A bug’s life: Cicada emergence is a mysterious, massive phenomenon
Sachin Gadani and a few friends recently spent a weekend combing Charlottesville for cicadas. The UVA MD-PhD graduate student is head of the University’s entomology club, and he and several fellow amateur bug lovers haven’t had to look hard to find the first local representatives of one of the greatest spectacles of the insect world: [...]
Fake ID trio remanded; feds say Rugby house held $1.3 million in cash
All three Charlottesville residents arrested last week for allegedly manufacturing thousands of fake IDs will remain in jail for the foreseeable future after each waived the right to a bail hearing in federal court Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, details continue to emerge about the raid on a Rugby Road house that led to their arrests, including [...]
As dome nears completion, a new chapter begins for Rotunda
Jody Lahendro has led a lot of curious locals up the 61′ of creaking scaffolding that has surrounded UVA’s Rotunda for a year. Most recently, it was a group that had won a private tour at an auction to raise money for the iconic structure’s ongoing renovation. Once the visitors emerged at the lip of [...]
When a MOOC is more than a MOOC: How online learning is shifting the academic goalposts at UVA
Lou Bloomfield is behind on his correspondence. A teetering stack of letters and postcards sits on the desk of the UVA physics professor, creator of the much-loved undergraduate science-for-non-science-majors course “How Things Work.” They’re all from students, and full of praise and thanks. He’s met none of them. “I really want to be able to [...]
Bright young things: UVA’s self-directed synthetic biology stars
Ask some of the newest members of UVA’s International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition team why they plan to spend the summer in a lab on Grounds splicing DNA, and they have a tendency to talk over one another in their eagerness to explain. “It’s undergraduate research, but we’re not treated like undergraduates,” said 19-year-old Josh [...]
Idea, inc.: Darden’s iLab incubator opens its doors to entrepreneurs from UVA and beyond
What do a seven-millimeter-thick portable speaker, a blood-sampling catheter designed to mimic a mosquito’s proboscis, and habanero-pineapple hot sauce have in common? They’re all destined for the Darden School of Business, three of more than two dozen business ideas from a group of entrepreneurs who will form the first class to go through UVA’s new [...]
What’s coming up in Charlottesville and Albemarle the week of 5/13?
Each week, the news team takes a look at upcoming meetings and events in Charlottesville and Albemarle we think you should know about. Consider it a look into our datebook, and be sure to share newsworthy happenings in the comments section. The Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association is hosting a candidates’ forum for the Democrats running for [...]
UPDATED: Details emerge following fake ID ring raid
This is an updated version of a story that ran last Wednesday, shortly after the three Charlottesville residents arrested earlier in the week for manufacturing fake IDs appeared in court for the first time. Secret surveillance at the Charlottesville post office. Swapped license plates. Luxury cars paid for in cash. A stockpile of money and [...]
UPDATE: Three arrested in suspected fake ID ring appear in court
Three fraud ring suspects arrested earlier this week following a massive raid of a Rugby Road house are in custody after an initial appearance in federal court Wednesday morning. Alan McNeil Jones, 31, Kelly Erin McPhee, 31, and Mark G. Bernardo, 26, suspected of running a fake ID ring, were charged Monday night after heavily [...]
Two arrested, one at large following Rugby Road fake ID raid
Two Charlottesville residents suspected of manufacturing fake IDs are in custody and one is at large after a Monday night raid on a house near UVA. Kelly Erin McPhee, 31, and Mark G. Bernardo, both of Charlottesville, were arrested by federal agents executing a search warrant at 920 Rugby Road, according to Brian P. McGinn, [...]
Anatomy of an eviction: The Parrish family and the city’s public housing debate
When 50 members of the Public Housing Association of Residents and their supporters marched up the Downtown Mall last week to protest recent efforts by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) and its director, Constance Dunn, to raise rents and make it easier for the agency to evict those who don’t pay, Janelle Parrish [...]
County sees turnaround on capital expansion
When the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted last week to push ahead with a plan to spend $11.8 million to turn an old building supply warehouse into the new home of the Northside Library, it added to a growing list of capital projects planned in the county for the next five to 10 years. [...]
Monticello makeover: $10 million gift brings goal of total restoration into view
Before another month gets torn off the calendar, the leading lights of Monticello will sit down together to discuss a task every nonprofit dreams of facing: How exactly they’re going to go about spending $10 million. It’s a conversation made possible by David Rubenstein, a co-founder of Washington, D.C. financial firm the Carlyle Group, who [...]
Tourism, tech, and the race to brand Charlottesville
At the start of the Tom Tom Founders Festival two weekends ago, a crowd filled The Haven on First and Market to rehash a question that Charlottesville loves to ask, but rarely manages to answer: Who are we? The “Aspen vs. Austin vs. Arlington” debate pitted several concepts of place against one another. Should the [...]
Anatomy of a hack: Examining Root The Box’s attack on UVA’s website
Last week’s high-profile defacing of UVA’s website may not have led to a serious security breach, despite threats of e-mail infiltration and stolen data by two hackers calling themselves “Root the Box” who took to Twitter to boast and threaten during a 24-hour battle with University Information Technology Services. But it definitely got peoples’ attention—in [...]
Judge says state devalued Biscuit Run property
An Albemarle judge has handed a big win to developers in the battle over Biscuit Run, ruling last week that the state under-appraised the 1,200-acre parcel south of Charlottesville by $45 million in a deal that traded tax credits for development rights. “This is a huge victory,” said Craig Bell, attorney for Forest Lodge, LLC, [...]
Brain in a Jar: Author of book on family’s experience with Alzheimer’s comes to Charlottesville
Virginia is deep in writer Nancy Bercaw’s blood. Her mother and father both grew up on family farms in central Virginia, her mother in Culpeper, her father near Palmyra. Like all his brothers, her dad, Beauregard Lee Bercaw, attended UVA. While he was in medical school there, his father began deteriorating. The disease he had [...]
Alleged Elks Lodge shooter indicted, cop cleared of criminal wrongdoing
A grand jury has indicted the man police say shot another Elks Lodge reveller on March 16 before being shot twice by a city cop. According to court records, Franklin Donnett Brown, 56, of Albemarle, was indicted on one count of malicious wounding for shooting Leon Travis Brock, 22, of Culpeper County, and one count of using a [...]
Big bang theory: Residents say blasting for critical airport project is damaging properties
“That’s a beautiful view,” Melanie Crawford said, staring out the windshield of a white pickup truck that had just come to a stop in the red dirt at the end of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport runway. She wasn’t looking at the Blue Ridge in the distance, but at the earth-moving activity in front of her. Crawford, [...]
UVA rebuilds its communications department, hands Sullivan the reins
As the first anniversary of the attempted ouster of UVA President Teresa Sullivan approaches, a major restructuring of the upper levels of the University’s administration is underway, as still-new Chief Operating Officer Patrick Hogan reshuffles his business and fundraising chiefs. But an even bigger management shift has gotten less attention. Sullivan has reorganized, renamed, and [...]
UVA Nursing’s $5 million gift and the future of higher-ed funding
UVA School of Nursing Dean Dorrie Fontaine had been on the job six weeks when she was told she was losing $1 million from her budget. It was 2008. State funding had been declining for years, and the financial crisis was delivering heavy blows to UVA’s endowment. The school’s only option was to take an [...]
Precedent is against petitioners who want to dump Dumler
The petition to remove Albemarle County Supervisor Chris Dumler from office went before a judge for the first time last week, but the effort to force out the Scottsville representative faces an uphill battle. The petition effort, spearheaded by Scottsville resident Earl Smith, invoked a little-known statute of the Virginia code that allows residents to [...]
Woolen Hills? City Walk development bringing big changes
It’s a few minutes before the lunch rush at Beer Run, and from a table near the front of their restaurant, stepbrothers and co-owners Josh Hunt and John Woodriff can see a line of white contractor’s pickups parked along Carlton Avenue, and behind it, a mountain of red dirt rearing up where just weeks ago [...]
To the races: Dems file for contested Charlottesville City Council primary
With last Thursday’s filing deadline behind us, the slate of candidates for the June 11 Democratic primary race for Charlottesville City Council is set. Only one incumbent is running in a five-way campaign for two open seats—Dave Norris will not run again—so Council is guaranteed to see some new blood next year, and changes to [...]
Petition to remove Dumler from office gets April 2 hearing
The petition to remove Albemarle County Supervisor Chris Dumler from office will be scrutinized in court next Tuesday, despite the fact that the Office of the Registrar has yet to verify the more than 580 signatures gathered by opponents of the embattled official, who plead guilty to misdemeanor sexual battery earlier this year after being [...]
Cab wars: Why new taxi technology is making some drivers mad
When Downtown Mall landlord Mark Brown bought Yellow Cab and Anytime Taxi last year, he created Charlottesville’s largest round-the-clock cab company, and started making big changes right away: a fleet of sleek new hybrid cars, an app that lets customers book rides via Web and smartphone, and credit card swipe machines that make it easy [...]
Family continues to fight for cemetery in the path of the Western Bypass
When Erica Caple James visited Charlottesville three years ago, the MIT anthropology professor was here to talk about the cultural impacts of the loss of the bodies of the victims of Haiti’s 1991 coup d’état. Two weeks ago, she was back, again to speak on behalf of the dead. But this time it was much more [...]