Circling back

Construction is on the horizon at Premier Circle. The former Red Carpet Inn was transformed into an emergency shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic, and helped nearly 100 people exit homelessness. The facility closed in June of 2023, leaving a gap in Charlottesville’s network of shelter services, but construction on the next phase of the project […]

Crowd pleasers

April is here and so is Charlottesville’s annual Tom Tom Festival, flooding the downtown area with events, music, and people. The festival has grown substantially in its 12 years, and is slated to span five days, from April 17-21, with a medley of different showcases including panels on technology, entrepreneurship, social justice, and consciousness. With […]

Green speak

Every seat was filled Saturday, April 13, as Dana Milbank recounted what led him to be aiming a bolt-action rifle out of his bathroom window at three whitetail deer. The answer, besides good luck and bad timing, is that the population of whitetail deer has swelled to more than 14 times what the ecosystem can […]

Meet the beetles

On a warm day early in spring, a group of volunteers led by the National Park Service is surveying Sugar Hollow Reservoir, hoping to find a new resident living on hemlocks in the forest. They hold broad, white sheets under a tree and knock the needles with a long stick. What they’re looking for is […]

A done deal?

Charlottesville’s unionized bus drivers reached their first agreement with the city after City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance to allow collective bargaining for public sector employees. The focal point of the deal was a substantial wage increase for bus drivers. Charlottesville Area Transit representatives, now members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, negotiated a tiered system […]

In search of shelter

On a cold morning following a night with temperatures in the teens, Quincy Scott and Cheryl Burroughs are among the first to gather on the benches that line the Downtown Mall. Tents, sleeping bags, and blankets are pulled snug against the transit center to take advantage of an overhang that juts out slightly and keeps […]

Changes at Ix Art Park

Meet Ix Art Park’s full-time staff: Director of programming, Ewa Harr. Director of curation, Ewa Harr. Director of operations, Ewa Harr. Executive director, Ewa Harr. Last year, each of those roles was separate, but now it’s a team of one. A financial deficit has forced the Ix Art Park Foundation to make some hard cuts. […]

Power shift

In the fall of 2010, Alexis Zeigler and Debbie Piesen set out to see if they could live independent of fossil fuels. On land just north of Louisa, they started building Living Energy Farm, their vision of a self-sufficient, off-grid community with zero carbon footprint. Last March, the off-grid systems and technology they developed won […]