City Council candidate Mike Signer stood before the skeletal Landmark Hotel, an unwelcome landmark on the Downtown Mall since 2009, and quoted the graffiti scrawled on its boarded up side: “We’re fed up.” And he promised to explore all legal actions for resolving the situation, including eminent domain. Flanked by fellow Dem candidates Kathy Galvin […]
As part of a national campaign called Imagine a Day Without Water, members from the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, Albemarle County Service Authority and City of Charlottesville set up booths last week on the Downtown Mall and asked passersby to describe the many ways they use water. Making tea, brushing teeth, filling water balloons […]
General contractor Martin Horn has been generating its own energy for months with an array of rooftop solar panels, and the company just gave passersby a new energy-saver to ogle. Martin Horn had already installed 82 grid-tied solar panels that produce 260 watts each, enough to run the office most of the time. In September, […]
The Albemarle Board of Supervisors snatched victory from the jaws of a 223-acre growth area expansion and approved the addition of only 35 acres south of the Interstate 64/U.S. 29 interchange to the comprehensive plan’s development area at a September 23 special meeting. When the supes last met [...]
The Brooks Family YMCA has been in the works since 2006 and secured a ground lease from the city to build in McIntire Park in 2008. Seven years later, the still-unbuilt facility faces continued opposition from members of the Charlottesville City Council as amendments to the ground lease were [...]
Story updated September 16 More than 30 citizens voiced their opposition to a change to the county’s comprehensive plan that would expand its southern growth area at the Interstate 64/U.S. 29 interchange, with a couple quoting the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel (“People hearing without [...]
People living around the property at the Interstate 64/U.S. 29 interchange, which the Albemarle Board of Supervisors is considering adding to the growth area to attract a West Coast brewery, are circulating a petition to slow the process. “We started being concerned about a factory across the [...]
After the Albemarle Planning Commission unanimously said no way to expanding the growth area at the Interstate 64 and U.S. 29 interchange August 18, the lines have been drawn between those who are shocked the county is hastily trying to amend its comprehensive plan to attract a West Coast [...]
U.S. citizenship meant a new beginning for Tilahun Goshu and his family—one where they would no longer live in fear and they could begin building their dream home, which Goshu envisioned being passed down to his children and his children’s children. But no sooner than he moved into his new [...]
If you only know one thing about the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, it’s probably that its tagline is “Beneath The Art Box.” This hints at the rich history of underground presses but also provides a literal reminder to help geolocate the community printmaking studio in its off-the-radar [...]
The preservation of Albemarle County’s rural beauty can directly be attributed to its comprehensive plan, the holy grail of where development can occur and where it may not. That’s why some are surprised the Board of Supervisors is fast tracking an amendment that moves 223 acres [...]
The controversial development that puts a Fairfield Inn on the corner of Ridge Street and Cherry Avenue, nixed by the Planning Commission 5-0 and rejected by more than 500 petition-signing residents, got a 3-2 go-ahead from City Council July 21. The Southern Development project was in front of [...]
The darling of 21st-century community design is the “planned unit development,” which typically combines commercial and residential for high-density, pedestrian friendly living. So when the developer of the already controversial William Taylor Plaza PUD told City Council July 6 there was no [...]
The Fifth Street development project, now known as 5th Street Station, is soon to be a big box retail sanctuary with almost half a million square feet of space, an abundance of parking and a buffet of popular brands—and it only took about two decades to build on this historically sought-after [...]
The mixed-use residential complex going up on West Main and 10th streets now has an official name: Uncommon. And the developers have a description of the type of people they hope will live there. “Uncommoners are trendsetters who don’t try too hard,” the development’s website says, but this hip [...]
For a city its size, Charlottesville has a truly amazing collection of world-class statuary. Standing at Court Square and two nearby parks, bookending West Main Street and of course liberally sprinkled across the UVA Grounds, they remind passersby of the Old Dominion’s leaders and heroes. Four [...]
For lovers of independent movies and vino, the construction of the Violet Crown Cinema and wine bar in the former Regal theater space on the Downtown Mall is a sign of good things to come, but for nearby small businesses along the mall and the Second Street crossing, the ongoing street closure [...]
On May 12, the Charlottesville Planning Commission will chew over the next chapter in a decades-old development story as Charlie Armstrong, vice president of Southern Development, pitches the latest zoning amendment request for the company’s property at the corner of Ridge Street and Cherry [...]
When Donald Trump and his son Eric bought former billionaire Patricia Kluge’s 45-room mansion in 2012, completing a $12.7 million takeover of her 776-acre county estate, the younger mogul hinted it could become a boutique inn for the adjacent Trump Winery. Now those plans are coming to fruition [...]
Documents acquired from the city via a Freedom of Information Act request are shedding more light on the possible grounds for downtown developer Mark Brown’s lawsuit against property appraiser Ivo Romenesko. Last August, Brown bought the Charlottesville Parking Center, LLC (CPC), which owns the [...]
Developer and businessman Mark Brown’s takeover of the company that controls most of the public parking in downtown Charlottesville last August was the sale of the summer, but the saga of the Charlottesville Parking Center acquisition isn’t over. Last week, Brown filed suit against appraiser [...]
Plans for a downtown business district funded by a 13-cent tax on properties on and near the Downtown Mall have been put on hold after numerous property owners objected. But proponents of a Community Improvement District (CID), researched and proposed by a committee of Downtown Business [...]
When Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones began the ceremony to mark the opening of the final segment of the John W. Warner Parkway and the intersection that ties the road to the city’s downtown last Thursday, February 5, he couldn’t help driving home just how long locals had been waiting [...]