 Gone baby gone: Last Wednesday, The Downtown kiosk, once situated in front of CVS, was driven away down Second Street SE. to be scrapped. |
Tuesday 4/15
Area shotputter headed to Olympics
Less than four months before the Summer Olympic Games open, NPR profiles one of America’s top medal hopes, Adam Nelson. “[O]ne of the greatest shotputters in U.S. history,” NPR reported on Monday, “[h]e is the only American track and field athlete to win a medal at every major outdoor championship since 2000, including Olympic silver medals in 2000 and 2004.” The Darden business student and Charlottesville resident recently passed on qualifying for the track and field indoor world championships because he was busy practicing for the Olympics on UVA’s campus.
Wednesday 4/16
Octagon Partners to build in Culpeper
 A year has passed, but Wednesday’s memorial service at UVA showed that the emotional wounds from last year’s shootings at Virginia Tech are still fresh. |
Condo sales plummeted in Albemarle last year, declining 66 percent, but Charlottesville-based Octagon Partners is betting that Culpeper’s downtown historic district will be different. The company is investing $10 million to remake a 1920s warehouse into a 22-condo complex, with retail space on the ground to boot. Prices for Waters Place will range from $243,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $489,000 for a three-bedroom penthouse. Developer J.P. Williamson, of “Lake Hollymead” fame, is a partner with Octagon.
Thursday 4/17
UVA holds memorial service for Virginia Tech
The first anniversary of the Tech shootings was commemorated yesterday by a memorial service that featured speeches by Student Council President Matt Schrimper and Patricia Lampkin, vice president for student affairs. “It was a tragedy not in some far-off spot of the world or unknown area of the country, but one that involved, for many of us, people we knew and a place that we knew,” said Lampkin, according to UVA Today.
Friday 4/18
State launches wine distribution company
Yesterday, Virginia launched a state-subsidized wine distribution company to help small vineyards in the state, reports The Washington Post. Since a 2005 federal court ruled that they could no longer distribute their own wines, small winemakers have struggled. “If it works really well and smoothly, it should be almost as good as direct distribution,” Lew Parker, owner of Willowcroft Farm Vineyards in Loudoun County, tells the Post.
Saturday 4/19
NBC29 goes hi-def!
Think that the carefully combed coiffure of NBC29 weekend anchor Matt Talhelm seemed particularly crisp at 6pm? In a press release issued hours before the premiere, NBC29 announced that the station would unveil Central Virginia’s first local news broadcast in high definition digital video, the culmination of five years of work and $3 million. No longer will you lament a vaguely fuzzy screen while getting the weather from Eric Pritchett or David Rogers! Your screen’s resolution will be sharper than reporter Henry Graff.
Sunday 4/20
Times reveals hasty origins of AccessUVA
Apparently, AccessUVA wasn’t a premeditated work, The New York Times reports today. An article details an October 2003 Board of Visitors meeting where UVA President John Casteen was handed a press clipping on UNC’s decision to cover the full cost for students whose families earned less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. The Times writes, “The program touched a nerve with Mr. Casteen,” the son of a shipyard worker. During the meeting, he ordered financial aid staff to put together an even better program, which was announced four months later at the next BOV meeting.
Monday 4/21
McDonough grabs some Earth Day press
Yesterday’s New York Times magazine, in its Green Issue, gives a nod to Charlottesville-based architectural visionary William McDonough’s “Cradle to Cradle” certification—a designation awarded to products that satisfy the philosophy, which McDonough is quoted summarizing thus: “Waste is basically stupid.” Vanity Fair’s current issue is also “green,” and includes a long profile of McDonough, calling him “a harbinger of a movement to redesign design itself.”
