Coiners Scrap Iron and Metal has been sold, Christina Mora reports for NBC 29. The Meade Avenue business, in its 101st year, is now owned by the Roanoke-based Cycle Systems, which is nearly as old. Cycle Systems has been on an acquisition binge in the past decade, snapping up scrap metal companies in Harrisonburg, Waynesboro, Staunton, Martinsville, Pulaski, and South Boston. Because the sale is private, it’s not known how much walking around money Preston Coiner has suddenly found himself with.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Monthly Archive for September, 2008
UVa has finally built a new dorm, the first of seven long-promised new ones, Katie Bo writes in today’s Cavalier Daily. The university has had a housing shortage for the last half decade, pushing students out to rent houses, which drives up the cost of housing in Charlottesville. The Kellogg dorm has such new-fangled technology as air conditioning, elevators, and the internets. It’s a start, but it’s not like others are following close on its heels: the plans for the next one won’t even be finished until next year.
Well, this seems bad:
An engineering firm has nearly doubled the estimated cost of a dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, prompting officials to halt design work on a project intended to supply drinking water to the region for the next 50 years.
Gannett Fleming — the firm tasked with the project’s design, engineering and construction — hiked the original $37 million cost estimate to $70 million largely because of fractured and weathered rock at the site of the future dam. Local officials then sought a second study from Schnabel Engineering, which concluded that the project could be done for $56.5 million or less.
Brandon Shulleeta explains in the Progress that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is putting together a panel to review the two studies and figure out what to do. Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply Plan are thrilled, saying that this is makes clearer than ever that it would be cheaper to just dredge the South Fork. The trick is that we’re not trying to provide water for everybody who lives here, but also everybody who might move here between now and 2058. Growth is expensive, and it’s the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia has become the central repository for human knowledge, but Charlottesville isn’t very well represented. Many of the basic historical figures and central geographic locations of our area are only given a cursory description, if they’re listed at all. There are predictably informative and lengthy entries for Thomas Jefferson, UVa, DMB, etc. But there’s nothing at all about the Jefferson School, the Charlottesville Pavilion, Barracks Road, or our own mayor (for instance). And the entries for the Downtown Mall, WINA, the Daily Progress, CHO, Lane High School, The Corner, and the Southwest Mountains are pretty anemic. And given their profile, Ash Lawn-Highland and Montpelier should have way better entries.
I’ve made a list of a bunch of entries that I’d like to create or improve, though no doubt folks can think of plenty more. It took two of us just a couple of days to create a decent entry for Paul Goodloe McIntire. I hope that y’all in the habit of contributing to Wikipedia will take a few minutes to add some information to local entries. And those of you who are new at this, I encourage you to give it a try: just click on the “edit this page” link at the top of any one of those entries, add any information that you think should be there, and save your changes. (See Wikipedia’s guide to editing a page.) Collectively, I’m sure that we all know enough about the area’s history to make a considerable contribution to its chronicling.
The feature story in the current C-Ville is Jayson Whitehead on the largely invisible latino minority in Charlottesville, a group that I’m happy to see written about. Whitehead focuses on the legal and social hardship aspects of immigration—legal and illegal—and writes quite a bit about the far-right Albemarle County Republican Party and their position on immigration. (The party chair says he totally agrees with Rep. Virgil Goode about everything; Goode got all upset about Mexican restaurants displaying the Mexican flag just last year, and that’s the least of his opposition to immigration, legal and otherwise.) The latino population remains relatively small, but as it grows, so too will immigration as an issue in Charlottesville and Albemarle.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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