The Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review says that the demolished Victory Shoes façade has to be restored, Liz Palka reports for CBS-19. It was illegally demolished last month, with property manager Bill Rice and building owner Joe H. Gieck claiming (implausibly) that they had no idea that a permit was required to demolish the façade of a historic structure. The BAR is pissed off, and has ordered them to set it back the way it was. In what sounds like a lucky stroke for the duo, somebody called the BAR to say that they’d removed the curved glass portion of the storefront, rather than allow it to be destroyed, and they’re willing to give it back. Gieck is going back before the BAR next month with a proposed storefront, one that’s premised on the restoration of the old one.
Monthly Archive for December, 2009
Page 5 of 8
A second stab at satire from The Hook, this time about smoking in restaurants. #
The Rutherford Institute thinks that Rep. Tom Perriello should move his office to a more protestable location, Brian McNeill writes in today’s Progress.. As Lisa Provence explains in The Hook’s cover story this week, angry protesters are intimidating patrons of neighboring businesses, insisting that they have every right to protest on private property, and complaining that the sidewalk next to the building isn’t close enough for their liking. (Let’s all pause to consider the irony of property rights advocate insisting that they have a right to protest on private property.) Rutherford president John Whitehead says that when the congressman’s lease expires on the space in a year, he should move to a location that is friendlier to protestors. Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression president Bob O’Neil thinks that it’s possible that it would be a good thing for Perriello to do that, but has to wonder what location this could possibly be.
So, let’s figure this out. Who can think of a privately-owned building that leases a space appropriate for a congressman’s regional district office, that’s surrounded by public land, located in a more popular and well-trafficked part of the city than this one (two blocks off the Downtown Mall), but has no neighboring offices, businesses, or residences, and has rent that’s low enough that anti-government protestors won’t complain about it? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
A UVA project has virtually recreated Vinegar Hill in its heyday, the university writes in a press release. (If you’re not from here: Vinegar Hill was a large, mostly black neighborhood around the McIntire/Main intersection that was demolished by the city for “urban renewal.” The city relocated people from their own homes into public housing.) Undergraduates researched archival records to look at who owned property, when and how it changed hands, what it was appraised for, where people went after they lost their homes, and lots of similar information, combining it all into a series of visualizations fronted by a website called The Vinegar Hill Project. I’ve spent a while exploring this website, and it’s just a treasure trove of data, veritable infoporn for local history buffs. Set aside an hour to pore over this site.
It’s a shame that the historical society is too stuffy to do this kind of thing. They prohibited their last executive director from blogging.
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