With a wing named for him since 1936, the UVA hospital honors a man who was fundamental in the university’s eugenics movement, and perhaps best known for his popular address titled “The American Negro: His Past and Future,” in which he argued that African Americans benefited from slavery. A group of local activists wants his […]
Devoted Audi owner Deborah Wyatt was set to buy her third car from Flow Automotive in Charlottesville in August—until she was presented with a separate arbitration agreement after signing the sales contract. Arbitration agreements, which are more often part of banking or credit card terms, are usually designed to block your ability to sue in […]
New contender for America’s Dad? Senator Tim Kaine stopped by his campaign office in York Place September 21 for a pizza party with nearly three dozen University of Virginia Democrats. Supporters passed around campaign signs that said “America’s Dad,” although Kaine may have some competition for the title—a spokesman for Bill Cosby told reporters recently […]
What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, the housing bubble had burst, the hottest area in real estate was foreclosures, and the Downtown Mall was littered with vacancies. Today, the county development scene is “white hot,” according to Albemarle Director of Community Development Mark Graham, and in the city, Director of Economic Development […]
It’s not just bad driving that has caused nearly 1 million Virginians’ licenses to be suspended. Failure to pay court costs—often unrelated to being behind the wheel at all—has put indigent citizens in a downward spiral of debt, unemployment, and incarceration, according to a civil suit filed by the Legal Aid Justice Center two years […]
‘United by beer’ City boosters and brewmasters have come together to blaze the Charlottesville Ale Trail, a two-mile stretch they’re calling the premier urban and pedestrian beer trail in Virginia. The six stops along the way are Random Row Brewing Co., Brasserie Saison, South Street Brewery, Champion Brewing Company, Three Notch’d Craft Kitchen & Brewery, […]
After months of thousands of community members urging the authority board at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail to stop voluntarily reporting the release dates of undocumented immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the board held a special meeting September 13 to take a revote on that policy. At the local jail, and every jail in […]
When there’s a weather disaster in the forecast, Jerry Stenger is on everyone’s speed dial. We didn’t catch up with the director of the State Climatology Office at UVA until yesterday afternoon, and even though Hurricane Florence has shifted south, here are his predictions for the storm—and tips on what to eat. “For us, the […]
At a meeting in late August, members of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority’s board of directors voted to add $7 million to its budget to install part of a controversial water pipeline in Albemarle, even though just a month before, they said they had no plans to start building it. Critics say the $7 […]
By Jonathan Haynes Charlottesville residents are again losing their patience with irregular deliveries from the United States Postal Service. Conan Owen, owner of Relax and Rejuvenate on Arlington Boulevard, says he has repeatedly experienced gaps in service over the past year. “They’re skipping the building entirely,” he says. Owen says the delays have disrupted his […]
By Melissa Moody This is a story about numbers. The number of families currently served by public housing and rental assistance vouchers: 826. The number of people on the waitlist for public housing or assistance: 1,866. The number of units Charlottesville needs to serve low-income residents: 3,975—or 20 percent of the city’s housing supply—in a […]
The usually staid UVA institution devoted to the study of the U.S. presidency has recently found itself mired in controversy, first with the hiring of Trump administrator Marc Short, and then with the August 31 resignation of Miller Center board member Fred Scott—and the revelation of resignations of two other unnamed board members because of […]
A Forest Lakes woman who pleaded guilty to child cruelty in May for neglecting more than a dozen kids at an unlicensed daycare will serve two years in jail. “I would like to publicly apologize to all the parents,” said a tearful Kathy Yowell-Rohm, before a judge pronounced her sentence September 7 in Albemarle Circuit […]
County boots Trump chicken Albemarle County said the state of emergency declared for the August 11-12 weekend was still in effect after Indivisible Charlottesville brought an inflatable chicken with a Trump-like coif to its August 28 Flip the 5th demonstration in front of the County Office Building. Police declared the lawn off limits and parking […]
In an August 30 motions hearing in Charlottesville Circuit Court, a judge heard arguments for why a three-week first-degree murder trial for the man charged with driving a Dodge Challenger into a crowd on Fourth Street last summer should be moved out of the city. Defendant James Fields, who wore a black-and-white-striped jail jumpsuit and […]
Public meetings held by elected officials in Charlottesville no longer go uninterrupted. But last night’s Albemarle County School Board meeting in which six people were arrested and one was hospitalized was a meeting of a different breed. For about a year, the Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County has pressured the school board to reexamine […]
Developer Keith Woodard has abandoned his plan to build a $50 million castle of downtown luxury condos and retail space on a city-owned Water Street parking lot. “The project was a tremendous undertaking, and over time, the process of obtaining the necessary approvals became very difficult and at times adversarial, causing continual delays and uncertainty,” […]
It’s about crime The Albemarle County Police Department released its annual crime report for 2017 in June, and while we already published some of the most striking statistics, here’s what else caught our eye. Between the years of 2016 and 2017, crimes rates increased in all but one category. The largest increases were in homicide […]
The two young men handed lengthy prison sentences last week for their involvement in the August 12, 2017, brutal parking garage beating of DeAndre Harris sat in stark contrast to one another in Charlottesville Circuit Court. One’s remorse was hard to miss. Jacob Goodwin, the Arkansas man who can be seen in videos wearing full […]
The lights were off and the door was locked in Shreya Mahadevan’s fourth-grade classroom at Johnson Elementary School. Small bodies huddled quietly behind a wall of backpacks—their teacher in tears. “It was really scary. Petrifying,” says the 9-year-old girl about the lockdown her school was under last October, when a man in nearby Johnson Village […]
At the first felony sentencing from last year’s violent Unite the Right rally, a judge on August 21 ordered a Maryland Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader to serve four years in prison for firing a gun at flamethrower-wielding Corey Long after an unlawful assembly had been declared. Richard Wilson Preston, […]
Korte sentenced to 12 months With a handful of UVA colleagues sitting in the courtroom, film studies professor Walter Korte, 74, was sentenced to five years in prison with all but 12 months suspended after pleading guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography. Korte was busted in August 2016 when he was spotted […]
Police called unlawful assemblies last summer after the KKK rally and before the Unite the Right event began. This summer, it appeared Charlottesville had gotten through the August 12 anniversary weekend without the declaring of any unlawful assemblies—but that wasn’t the case. At the August 11 UVA rally—after students had moved their protest to Brooks […]