“You see,” writes Myra Anderson in her essay “Healing Words,” “when you’ve been hospitalized over one hundred times, taken away in handcuffs, subject to medication against your will, thrown into seclusion and restraints constantly, traumatized repeatedly, and forced to grow up in a system which prided itself on conformity and compliance, maybe then you can […]
What happens when the housing market takes a nosedive and a deal goes bad between a contractor and a developer? Lawsuits, my friend. Lawsuits. These properties form the crux of a $3 million-plus dispute between R.L. Beyer Construction and Tom Hickman. In January of 2002, when the local real estate and housing markets were turning […]
With green building becoming all the rage, developers and builders are jumping over themselves to tout their environmental bona fides. But some, to paraphrase a country song, were green before green was cool. One of them is a native. You may have seen his work around here. Thomas Jefferson—third president, UVA founder and “green” architect, […]
First the politicians spoke, Virginia State Senator Phillip Puck, Delegate Terry Kilgore and local Wise County officials among them, offering bland platitudes on economic growth and construction jobs—real concerns to be sure in a place like Wise County, where jobs have become scarce.
The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) lifted its drought warning on January 2 after issuing it in August, and mandatory restrictions were promptly lifted by City Council and the county Board of Supervisors. Lawn-waterers across the Charlottesville area rejoiced. Tom Frederick, executive director of RWSA, says that he expects area reservoirs to top off […]
The proposed Wise County plant has come to symbolize growing debates about the importance of a region’s economic health verses the actual health of its residents, the power of Dominion in state government and the looming battle over the future of public investment for our energy. While Dominion and government officials tout the proposed plant […]
Sure, there are houses moving. But overall, the local housing market sort of looks like the real estate equivalent of a guy sitting on his couch, twiddling his thumbs. Lots of homes on the market, not a lot of people jumping to buy them. In the past months, the market has softened, driving prices down. […]
There was a time in the not-too-distant past that a developer could stand in front of the county Board of Supervisors or the city’s Planning Commission, tout his or her project’s green-building designs and ride the environmentally feel-good wave all the way to approval. That time may be beginning to pass. The revolution of green-building […]
Vesla Weaver leans across her desk and points to a graph on her computer screen. There are three bars. Each represents a different skin color of African Americans; the bars’ height shows the education and income levels for each statistical group. The chart is one of many, but each one shows the same thing: As […]
For the past three months, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) has been trying to fill a new position, director of redevelopment. After running ads regionally and in national publications like The Washington Post, the position is still unfilled. As the search continues, the city and CRHA face what Noah Schwartz, executive director of […]