Louis Schultz is arrested for attempted assault by car.
PHOTO BY ROB SCHILLING

A citizen icon of the property rights and environmental movements spent the night behind bars, charged by Charlottesville Police with a felony, but according to a witness to the arrest, Louis Schultz was simply staging a peaceful defense of his own private property.

“It was kind of like a low-grade Tiannamen Square,” says Rob Schilling, host of WINA’s Schilling Show. “Louis had the nose of the car up to the bulldozer, blade-to-blade with the bulldozer. It was eerily reminiscent of 1989.”

That proximity, however, say police, is what cost Schultz his freedom.

According to Charlottesville Police Lieutenant Gary Pleasants, Charlottesville Public Works employees under orders to (more)

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Show him the papers— or else.
CUCCINELLI CAMPAIGN

No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli  directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.

In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.

If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined (more)

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CenturyLink headquarters for Virginia are on West Main Street.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

It seems like just last year that CenturyTel acquired Embarq and started repainting those utility trucks with a CenturyLink logo. Wait, it wasn’t even a year ago, and now, the Monroe, Louisiana-based company has added another telco to its belt, this one Qwest Communications with its beefy fiber-optics network.

“The nice thing I can say is we’re the acquirer and won’t have to change our name,” says Rondi Furgason, CenturyLink VP and general manager for Virginia, who is headquartered in the old Centel/Sprint/Embarq building on West Main.

In the $10.6 billion stock-swap deal, CenturyLink takes a 50.5 percent majority ownership. The combined landline companies will operate in 37 states with 17 million access lines, 5 million broadband customers, 1.4 million video subscribers and 850,000 wireless consumers.

The latter will come from Qwest, because Embarq/CenturyLink ditched its wireless customers last year. (more)

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Minor and Danielson have traded lawsuits over their unfinished Landmark hotel.
FILE PHOTOS BY HAWES SPENCER, JAY KUHLMANN

After a week spent inside some Omni hotel conference rooms putting on evidence as if at trial, would-be hotel-makers Lee Danielson and Halsey Minor each offer their own spin on their court-ordered binding arbitration process.

Danielson, taking note of the various lawsuits Minor is facing and waging, contends that the $3.5 million Minor alleges he’s spent on legal fees litigating the Landmark hotel— a moldering eyesore on the Downtown Mall— might have actually completed the project.

“The hotel should be finished,” says Danielson, “and a man of this substance should be able to finish it and work out his other problems.”

Minor and the experts he called to testify in the arbitration procedure— which was closed to the public including the media— don’t see it that way.

“Lee has to have the last word no matter how inane and ridiculous,” says Minor. “Lee’s and the bank’s budget was $30 million, which both experts considered fantasy.”

Construction on the Landmark ceased a year ago with accusations from various parties about unpaid bills, unfunded loans, bogus budgets, and a spendthrift owner. All that the two sides agree on at this point is that they expect to hear a decision on the binding arbitration in June.

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Work commences on the McIntire Amphitheatre’s gravel walkway.
PHOTO BY DAN ADDISON

The University of Virginia’s iconic McIntire Amphitheatre, the 1,500-seat concrete neoclassical Greek theater space, is looking more like the original did now, thanks to the addition of a 10-foot-wide gravel walkway and stone curb between the grass and the lower level seating.

“We want to reclaim the area visually,” said Mary Hughes, landscape architect for the University. “It is used as an outdoor gathering space and it is visible from many academic buildings.”

The structure was a gift from local philanthropist Paul Goodloe McIntire and was designed by Fiske Kimball, head of UVA’s Architecture School, who also directed the restoration of Monticello from 1925 to 1955. It was reported to have been only the seventh such (more)

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World Peace and other 4th Grade Achievements and  The Parking Lot Movie were the subject of the Hook’s February 18, 2010 cover story.
HOOK COVER IMAGE

One month after two local movies premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, the directors of both films say the good news keeps coming— along with the crowds.

“Our screening in Richmond was great!” exclaims Chris Farina, director of World Peace and other 4th Grade Achievements. The film showed there Sunday, April 25 at the historic Byrd Theater in Carytown to an estimated 300 people, Farina explained the following day, as he drove north to D.C. to catch a flight to California for the Newport Beach Film Festival.

The World Peace film focuses on local teacher John Hunter’s World Peace Game, which he developed over the past three decades and has taught to students from fourth grade through high school. In addition to Newport Beach Film Festival, it has also been accepted to the Bergen International Film Festival in Norway in October, which Farina and Hunter plan to attend.

But perhaps even more exciting than an oversees festival, Farina says, is a May 4 event in Roanoke, where the film will screen to the Virginia Association of School Superintendents. Charlottesville Schools and Albemarle Schools superintendents Rosa Atkins and Pam Moran will lead discussion with Hunter following the film.

“We were almost thinking about this as a focus group,” says Farina.

If the film Farina made is doing well, the one in which he stars— The Parking Lot Movie-– is also racking up rave reviews on the festival circuit according to its director, Meghan Eckman.

“It’s going awesome! I’m in Boston right now at the Independent Film Festival,” says Eckman, expressing delight at a sold-out screening held April 25. (more)

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