News

The contentious issue of rural preservation is at the root of a new proposal for tradable development rights (TDR) from Albemarle County Supervisor David Slutzky. It’s garnering reserved approval from interested parties across the spectrum.
The question of how to prevent bucolic countryside from being converted to cul-de-sacs and strip malls (a.k.a. How Not To Become Northern Virginia) has been critical lately. Three years ago, the Board of Supervisors decided that Albemarle’s answer would be to designate 5 percent of the county as growth areas.

The rumblings from neighbors over truck traffic on Franklin Street had quieted since the previous City Council meeting, when Woolen Mills resident Bill Emory played a tape of truck noise, ruffling Mayor David Brown. At that time, it seemed that no compromise short of a no-trucks ordinance would appease the E. Market Street residents.    But, […]

The enormous hole in the ground at the corner of Jefferson Park Avenue and Valley Road is a sign of progress, according to Will Bynum, project manager at Kjellstrom & Lee. K&L, the contractor that brought you the tennis facility at the Boar’s Head Inn and an addition to the maternity-services wing at Martha Jefferson […]

On Tuesday, October 3, police identified a body found over the weekend near an abandoned car on the Blue Ridge Parkway as that of UVA graduate student Elizabeth Michelle “Lizzy” Hafter. Her parents had last heard from her the previous Friday, when she told her mother that she was going to the mountains to study and enjoy the weather.

A 19-year-old driver was assaulted October 3 at Barracks Road Shopping Center after letting a strange man into his car at the 7-Eleven at U.S. Route 29 and Hydraulic Road. The teen ran from his attackers, who attempted to abduct him even after he handed over his wallet and car keys.    Around 8am, City spokesman […]

The “ultimate bed and breakfast,” as Virginia’s former director of corrections Ron Angelo called the prison system, isn’t a pleasant stay. Such was the theme of an independently produced documentary Up the Ridge, which examines the “supermax” Wallens Ridge State Prison, located in the southwestern tip of Virginia. Several dozen locals turned out October 4 […]

Charlottesville is now officially a less cool place to live for those who laugh in the face of parking regulations. A loophole that essentially doled out no punishment for unpaid parking tickets has been closed, following an October 2 City Council vote that remedied the glitch.    Under the old procedure, appealed tickets would get forwarded […]

It was a muggy August day on the UVA Lawn; administrators hoped the weather would hold for the Convocation ceremonies that were about to welcome the Class of 2010. The breeze fluttered programs placed on rows upon rows of folding chairs. Slowly, some traveling in packs from dorms, others filing in groups of two or three, the class of 2010 arrived in waves of t-shirts, shorts, sundresses, ball caps.