Former hospital faces demolition

Just north of Monticello lies a relic of one of the less illustrious aspects of Charlottesville’s not-too-distant past. The Blue Ridge Hospital housed tuberculosis patients until 1978, but has since gone into disrepair as it has passed through the hands of a number of organizations, all unsure of what to do with the 142-acre property. […]

Meager profits for ash vaults

Many institutions of higher education, including UVA, offer alumni and faculty a unique final resting place near the hustle and bustle of academic life: With burial space on campuses dwindling, colleges and universities are now building columbaria—memorials used for the internment of funeral urns after cremation—to meet a growing demand among aging alumni and faculty. […]

Tenants pushed out in Fifeville

Fifeville tenant Michael Lannutti knew his landlords were selling their property at 918 Grove St. to a larger rental and development company, Grove Street Properties LLC. So he was pleasantly surprised to learn in February from the soon-to-be property manager Tim Slagle that he could stay on with only a slight rent increase. But two […]

Locals float ideas for Eastern Connector

How does the public pick a path for a new road? Most of those attending an initial meeting May 22 for the Eastern Connector couldn’t even tell you why we need the road in the first place. They asked: Why are we connecting Route 29 to Route 250 East? Why don’t we talk about better […]

The little Frenchman who could

Dear Ace: Forgive me, Professor Atkins, but my American history is spotty. Basics I got. Jefferson? Check. Madison? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Monroe? Old news. But what about this Claudius Crozet I’ve been hearing about? With a town (and a pizza joint!) named for him, he must have been someone pretty special. But special how, when […]

My Father’s House

words Memoirs—such a hot genre in the current book biz that a certain James Frey was willing to pass off fiction as fact in his notorious A Million Little Pieces—tend to come in two forms: 1) dramatic personal events that demand expression, and 2) ordinary personal events made dramatic through description and analysis. Beatrix Ost […]

Spider-Man 3

game After three mega-successful Spider-films, it’s safe to say that even non-comics-geeks grasp the whole “with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility” thing. It appears, however, that Treyarch, the team responsible for creating the Spider-Man 3 videogame and its predecessors, missed the follow-up memo about great power and great expectations. Instead of giving us a spectacular next-gen web-slinging adventure, they’ve given […]

The Book of Liz

stage Satire, it’s said, is a pretty mocking of life.  And satire is exactly the word to describe The Book of Liz, a play penned by the famed brother-sister duo of David and Amy Sedaris.  There’s little else you could call theater that puts on the same stage an Amish-like religious sect, a Colonial-themed chain […]