After a brush with the wrecking ball and a short stay in the city yard, the kiosk that sat outside of the CVS on the Downtown Mall until its removal in April has found a new home.

The city sold the wood and copper structure as surplus property in a sealed-bid auction to Keswick resident Richard Hewitt for $2,011, according to Jennifer Luchard, the City’s procurement manager.

While he eventually hopes to serve cocktails in the kiosk by the pool, for now winning bidder Hewitt is just “admiring” the Charlottesville artifact, which he says has been more difficult to transport than he realized.

“I’m happy it found a good home,” Hewitt says.

Donated to the city after its failure (more)

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It looks even bigger Saturday in the afternoon light.
PHOTO BY STAFF

PHOTO BY STAFF

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According to city spokesperson Ric Barrick, this crane that just went up over the Landmark Hotel construction site on the Downtown Mall is the biggest one ever involved in a Charlottesville construction. Naturally, with the news of the collapsing cranes in New York still fresh in our minds, we wondered… is it safe?

“Our understanding is that the cranes that have had problems in New York were not free standing as this one is,” says Barrick. “They attached to a building and the collapses, according to the hotel contractor, happened when they were adding parts or taking away parts, an operation not required with the different type of crane involved with the Landmark.”

Barrick says the big crane will be certified by the contractor today, and that an independent firm will inspect the crane next Monday and again in three months.

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The now-barricaded Rugby Road-area stretch of University Avenue will reopen as a key thoroughfare Saturday, June 28, when the first of a two-phase project to repair UVA’s steam tunnels is finished. According to project manager Kate Meyer, the completion date is nine days ahead of schedule for the first phase.

“We closed the road June 9,” says Meyer, “and we said it would take four weeks.” She attributes the speedy repairs to “team effort, hard workers, and good weather.”

Meyer says the second phase will block part of McCormick Road and close an eastbound lane of University Avenue. Cars turning right from McCormick to University Avenue will have to bear left at the median triangle past Alderman Library. Eastbound University Avenue drivers who plan to turn left onto Rugby Road are advised to turn left onto Culbreth Road instead, so as not to hold up traffic.

Meyer estimates that the second phase will take about 30 days, with the total project’s estimated completion date– which had earlier been set at mid-August– possibly as early as July 28.

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The waterworks, now pressed by both local governments, voted today to do what it’s been avoiding for five years: put out an RFP, a request for proposals, for dredging the silt-choked Rivanna Reservoir. But in a parallel action, the five-member Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority stipulated that the RFP should consider various uses of the reservoir, as guided by a new “task force” composed of the chairs of the four bodies that control it– three of whom have spoken dismissively about dredging’s value for the water supply.

“The Reservoir is a water supply, and any other uses are secondary,” said dredging supporter Betty Mooney after the meeting.

Fellow dredging supporter Kevin Lynch noted in public comment to the board that there shouldn’t be much work for a task force because a local environmental group had commissioned a similar but never acted-upon RFP in 2005.

“You have a good starting point to work from,” said Lynch, “so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

Lynch also told the board that the 1978 documents which created the Authority and handed it (more)

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Dredge fans such as Ryan Susa (shown here at left) have begun taking to the streets in an effort to get signatures on a petition calling for a study of dredging the Rivanna Reservoir.

“We want to make sure that government keeps its word and does a study that’s unbiased,” said Susa Friday night as he chatted up the cause, in this case with Fridays After Five-goer Veronica Price-Thomas.

Already, charges of bias have been roiling a community that finds itself seemingly committed to a $143 million consultant-driven water plan that’s supposed to supply 50 years of water while budgeting nothing for maintenance dredging any of the existing reservoirs. The situation boiled over earlier this month when first the Charlottesville City Council and then the Albemarle Supervisors passed resolutions demanding (more)

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The Charlottesville construction company that built the Charlottesville Pavilion and rebuilt Scott Stadium has been recognized for its success by Virginia Business magazine. The publication named Martin Horn a 2007 Construction Leader based on its volume of business.

“We’re really lucky to be here with the university and everything else that’s going on,” company president Jack Horn, Jr. said, noting that repeat business and established relationships have contributed to Martin Horn’s expansion.

The family-owned company has grown from doing $700,000 of business in 1979 to grossing over $50 million in 2007. All of the company’s projects were in Charlottesville and Albemarle County last year, and Horn says that isn’t likely to change. “We like being local and working in this area,” Horn said.

Martin Horn is currently building a new Rosewood Village assisted living facility and the Claude Moore nurse’s education building for the University.

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Now there’s a detour in the detour.

UVA’s decision to undertake underground utility work that forced a closure along the City’s key east-west thoroughfare continues to cause traffic delays, which are now exacerbated by a detour through a parking lot.

As shown in these photos shot around 10 o’clock this morning, construction on Ruffin Hall has resulted in flag-person-arrested traffic which takes turns rolling (more)

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According to a recent press release, all traffic traveling in both directions on University Avenue must now use the Culbreth Road detour. The original hope was that only westbound traffic would have to use this detour, and that eastbound traffic would simply turn left onto McCormick Road and right back onto University, just going around the triangle of land. As it turned out, this caused a great back-up of traffic, and the decision was made that cars traveling in both directions must use Culbreth Road. As reported earlier, the road may be closed for two months.

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Albemarle supervisors have either just taken a step toward turning a $143 million water supply project into an approximately $170 million water project, or they’re setting the stage to derail the controversial Ragged Mountain mega-reservoir. They voted last night, without discussion, to join the Charlottesville City Council in pushing the local waterworks to study dredging and conservation.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, it appears to be another rebuke to the waterworks, which advanced a $143 million, 50-year water supply project that provided not a cent for dredging— despite its own studies that showed the main reservoir shrinking during that time to just 12 percent of original capacity.

“I’m extremely pleased,” says Keith Rosenfeld, a Barracks Road businessperson who recently joined Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply, the group of mostly ex-officials who claim the public has been misled by a Pennsylvania firm allegedly so tempted by the prospect of a $3.1 million dam design contract that it overstated the cost of dredging by a factor of nearly ten.

While the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority stands by its embattled consultants, the resolution demands that the Authority commission a study of (more)

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One major Charlottesville road is about somewhat more winding and narrow. Starting today, Tuesday, June 10, the University of Virginia is performing an excavation on steam tunnels where McCormick Road intersects University Avenue. UVA appears to be closing down part of a main thoroughfare to deal with its own underground steam heating system.

This procedure is not an emergency effort, according to Jim Fitzgerald, Associate Director of Community Relations for UVA.

“The work is critical in that it is important, not in that it is dangerous,” says Fitzgerald.

But it will affect the flow of traffic and public transportation. According to UVA’s (more)

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