We’re now almost a quarter of the way through our highly selective tour through the past 20 years of local news and arts in C-VILLE. And we’ve started to notice a trend: The more things change, the more they stay the same—at least in the past decade or so. The Cavaliers get a new basketball coach and property is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. That’s the news this week—and the news from a few years back, too. Whether it’s a new wrinkle on a familiar tale, or something old that sounds new (wine from Hungary, anyone?), stay tuned. All year long we will continue to look back at the accumulated pluck and provocations that will power this free and freethinking institution into the next 20 years.
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Paging through the archives
“But while development continues on 29N, many existing structures remain vacant in and around Charlottesville. A scan by C-VILLE of empty buildings in the area found 1,199,088 square feet of unused space…. With abundant real estate in locations like the former supermarket across from the Omni Hotel and the Boxer Learning building on the Downtown Mall, why are developers skipping the empty spaces and choosing to break new ground on 29N?
“The answer, according to Ivo Romenesko, a professional real estate agent, president of the Appraisal Group, and chairman-elect of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, is population and job growth in Albemarle County.
“‘Over 80 percent of all major retailing is located along that 29 corridor,’ Romenesko says. ‘We’re going to see a continuation of that trend.’
“Additionally, the most practical means of development along roads like 29N is to merely knock down an existing Radio Shack or Home Depot and erect a new building, since strip mall and big box retail spaces are relatively cheap and simple to bulldoze and build.”
Paul Fain, December 9, 2003
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Getting covered
Four years gone by and the story is rather unchanged over at the UVA men’s basketball program. In our March 22, 2005 issue Eric Hoover examined the events leading to the ouster of coach Pete Gillen, which itself led the way to…the ouster of Dave Leitao: “As expectations soared, the men’s basketball team turned into an annual overhyped and underachieving enigma. Over six seasons, the Hoos won some big games, nearly all of them at University Hall. On the road, they piled up a heap of excruciating defeats: blowout losses, close losses, losses that inspired new cuss words. Throughout the Commonwealth, a generation of televisions bit the dust on game days, and Gillen went from genius to goat.
“This season, the coach who once remarked that Duke basketball was on TV more than ‘Leave It To Beaver’ re-runs found himself trapped in the same bad episode—the one in which his team displays moments of brilliance, then ties itself to the tracks before a freight train of an ACC foe plows through it. The Hoos became a book of basketball mysteries, whose chapters included ‘Who Guarded the In-Bounds Play?’ and ‘The Purloined Pass.’”
