Punishment delayed for Goode donor

Last February, Mitchell Wade, the former head of defense contractor MZM, pleaded guilty to paying California Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes in exchange for government contracts. Cunningham is currently serving eight years in prison for his part in the scandal and on Monday, August 21, Wade appeared in Federal Court […]

Incoming class includes 180 from Community Colleges

UVA President John Casteen III welcomed the incoming class on Sunday, August 21. Among them, 180 students are transfers from Virginia’s community colleges, the highest number yet.
“We welcome you in a special way, because we have valued the collaboration of that system from its very beginning,” Casteen said.

Governor’s office disowns state climatologist

Who does State Climatologist (and global warming doubter) Patrick Michaels belong to: the Governor or UVA? According to Governor Tim Kaine, he’s all yours, Charlottesville.For years, UVA professor Patrick Michaels’ skepticism toward human-related global warming was credited in media reports to the “Virginia State Climatologist”—which, in all fairness, is his official title. But as Michaels […]

Jefferson’s Legacy viewed from across the pond

It can’t be denied: Good ol’ TJ’s reputation has taken more than a few hits over the past decade. From the 1998 DNA test which indicated that Mr. Jefferson had almost certainly fathered a child with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, to the recent Alexander Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow that depicts America’s third […]

Cav Daily scoop: Gov. Warner waxed poetic on state bat

In a great find by The Cavalier Daily, an editorial Friday, August 25 noted former Governor Mark Warner’s March 2005 bill naming the Virginia Big-Eared Bat as the state’s official nocturnal flying mammal. In an amazing feat of parallelism, the editorial pointed out the irony that we have a State Bat, yet no one seems […]

County planners defer affordable housing changes

To increase the supply of area homes under $200,000, the Albemarle County Planning Commission considered, but deferred action on, changes to the zoning code that would provide extra incentives to by-right developers who include affordable housing. Though the County currently has a 15 percent affordable policy in place for projects needing special permits, current incentives […]

Albemarle Place wins preliminary approval

Already six years in the making, Albemarle Place jumped one of only a few remaining hurdles on the path to becoming a 65-acre assortment of 700 residential units and roughly 40 new stores, along with a stadium-seating movie theater, a hotel and a relocated Whole Foods.

Public meetings in August

Get your soapboxes ready. Here are your chances to opine on development matters during the coming weeks. Albemarle Planning Commission meets to discuss early drafts of the Pantops Master Plan. August 22. County Office Building.Route 250 West Task Force holds a discussion on projects. August 23. County Office Building. Albemarle Board of Supervisors and area […]

Just another development

The future site for North Pointe, a mixed-use development planned for Route 29N, just north of Profitt Road, seems less like a “places we’ll lose” and more like a place we’ve already lost. The now wooded land would be yet another link in a chain of developments—Forest Lakes South, Hollymead, Forest Lakes—that run along the […]

Teen cleared in bomb threat case

An Albemarle teen\’s appeal to circuit court proved fruitful on Wednesday, August 16, when a jury acquitted him of threatening to blow up two Albemarle high schools on the seventh anniversary of the Columbine shootings.