News in review

Tuesday, November 1
Bypass could waste money

A study released today reports that 67 percent of the traffic on 29N is local, meaning that a proposed bypass through Western Albemarle County would do little to ease traffic congestion on the highway. Albemarle County and State officials collaborated on the survey, and the results will be used to guide Places29, the latest “master plan” process organized by County planners. Local officials favor a system of roads running parallel to 29, as opposed to a bypass.

Wednesday, November 2
PVCC keeps haulin’ it in

Today Piedmont Virginia Community College President Frank Friedman announced a $1.2 million gift to the school’s Campaign for Opportunity and Excellence from the Kluge-Moses Foun-dation. The donation—the largest in the college’s history—is the latest in a series of recent gifts. This money will go to support science, health programs and laboratories, specifically the construction of a new building for the sciences—appropriately titled The Kluge-Moses Science Building —to be completed in 2008. Kluge-Moses Foundation President Bill Moses tells
C-VILLE that he and wife Patricia Kluge felt that the $1.2 million gift was “an appropriate way to boost the campaign.” Moses says he is “impressed with [PVCC’s] role in the community and the level of education the school provides to people in Albemarle County.” The relationship between PVCC and the foundation began a year and a half ago, when the Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard helped develop the college’s viticultural programs.

Thursday, November 3
Local investors hit jackpot with College Sports Television

CBS made millionaires out of three local investors today when it announced that it would buy College Sports Television Network for $325 million. CSTV, a 24-hour cable network dedicated to broadcasting all the college sports you don’t see on ESPN, has been a major hit among sports followers since it was launched in 2003. Just two years later, Randy Castleman, Chris Holden and Jim Murray—partners in Court Square Ventures, the Charlottesville investment group that has had a multimillion-dollar stake in CSTV since its inception—are reaping the benefits of its success. Holden says, “It’s a good day for [Court Square Ventures] when a big company like CBS comes in and buys out our investments—at the end of the day, that’s how we make our profit.”

Friday, November 4
Future looks bright for Virginia’s GOP

If the apple never falls far from the tree, then Republicans are going to have a fruitful future in the Commonwealth. From October 28 to November 3, 35,000 students from across Virginia had the opportunity to vote in the UVA Center for Politics Youth Leadership Initiative Mock Election. The young politicos voted to elect Republican Jerry Kilgore for governor, Democrat Leslie Byrne for lieutenant governor and Republican Bob McDonnell for attorney general. Center for Politics Chief of Staff Ken Stroupe emphasized that the mock election results are not predictive of the actual election, since the students do not reflect a random sampling of the population. Stroupe also added that given the percentage breakdowns (44 percent to 42.07 percent in the gubernatorial race), “students are wrestling with which candidate to choose, just like their parents.”

Saturday, November 5
NASCAR for the champagne set

Proving that the thrill of standing in the sun and watching things run in circles knows no class boundary, today’s Montpelier Hunt Races drew hundreds of fans to Orange County. The annual, family-friendly races at Montpelier is one of the oldest steeplechase events in the country, sending riders across 100 acres of rolling meadows and seven jumps.

Sunday, November 6
Heavyweights stump for Kaine and Kilgore

Mark Warner delivered a sermon at Central Place today for the local Democratic choir. “I wish every city in Virginia were like Charlottesville,” said Warner, appearing on a gorgeous Indian summer afternoon in Char-lottesville, stumping for Lieutenant Governor, Tim Kaine. Today’s newspaper polls indicate Kaine is neck and neck with Republican Jerry Kilgore anticipating the gubernatorial election on Tuesday, No-vember 8. Also today, Kilgore’s campaign announced that President Bush will headline a Kilgore rally at Richmond Airport on election eve.

Monday, November 7
Council must pony up to fix city roads

Tonight City Council was slated to hear a staff report describing a decline in street paving and a backlog of sidewalk repairs. The report blames lack of funding from Council, as well as an increase in the cost of asphalt and a decline in large construction projects that help pay for paving. The City estimates it would cost $1.2 million a year to adequately pave Charlottesville roads.

 Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.

All that jazz
UVA prof to advise on New Orleans’ next phase

Municipal disasters, such as Hur-ricane Katrina in New Orleans, often serve as catalysts, accelerating changes already in progress, according to UVA architecture professor Bill Morrish. He was recently selected to serve on an urban development advisory panel that will report to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin to create a master plan for moving the city forward. Morrish will examine in particular the questions of rebuilding infrastructures—levees, schools, transportation—that were insidious problems even before Katrina hit. C-VILLE talked to Morrish last week about the massive project of rebuilding New Orleans—a city, as he says, that’s certainly not going away.—Will Goldsmith

C-VILLE: What aspects of infrastructure have priority?

Bill Morrish: The schools, which were already in desperate need for rebuilding and a whole new agenda, are strategically located pieces of property and they could become the lifelines of the city if the city went under again.

   You also need to completely rebuild the levee system so that it’s deeper, wider and bigger, so that it’s a real levee and park system to protect the city and work with the natural systems—the current one was designed for managing cargo and barges. That would reorganize an awful lot of private property, which means the levee rebuilding is linked to supporting the building of new kinds of housing mixtures that are uniquely New Orleans.

Is that what’s been called the jazz method of rebuilding?

It’s this infusion of difference that comes together instead of flattening out. New Orleans is a city that’s very eclectic, very inventive, and it’s really hard to type its style. They call it the “French” Quarter, yet most of the architecture comes from Jamaica and Haiti—it’s much less French than Creole, which is this real mixture, like jazz.

   How do you tap into that inventiveness? You take that and make new buildings, a whole new generation of New Orleans infusion, which could be very attractive not only for tourism—to see the next generation of this incredible gumbo of ideas—but could also attract new people who want to live there, who are attracted to the idea of rebuilding a town—new American pioneers.

What gets in the way of getting all of this done?

Unfortunately, the habit for the last 20 years has been to centralize the public money toward the private sector. There’s this real belief in the large company being able to be the benevolent service provider, but you don’t build a town that way—you build a town with citizens. I don’t think that’s just a liberal idea, I think that a lot of small- and medium-sized business owners would agree.

   If you’re going to attract businesses, you really have to go down to that community trust level, and I think it’s the solid middle class that feels that, if they take a risk to return, that their risk needs to be supported with the infrastructure—social, capital, physical—over the next three years.

Fun with fundraising
How UVA stacks up in the billion-dollar business

UVA President John Casteen has been a busy bee since first coming to Mr. Jefferson’s University in 1990. Over the past few years he’s ramped up the school’s fundraising arm, including a current $3 billion capital campaign that will go public in September 2006. That may seem like a lot of scratch, but it’s really just keeping up with the Joneses—The Chronicle of Higher Education lists 24 American universities currently begging for $1 billion or more. Here’s a look at how UVA stacks up against some of its peers.—Eric Rezsnyak

CAMPUS SPACES WE LOVE
When Plato set up the School of Athens in an olive grove outside of the city, he forged what would be a lasting relationship between gardens and scholarly life. Looking at the gardens that line the Academical Village, you can only conclude that Jefferson hoped to model his University on Plato’s open-air classroom. Placid, remote and largely free of rowdy undergrad chatter, the public garden behind Pavilion IV is shaded by Southern magnolias, tree peonies and historic boxwoods. Profes-sor Maxmilian Schele de Vere, who lived in Pavilion IV between 1845 and 1897, first planted the boxwoods, which were later restored in 1916 by the Albe-marle Garden Club. While the Pavilion IV garden may never measure up to Pla-to’s “groves of ac-ademe,” it is still perfect for contemplating the good, the true and the beautiful. It is, therefore, a space we love.—Anne Metz

Last man standing
Peter Kleeman keeps fighting the MCP

After sitting through a three-hour meeting, former VDOT engineer and citizen advocate Peter Kleeman finally got a chance to speak.

   Kleeman has emerged as a major pain for City officials eager to build the Mea-dowcreek Parkway.
He knows more about how roads get built than most people in City Hall, and he’s been using his inside information to keep up the fight against the long-debated road.

   Most Parkway opponents gave up the fight in July, when Virginia Senator John Warner secured $27 million for an interchange to connect the Parkway to Route 250 and McIntire Road. Kleeman, though, has continued to accuse City officials of dodging citizen input and environmental regulations as they pursue the Parkway.

   After concluding all business on the agenda with 15 minutes remaining, the Route 250 Bypass Interchange at McIntire Road Steering Committee opened the floor to public comments and questions. At that point, Klee-man, the only “public” present at the meeting, was allowed to address the committee within a three-minute time constraint.

   Kleeman began by immediately attacking the lack of pubic involvement. “I think it’s really inappropriate to have a meeting without an item on the agenda that allows the public to participate in a public meeting,” he said. “That’s why I encourage you to consider that—especially if you’re going to put severe limitations of three minutes on people—I don’t think it’s a major burden to let the public participate.”

   In addition to public involvement, Kleeman took issue with the strategy of the Route 250/McIntire Road interchange. Currently, the Meadowcreek Parkway/ McIntire Road extension and 250 Inter-change are separate projects.

   According to Klee-man, “the interchange and Parkway/McIntire extension projects are apparently not being joined so that the parkland protection and environmental impacts associated with the roads can be excluded from the federally required environmental documentation.

   “My primary objective in all this is to get an integrated Parkway/interchange project to unify the consideration of this effort in our regional transportation plan,” he added.

   In his comments, Kleeman urged members to consider alternative proposals that would integrate the larger traffic issues into their recommendation to City Council.

   “I would certainly urge this group not to limit the scope to just looking at this intersection, but looking at the transportation problems of getting the traffic from the north of town to the east of town as being the overall goal,” said Kleeman.

   Over the next year, the Steering Committee will meet to discuss alternatives for the Meadowcreek Parkway/Route 250 intersection. Many members said that not building an interchange at what will be a 17-lane intersection would cause congestion similar to the junction of Route 29 and Hydraulic Road. The next meeting will be on January 11, 2006 at a location yet to be determined.—Dan Pabst

Election spending breakdown
Here is a breakdown of some candidate finances approaching Election Day for statewide and local candidates in contested races. Republican candidates had out-raised (and out-spent) their Democratic opponents in four of the five state races. The exception was David Toscano in his bid to replace Mitch Van Yahres as Charlottesville’s Delegate.

—Dan Pabst

Governor    Jerry Kilgore (R)    Tim Kaine (D)   Russ Potts (I)

Total raised   $19,074,220   $17,599,248   $1,207,937

Total spent    $18,193,707   $16,882,543   $935,714

Lt. Governor   Bill Bolling (R)   Leslie Byrne (D)

Total raised    $2,854,971   $1,262,769

Total spent    $2,641,732   $1,200,777

Attorney General   Bob McDonnell (R)   Creigh Deeds (D)

Total raised    $4,661,241   $2,425,851

Total spent    $4,573,467   $1,899,081

House of Delegates

57th District   Tom McCrystal (R)   David Toscano (D)

Total raised    $14,294   $139,432

Total spent    $12,496   $102,442

House of Delegates   

58th District   Rob Bell (R)   Steve Koleszar (D)

Total raised    $289,804   $53,314

Total spent    $178,588   $28,276

Albemarle County Board of Supervisors

Jack Jouett District   Christian Schoenwald (R)   Dennis Rooker (D)

Total raised    $18,316   $39,214

Total spent    $9,914   $30,940

Rio District   Gary Grant (R)   David Slutzky (D)   Tom Jakubowski (I)

Total raised    $22,738   $32,793   $1,178

Total spent    $11,837   $11,846   $1,178

Sources: Virginia State Board of Elections (www.sbe.virginia.gov) and Albemarle County Voter Registration and Elections Department. All figures as of October 26, 2005.

Upping the ante
Donors add $30,000 to reward for the serial rapist

In the hope that doubling the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the serial rapist might heighten exposure for the case and expedite his capture, on October 26 the Parents’ Program of the UVA Alumni Association announced that they were adding $30,000 to the pot. Another UVA parent, of his own volition, donated $5,000, upping the reward to $55,000.

   The serial rapist’s last attack occurred in August 2004, when he assaulted and raped a woman inside her Albemarle home. He had previously been forensically linked to six other assaults.

   But on the subject of rewards, consider this: There’s been a $25 million boun-ty on Osama’s head for four years now and we’re no closer to smoking him out than we were when we first bombed Kabul. Do rewards really aid and abet in the apprehension of criminals?

   Sgt. Chip Harding with the Charlottes-ville Police Department admits he doesn’t have hard evidence to support the effectiveness of rewards. Anecdotally, though, he says it’s common practice to reward
informers on drug and robbery cases. He’s done this before and he’ll do it again.

   Harding says, however, that he’s never dealt with a case as big as that of the serial rapist. The largest reward Harding has ever given was $2,000 to a drug case informant.

   While “[a reward] certainly doesn’t do any harm…it’s probably a little harder in a case like this,” he explains, “because rapists don’t usually go around and talk about [their crime],” whereas drug dealers and burglars often do.

   Sgt. Melissa Fielding with the UVA Police Department agrees with Harding’s assessment. While she can’t cite a specific case where a significant reward has made a difference in how or when an arrest was made, she asserts that a monetary reward could simply remind people that there is “some benefit to bringing forth any information” they might have about a case.

   In all, it’s hard to say what sticks in the public’s head when plastered on the front of a newspaper: a bright, shiny reward number or a scary police sketch of a scary serial rapist’s scary mug.—Nell Boeschenstein

Kiddie porn arrest made
Youth basketball official faces 10 counts

Last week the former commissioner of the Piedmont Shenandoah Basketball Of-ficials Association, a youth basketball program, was ar-rested on 10 counts of possession of child pornography. Richard Bonnie Lakes, a 61- year-old grandfather of three who is currently licensed as a pharmacist, was taken into custody on Wednesday, Oc-tober 26, and was later re-leased on $10,000 bond.

   Arrest warrants indicate that 10 class-six felony charges were filed based on incidents that took place from October 6 through Octo-ber 24. Lakes could face up to 50 years in prison and maximum fines of $250,000.

   According to Albemarle Police Lieu-tenant John Teixeira, the police department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force launched a criminal investigation of Lakes several weeks ago.

   The ICAC Task Force is a nationwide program that helps federal, state and local law enforcement agencies investigate complaints of Internet child pornography and cases of “cyber enticement.”

   Through ICAC’s Cyber-Tipline, citizens can report any kind of suspicious activity anonymously. But when asked why Lakes fell under suspicion, Teixeira told
C-VILLE the police received information from a source that “was not anonymous.”

   In response to his arrest, Lakes told The Daily Progress, “These are very serious allegations against me and it is very important that the local basketball association and the schools not be placed in a more awkward position because of what has occurred.” An official at the basketball association confirmed that Lakes resigned from his position prior to his arrest.—Joyce Carman

Crossing guard
More cars to cut through Mall?

When the Charlottesville City Council and the Planning Commission meet for a joint public hearing next Tuesday, November 15, they’ll review proposed changes to two key areas of town. One would add another vehicle crossing to the pedestrian mall Down-town; the other would establish an eighth major architectural design control district. The public meeting begins at 7pm in the City Council Chambers.

   The agenda includes a “discussion of alternatives” for the proposed addition of a street crossing at either Fourth or Fifth streets on the east end of the Downtown Mall. Until construction began on the amphitheater and President’s Plaza projects last year, Seventh Street served as a vehicle crossing. At present, the sole street crossing is at Second Street on the Mall’s west end. It was created in 1994.

   Bob Stroh, co-chair of the Downtown Business Association and head of the Charlottesville Parking Center, supports restoring an east end crossing. “Traffic circulation is a huge issue as people get lost, distracted and leave,” he says. “You have to make it easier for [visitors], otherwise they just give up.” Stroh says a Downtown advisory group regards the Fifth Street crossing as the more appropriate of the two being considered.

   Jon Bright, owner of the Spectacle Shop on the Downtown Mall, sees it more broadly. He thinks a Mall crossing should be part of a complete rethinking of streets, lights and traffic flow throughout Downtown. “Tourism has al-ways been a big issue,” Bright says. “Get-ting them to the Mall.

   “But are we really doing this for the sake of transportation,” he adds, “or for the interests of individual developers?”

   Also on the Planning Commission/City Council agenda: more discussion about adding another Architectural Design Control District, to wit, the Rugby Road-University Circle-Venable Neighborhood.

   As recommended by the Board of Architectural Review, the goal would be to protect more than 200 distinctive properties that represent a wide array of architectural styles popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But there is a highly contentious aspect of the ordinance, namely amending the existing medium- and high-density zoning ordinance established in the neighborhood in 1990 to allow developers to fulfill the demands of student housing. How to resolve these conflicts? The ordinance proposes “creating an ‘overlay’ zoning restriction without affecting the underlying zoning district designations.” The public should have fun discovering the devils hidden in whatever details are worked out by City Council and Planning Com-mission members.—Jay Neelley

Gleason grows up?
Redevelopment possible for hardware building

Don’t be surprised to see big changes come to the Gleason’s building at 126 Garrett St.

      The 105-year-old building sits beside the old Ivy Industries building, which Coran Capshaw and Phil Wendell are turning into a swanky new ACAC fitness club. That project makes the Gleason’s site seem underdeveloped by comparison, a point not lost on the building’s new owner.

      “There are future development opportunities for another mixed-use building there,” says J.P. Williamson, who bought the Gleason’s building three weeks ago from Audrey L. Haisfield for $3,450,000, according to City records. Haisfield paid $1.7 million for the building in 2001; it is currently assessed at $1.68 million.

   The sale price certainly speaks to the development potential on the 1.3-acre site. Williamson should know—he owns Octagon Partners, a local real estate investment firm. He says that for now, he plans to move Octagon’s offices into Gleason’s and rent out the rest for retail; currently Baker’s Palette, hair salon Moxie, shoe store Sweet Beets and Gleason’s hardware occupy the storefront. There’s plenty of room to grow if Williamson decides to build, because zoning laws allow up to nine stories on the site.

      “Anything we do would preserve the original Gleason’s structure,” he says. “There are no concrete plans right now.”—John Borgmeyer