suing Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles. One reason for their absences, according to their attorney, is because their driver’s licenses are suspended. The case, filed by Legal Aid Justice Center against DMV Commissioner Richard Holcomb, […]
Albemarle hates it and Charlottesville loves it. But neither jurisdiction saw Delegate Steve Landes’ budget amendment coming that could scrub a 1982 agreement in which Albemarle pays millions every year to Charlottesville for the privilege of not being annexed—even though the General Assembly put a moratorium on annexation in 1987. “The county was only recently […]
Mayor Mike Signer had a quorum of councilors today outside City Hall, but it wasn’t for a City Council meeting. A band played Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” as hundreds of Charlottesvillians assembled at noon below the statues of three presidents, along with a handful of vocal protesters, and Signer declared Charlottesville the “capital of […]
The Great Recession is officially over. The evidence? Building permits in 2016 were the highest since 2007 housing-bubble levels. Construction is going on all over the area, from 5th Street Station to West Main to U.S. 29 north. And a recent Weldon Cooper Center population study pegs the Charlottesville area as booming.