UVA drives increased bus ridership

Since September, monthly ridership on the Charlottesville Transit Service (CTS) has been up on average 15 percent over the previous year. We can guess why, right? With gas prices boiling over at $4 a gallon, more and more people are leaving the car at home and hopping on the bus. Except we’d be wrong. What […]

County staff gets $35K to keep near-verbatim minutes

County Executive Bob Tucker isn’t as silly as he seemed when he went through with a Board of Supervisors work session June 11 on whether to make the minutes of Board meetings “summary” instead of “near-verbatim”: He was able to extract $35,000 from supervisors for additional staff to transcribe Board minutes.

Blaze claims Fifeville house

A Fifeville house in the midst of renovations went up in smoke today. According to city spokesman Ric Barrick, three workers left 1004 King St. around 12:30pm. Around 2pm, a 911 call alerted city emergency personnel of the blaze, which did extensive damage and took off much of the roof of the white stucco dwelling.

Police seize $34K and 200 grams of crack

Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force (JADE) officers have arrested two men and confiscated a lot of drugs and a lot of cash. Last night at around 7pm on the 300 block of 10th Street NW, officers arrested Murray Lee Hill, a 51-year-old Charlottesville man, along with 28-year-old Maurice Edgehill of New York City.

Reinvigorating downtown Crozet

Downtown Crozet is ready to return to the limelight, and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors is willing to approve a rezoning plan that property owners, consultants and the Planning Commission thinks could take it there.

The right angle?

This rendering, a view of the northern side of West Main Street, show early plans for a nine-story building on the corner of McIntire Road and West Main Street, with retail on the ground floors and condos above. Architecture firm Morrison Seifert Murphy presented preliminary designs last month to the city’s Board of Architectural Review. […]

NGIC “contractor tail” still undefined

Northern Albemarle County is getting at least 1,000 new jobs in the coming years—and probably a lot more. Army Colonel Mark Moffatt gave the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors an update June 4 about the expansion at the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), almost doubling the number of employees who work at the facility on […]

Red dirt alert!

Pantops has some fertile soil for development. Preparation work is underway for Richard Spurzem’s Gazebo Plaza shopping center, which historically has been a lightening rod for controversy. Spurzem took the county to circuit court to get the go ahead for the project. Now, Gazebo Plaza makes for a conflict between two surrounding neighborhoods: Spurzem has […]

Summer construction round-up

Ah, summer. With the undergrads out saving the rest of the world, Grounds is abandoned to us townies—well, us and several battalions of construction workers. UVA’s campus is abuzz with builders this offseason, the clatter of cranes and belches of backhoes burgeoning from Fontaine Research Park to Rugby Road. Here’s a list of major projects […]

Next big water question: Why dredge?

When county Supervisor Sally Thomas met with dredging consultants Gahagan & Bryant Associates last month about the possibilities of dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, they said the first question to answer was, Why are you dredging?