The city will reveal the name of Charlottesville’s newest park on Friday, April 27 at noon, during an Arbor Day Celebration in which Mayor David Brown will unveil the park’s new sign. The celebration will take place at the park, which is next to the recycling center on McIntire Road. The park includes a walk/ bike path, which runs from Preston Avenue to the C’ville Coffee shopping plaza, as well as an Art-In-Place sculpture garden and lush greenery. Schenck’s Branch creek also runs through the park, and has been monitored and cleaned up by The Living Education Center for the past six years. The new park should (more)

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Nearly three years after an arson destroyed the main building of the Skyline Parkway Motor Court, the structure has been demolished. It came down on Wednesday, April 18, according to owner Phil Dulaney.

“I’ve gone from 11 buildings to eight, and I hope to get down to three soon,” says Dulaney. “It’s just a lengthy, expensive process.”

Dulaney explains that pre-demolition asbestos abatement on that one structure cost $44,000, which burned in July 2004. He had two other buildings, two of what have been dubbed “the cabins,” razed in December, and he hopes to demolish five more in the next five months.

Next on the hit list: more cabins and the abandoned whitewashed brick gift shop. What will survive are the gas station, the long-shuttered HoJo’s restaurant, and the stone-foundationed building that houses the Rockfish Gap Tourist Information Center.

Center volunteer John Wright welcomes the bulldozers. Although the collection of buildings recalls the pre-Interstate 64 era, the dilapidated conditions have shocked more than a few hikers coming off the nearby Appalachian Trail. “They call it Baghdad,” says Wright. “That’s how bad it looks.”

Dulaney, who eventually plans to invest millions redeveloping the site, says he hopes to break ground on something new in about three years.

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Embattled NBC29 anchor– er, make that former anchor– Kristina Cruise suffers the latest slight in her fall from grace for talking to the Hook– although sources familiar with Channel 29 say station management had long intended to replace her on the news at noon and 5pm to make way for new anchor Sharon Gregory.

As recently as April 19, Cruise still greeted viewers on the banner along with fellow anchors Mark O’Brien, Laura French, Shane Edinger, Steve Rappaport, and Crystal Cameron.

Today, however, it’s Gregory who is firmly lodged in the middle of the NBC29 talking heads. Cruise reportedly was suspended four days and demoted to reporter after being sent home April 9.

When contacted by the Hook last week to see how she fared after being unceremoniously demoted, Cruise said she’d ask station management if she could talk to us. Not surprisingly, that was the last we heard.

So far, her biography still identifies her as an anchor. Gregory comes from another Waterman Broadcasting station, ABC7 in Florida.
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Charlottesville Mayor David Brown will announce his plans to seek reelection to City Council tomorrow at 10am in front of City Hall.

The Democrat was elected to office four years ago with fellow newcomer Kendra Hamilton and veteran Kevin Lynch, neither of whom will run in November. Brown broke tradition by taking the mayoral mantle as a freshman councilor, and then again by taking an unprecedented— at least since the days of Frank Buck— second two-year term as mayor.

Also aspiring to the three open City Council seats are former planning chief Satyendra Huja, attorney Jennifer McKeever, nurse/activist Holly Edwards, and former city School Board chair Linda Seaman. All seek the Democratic nomination, which will be decided at the mass meeting on Saturday, June 2.
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Beginning last Wednesday, April 18, motorists crossing the Downtown Mall at 2nd and 4th streets were approached by clipboard-carrying men in yellow safety vests asking questions. No, it wasn’t the FBI. They were employees of RK & K Consulting who were conducting a three-day Mall crossing survey.

With the one-year anniversary of the trial 4th street crossing coming up, the City is collecting data to determine how the crossings are used and if the 4th street crossing should be permanent (actually, 5th street east would be the permanent home of the 4th street crossing), a decision that is expected this summer, says development watchdog Charlottesville Tomorrow. As detailed in numerous Hook stories, the Mall crossings have been a contentious issue over the years.

According to RK & K’s Brian Revels, this is the fourth survey the company has done, including one last August. He says they will survey between 300 to 400 drivers this time around and report the results to the City in about a month. (more)

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The woman who came up with the idea of sweetening sermons about global warming with free Sheryl Crow concerts apparently left the stage of the Pavilion last Thursday and burst into tears.

Laurie David, creator of Stop Global Warming, producer of the Al Gore hit, An Inconvenient Truth, and wife of Seinfeld/Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David, writes “Social change is a journey” on the Huffington Post about her 20-minute talk at the “gorgeous Charlottesville pavilion” in front of “a couple of thousand slightly inebriated college men” waiting for the free Robert Randolph concert. Her buddy, Crow, was unable to make the Charlottesville stop.

“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw guys yawning. I heard kids saying, ‘Where’s the music? and I think I heard the ‘b’ word,” laments David. She rushed through her speech and off the stage before bursting into tears, “not because I took anything personally, but because it was so clear how much work is still to be done.” (more)

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