Kuttner May Build Affordable Housing

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 10, 2007 in Development. 25 Comments

In last week’s C-Ville Weekly, Will Goldsmith wrote about Oliver Kuttner’s planned work on the old Central Fidelity bank. In it, Oliver says that he’s considering doing something audacious:

Kuttner wants several floors of retail by opening up the basement as a courtyard along the side street and creating a second floor of retail fronting the Mall. He plans four apartments above the retail in a first phase of redevelopment. The second phase will be a larger structure closer to Water Street that nears the nine-storey limit, which will contain either a 72-room hotel–or affordable apartments at around $500 a month.

$500 apartments on the Downtown Mall? That’s awesome. Oliver would be a minor hero if he did that.

(Via Dave Norris)

New Site: Richmond Sunlight

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 10, 2007 in Law and Justice. 13 Comments

Please excuse a quick self plug. I launched a new site yesterday, Richmond Sunlight, that makes it simple to keep up with the General Assembly. Their 2007 session started today, and they’ll carry on for the next 45 days. The site is blog-like and heavily collaborative: you can post your thoughts about a bill in the form of comments, vote on whether or not you think a bill should pass, pingback from a blog, tag bills with relevant keywords, etc. Take it for a spin. I hope you find it useful.

The 4,612 Things Stolen in C’ville Last Year

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 8, 2007 in Crime. 13 Comments

The Daily Progress Rob Seal reported yesterday on some of the items reported stolen to Charlottesville police in 2006, revealing that some mighty unusual things are stolen each year.

The Charlottesville Police Department was kind enough to provide me with a copy of this list, and I reproduce it here for your listening and dancing pleasure. It makes for some bizarrely fascinating reading. I don’t know what’s weirder: that some of these things are stolen, or that anybody bothers to call the police to report them. If I had some more time on my hands, I’d keyword these and turn them into a tag cloud.

Continue reading ‘The 4,612 Things Stolen in C’ville Last Year’

Martha Jeff Hopes for a Quiet Departure

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 8, 2007 in Business and Development. 3 Comments

Martha Jefferson Hospital is due to move out of downtown in a few years, consolidating all of their operations up on Pantops, and they’re hoping to keep the neighborhood from hating them for it. Brian McNeill writes in today’s Daily Progress about what is permitted to replace the hospital under zoning regulations, what might end up there, and how it could affect the neighborhood. The whole area has developed around the hospital for the past 80 years; it’s going to be awfully tough to find something else to go in there that won’t radically disrupt the human settlement and usage patterns of what will long be known as the Martha Jefferson neighborhood.

Lowest Unemployment in the Nation

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 7, 2007 in Business. 13 Comments

Charlottesville has tied for third place with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation in an analysis of November employment data. We’re at 2.1%, with Fargo, ND (1.7%) and Logan, UT (2%) coming in ahead of us. We tied with Billings, MT.

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