Stopped light: Long wait at downtown signal triggers questions

On Water Street, buses regularly back up at a traffic light at Third Street SE that has the Water Street Parking Garage on one side and a half street dead-ending on the Downtown Mall on the other. Water Street traffic can idle at this light for nearly a minute, by this reporter’s count. The Charlottesville […]

Reservoir reservations: Critics still question Ragged Mountain plan

Perhaps nothing this century has shaken the Charlottesville area more than the drought of 2002, when carwashes closed, restaurants served on paper plates and the water supply was within 60 days of running out. And perhaps nothing has divided the community more than the multi-year battle waged over the plan to build a 129-foot-tall mega-dam […]

Downtown Charlottesville sees hotel boom

Between the Corner and downtown Charlottesville, five hotel projects are in the works—and that doesn’t include the recently opened Residence Inn on the corner of West Main Street and Ridge-McIntire Road, nor Graduate Charlottesville, which opened last year. City and tourism officials say this hotel-building frenzy is an economic windfall for the area and provides […]

Bank of America to close downtown branch

Bank of America is closing its location on the Downtown Mall February 17, branch customers learned by letter April 20. “What, we’re closing?” a teller there asked this morning when she heard a colleague inform a customer on the phone. Built in 1916, the structure was originally Peoples National Bank and has housed Virginia National Bank, Sovran […]

Density issue: Big apartments near Little High chafe residents

While official Charlottesville has embraced greater density and infill, some residents aren’t loving it, particularly when the density is happening in their neighborhood. That’s the case for plans for 124 units in the East Jefferson Apartments between 10th and 11th streets on a site that currently houses doctors offices. Developers are seeking a special permit […]

Future focus: What’s in store for Charlottesville?

What does the future hold? We examine what has happened in Charlottesville’s past and present to make some zany predictions about what could occur years down the road. But you know what they say: Fact is stranger than fiction. Developing our future Growth is always an issue in both Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and there’s no reason […]

How to spend $162 million: The city’s budget increases 3.5 percent

Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones presented his proposed budget for fiscal year 2017 to City Council on March 7. The $161,871,784 budget is a 3.5 percent increase over 2016’s fiscal year budget, which was approved at $156,391,435. The latest budget is Jones’ sixth version. “The biggest chunk is going to the schools,” he says, and […]

Nightmare on Water Street

Utilities relocation for Market Plaza had already closed the eastbound lane on Water Street and detoured traffic to South Street and Second Street SE, and when Second Street was also closed last week, many who park in the Water Street Garage were trapped in an extraordinarily long exit line March 3. “Staff met with [contractors] […]

Old and new: West Main complex keeps Blue Moon Diner

A new apartment complex is in the works for West Main, but the Board of Architectural Review has already ruled out tearing down some of the street’s oldest buildings to accommodate the building. Developer Jeff Levien says he would prefer to demolish Blue Moon Diner and the next-door convenience store and rebuild them, adding that Blue […]