Developer Wendell Wood.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

What’s going on across from Kegler’s on Route 29, you ask? Well, developer Wendell Wood is at it again, breaking ground on yet another development.

This one is called Northtown Center, a 190,000 square-foot complex of commercial and retail space on 16 acres, which was approved by the Albemarle County Planning Commission last June. Wood says the site will be anchored by a StellarOne bank, a Country Inns & Suites hotel, and a restaurant to be named later.

Wood originally wanted to bring a Home Depot to the site, but County planners nixed that idea over “critical slopes” issues, including concerns about burying a stream, a decision Wood tried to overturn by filing a lawsuit.

Eventually, however, Wood came back with the Northtown plan, which was approved after he agreed to protect the stream and install redundant systems to control stormwater and sediment that might affect the nearby Carrsbrook neighborhood.

In the end, Wood claims, Northtown will actually have more total square-footage than the Home Depot would have.

Once again, Wood’s legendary patience seems to (more)

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Colin Steers
PHOTO COURTESY OF BRAVOTV

It was over before it began. When Make Me a Supermodel contestant Kerryn got her walking papers last week, the writing was on the wall: nerd-a-licious local, Colin Steers, would be the next to go. Kerryn’s ouster meant innocent Colin’s lessons in Carnal Knowledge 101 would remain incomplete, and without the possibility of the Charlottesville virgin’s public deflowering on cable TV, the show’s producers could no longer justify keeping the modeling novice in the catwalking pack.

Furthering the dismal prognosis for Colin’s fate was his first camera confessional this week, in which he talked about how much he’d progressed and geekily made a graph with his arms, concluding, “I’m not going home this week— no, no.” Sigh. Reality TV Rule #6: Whichever contestant talks about “not going home” and (more)

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Former Mexican president Vicente Fox told an audience at UVA’s Darden School of Business that American backlash against illegal immigration and the outsourcing of jobs was, “not coherent with its founding ideas.”
PHOTO BY LINDSAY BARNES

In 2000, Vicente Fox famously became Mexico’s first president not belonging to the Institutional Revolutionary Party due in some part to his promotion of free-market capitalism and to a fortune made as an executive for the Coca-Cola Company. Nine years later, Fox is still preaching free trade, but he told an audience of hundreds at UVA’s Darden School of Business that Americans have become “xenophobic” toward his country to the point where it hurts the economic interests of both nations.

“We were told by America that trading was a win-win tool,” said Fox. “Now we have [the U.S.] saying ‘I have to build a wall. I don’t like outsourcing. Why should my job go overseas?’ The leader is not being coherent with its founding ideas.”

Fox returned to this theme of admiration for American ideals but criticism for the United States government’s decisions toward Mexico throughout his keynote address at the Darden School’s annual Latin American Student Association conference. For an hour, the Mexican president from 2000 through 2006 eschewed the podium and instead paced the stage at Abbott Auditorium, filling the room with his booming baritone.

Particularly troublesome to Fox was (more)

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Nelson County native Laura Burns snaps a photo of herself in the taxi that takes her to the airport.
PHOTO BY LAURA BURNS

Laura Burns didn’t realize how bad the swine flu epidemic was until her classes in Mexico City were canceled Friday, April 24. Even then, she thought it was just for one day.

“They canceled classes in all schools,” recounts Burns, a former Hook intern who’s doing graduate work in international relations at La Universidad Iberoamericana and who describes her adventure on her blog. “On Saturday, they announced they were canceled until May 6.”

She began hearing more on the news about the swine flu outbreak in the city of 8.8 million, and the news was getting more dramatic.

“The mayor started talking about canceling public transportation and suspending all activity,” she says. “I went out on Saturday night, and all the bars were closed. It was like a ghost town.”

By Sunday, April 26, Burns decided to return home to Charlottesville. She already (more)

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For many years, Charlottesvillians could shop at Peyton Pontiac on West Main Street, at this structure demolished in 2004.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

“I think it’s a pretty darn sad day,” says Carter Myers, owner of Charlottesville’s Colonial Auto Center, reacting to the news that General Motors is killing its Pontiac brand. “It’s about as unfortunate as what happened a few years back to Oldsmobile.”

At Colonial, where Pontiac constituted a small percentage of the eight-branded dealership’s total sales, Myers says it’s business as usual for parts, repairs, and— for at least a year or two— even for sales of new Pontiacs.

In Harrisonburg, however, GM’s edict coincided with an announcement by Charlie Obaugh Pontiac-Buick-GMC that it will go out of business April 30. And in nearby Elkton, a dealership called Dick Myers Chevrolet-Pontiac announced that it would shut its doors the same day.

Colonial’s Carter Myers contends that Pontiac suffered after the brand— perhaps best known for creating the GTO, original muscle car— stopped sponsoring Nascar races and after parent GM began offering newer lines, such as Saturn and Hummer, both already on the chopping block.

“GM just got stretched too thin,” says Myers.

–last updated 3:43pm, April 28

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Monday recycling could end with the new fiscal year, which begins July 1.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

With revenues slammed by an ailing economy and a thriving private competitor, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority will begin closing the popular McIntire Recycling Center on Mondays as part of an effort to rein in expenses.

“In order to deal with some of those reductions in revenue, we have cut operational expenses 17 percent,” explained Waste Authority financial manager Lonnie Wood, filling in for executive director Tom Frederick, who was reportedly out sick Monday, April 27, when the board publicly heard the news. “We just went line by line.”

Such cuts weren’t enough, however, to balance the Waste budget, whose operating revenues are expected to fall 32 percent. To cover the expected deficits, Wood proposed a budget that gathers over $1.3 million from local governments and pulls about $1.1 million from its own reserves.

More deficits could appear on the horizon, according to (more)

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Paulien and Gerard van Dijk returned home earlier this month after an omission on an immigration form filed nearly a year ago left them and their three children stranded on the Dutch island of Curaçao.
PHOTO BY LINDSAY BARNES

When Dutch citizens turned Crozet residents Gerard and Paulien van Dijk were preparing their application for permanent residency in the United States seven years after moving here, they thought they had everything in order. They triple-checked the proper forms with their attorney and even pulled their children out of Albemarle schools to move to a foreign country in hopes of complying with American immigration regulations.

So it came as a shock when, on March 30, after waiting six months outside the United States, an American official informed Paulien van Dijk that she and her family might never return home to Virginia.

“I lost it,” she says. “I cried and cried. I couldn’t even look at my children at that moment.”

The critical mistake? Omitting (more)

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This graphic informs readers on the Waynesboro News Virginian’s website that they’re only getting part of the story.
WAYNESBORO NEWS VIRGINIAN

As daily newspapers’ sales plummet nationwide, editors and publishers are employing myriad strategies to stay afloat as readers increasingly turn to the Internet for their news. Now, the Waynesboro News Virginian is testing a new strategy to drive readers from its free website back to buying the hard copy.

On Monday, April 27, the News Virginian posted a story about a parent’s complaint about lewd music at a middle school dance on its website, corresponding with the same article which appeared in its print edition. However, after the fourth paragraph on the web version of the story, readers find a message that informs them that the text they’re reading is only “an excerpt”and instructs them to “pick up The News Virginian today at an area newsstand to get the full story.“

“It’s an experiment,” says News Virginian editor Lee Wolverton. “We’re (more)

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Casey Stein stars as Rebecca, a woman with secrets, and Matthew Marcus, who wrote the screenplay, as the hero.
Publicity photo

UVA alum Kevin Bender releases a feature film this Friday, May 1. Entitled The Artist, it’s an action/psychological thriller shot in and around Charlottesville and starring UVA students— and the premiere is free.

Delusions unravel, and dreams are deferred in this 100-minute picture whose principal photography wrapped in February. The film was scored by Kyle Ringgenberg using the Vienna Symphonic Library digital toolset and including an original vocal piece, ‘In Any Way I Can,” performed by Annie and Elyse Steingold.

Director Bender, whose day job is accounting in the Williamsburg area, is a 2008 graduate of UVA (magna cum laude according to his production company’s site) with some prior film credits.

The free premiere takes place at 8pm May 1 in Culbreth Theater on Culbreth Road with free parking at the new garage there. More details Monday.

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A Charlotte, NC-based real estate company will be developing the old Martha Jefferson Hospital into a master planned community.
FILE PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

Old Trail Village isn’t the only master planned development making news. Martha Jefferson Hospital has selected a Charlotte, NC-based real estate company to handle the estimated $170 to $200 million development of its 14-acre Locust Avenue campus. The hospital is moving into a new 88-acre location on Pantops Mountain in 2012, after more than 100 years in its current location, and had launched a national search for proposals to develop what they’ll be leaving behind.

“More than 25 firms responded,” says MJH spokesman Steve Bowers, ” but we finally winnowed it down to Crosland. They totally get it all, and they have the experience and capital to create a place that could really please everybody.”

What Crosland appears to get, says Bowers, is that the MJH site will have to (more)

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In 2006, Old Trail Village in Crozet played host to director Tom Shadyac and his movie Evan Almighty, which called for building an ark on the development.
PHOTO BY DON ANDERSON

Wanna buy a master planned community? Old Trail Village, the massive mixed-use development located in Crozet is for sale, according to an email sent to area developers by corporate real estate broker CB Richard Ellis. Although no price is listed, area realtors contacted by the Hook said the 260-acre development could fetch as much as $80 to $100 million.

However, according to Old Trail’s developer, Gaylon Beights, it’s simply a marketing tactic, not a cry for help.

“We are not for sale in the sense of any urgency,” says Beights. “In tight markets, you simply have to try a broader approach.  This new email blast is an attempt to achieve a wider market.”

Beights says the last blast brought in the developer for a new Senior Community, one that will close on a 4-acre lot next week.

“In short, we have always been for sale, a lot at a time, groups of lots, as in the sale of nine lots to Craig builders in January,” says Beights. “We hope this new email blast interests (more)

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