Dry grass snaps underfoot as Gil and Dan Harrington make their way across the winter-yellowed fields of Anchorage Farm, where one year ago a farmer checking fences discovered the badly decomposed remains of their daughter, Morgan Harrington. The discovery brought a tragic end to a three-month search for the 20-year-old blond beauty, who disappeared after leaving a Metallica concert at the John Paul Jones Arena.

“This is not evil land,” says the bereaved mother, kneeling on the spot her daughter’s body lay and touching the earth. “But there was an evil man or men here who killed my daughter.”

Joined by a clutch of reporters, the parents undertook their first visit to the field, and on the walk down  to the site, the 53-year-old mother clutched the arm of her husband, Dan, and cried softly amid the rolling hills nine miles south of Charlottesville.

Gil Harrington’s outpouring of emotion stands in sharp contrast to the stoic frustration she expressed both in the early days of her ordeal and again in recent months as she has learned of a powerful new tool that could assist the investigation.

With police expressing their own frustration at finding a suspect, Gil Harrington has begun speaking out about the tool, which recently helped California investigators nab an alleged serial killer. It hasn’t yet been used in her daughter’s case— not because there’s any law preventing it, but because there’s no policy regarding it at all.

“That,” says Harrington, “is not an acceptable delay to use technology.”

The tool she’s talking about is familial DNA searching, a process by which an unidentified DNA profile— like the one investigators have obtained in the Harrington case, which linked it to an unsolved 2005 Fairfax rape— is run through the state’s DNA databank looking not for an exact match but for a close match that would identify a family member of an unidentified perpetrator and could point in the direction of potential suspects.

The method went high profile last summer with California’s so called “Grim Sleeper” case, and now law enforcement officials across the country are wondering if some of their own toughest cases might be cracked with familial DNA.

The ‘Grim Sleeper’
Beginning in 1985, Los Angeles detectives were stumped by a series of murders of women, many of them prostitutes, whose bodies were found in alleyways on the city’s southside. After a series of exposés by the L.A. Weekly in 2007, including an interview with the killer’s only known surviving victim, police feeling the heat of public pressure ran DNA of the unidentified perpetrator (dubbed the Grim Sleeper because of an apparent 14-year hiatus in killings) through the California DNA database looking for a familial connection. After linking the killer’s DNA to DNA taken from a man convicted on a felony weapons charge— a man who turned out to be the killer’s son– police homed in on 57-year-old Lonnie David Franklin Jr., and believed they’d found the killer. Franklin was arrested in July 2010 and has pleaded not guilty to 10 murder charges.

Only one state besides California— Colorado— currently uses familial DNA searching, but Virginia, a leader in the forensic use of DNA and the first state to fully fund its DNA databank in the mid-1990s, may soon follow suit, according to Gail Jaspen, chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. In fact, she says, both the Attorney General’s office and the Virginia Crime Commission have ruled that there’s no legal obstacle preventing the state crime lab from conducting such searches and releasing results to law enforcement. The reason it hasn’t already begun, she says, is that Virginia simply didn’t have the necessary technology.

“We are indeed interested in acquiring the capability to do this as expeditiously as possible,” says Jaspen.

That would be welcome news to the Harringtons, for whom the idea that any stone has been left unturned in the search for their daughter’s killer is source of pain and fear— fear that another woman will be killed by the same man, and another family forced to endure the agony they’re suffering.

“It seems like it’s getting harder now, perhaps because that protective cloaking of shock is dissipating,” says Gil Harrington. “It’s more apparent that she’s not here, her closet doesn’t smell like her anymore, we’re starting to forget what her voice was like.”

No named suspects
The Morgan Harrington case began October 17, 2009 when a disoriented Harrington left the concert alone and began hitchhiking on the Copeley Road Bridge. During the recent media tour, the lead investigator, State Police Agent Dino Cappuzzo, told reporters that a bloodhound and eyewitness accounts confirm the area around the bridge as the last place the Virginia Tech student was spotted alive.

The case has stumped investigators, and a series of revelations over the past 12 months— starting with the discovery of Morgan’s body— have provided evidence to work with but yielded no named suspects. Perhaps the most significant revelation came in July, when investigators confirmed that forensic evidence— later confirmed to be DNA— had linked Morgan’s case to a 2005 unsolved brutal rape in Fairfax. A sketch of the suspect in the Fairfax case generated dozens of new leads, but none have led to an arrest. If Morgan’s killer has a parent, sibling, or child who’s been convicted of a felony since the Virginia DNA databank was launched in 1989, her parents say, there’s a chance a familial DNA search could narrow the potential field of suspects in her case down from countless thousands to a few dozen.

The Harringtons aren’t the only ones eager to see familial DNA searching become a standard weapon in Virginia law enforcement’s crime-fighting arsenal— particularly in violent crimes where a predator remains on the loose.

“A lot of times when you have a convicted felon, you’ll find other felons in the family,” says Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding, who pushed for and helped win legislation to fully fund Virginia’s DNA databank back in the mid- ’90s after learning that 150,000 DNA samples had been collected from felons but hadn’t been entered into the databank.

Thanks to that funding, as of December 31, the Virginia DNA databank holds neary 328,000 DNA samples taken from convicted felons and those arrested for violent crimes. By the end of last year, says Harding, law enforcement officials had had 6,957 “hits”— when DNA evidence taken from a crime scene matched a DNA profile in the databank, in many cases leading to a conviction.

Harding recalls one local case that highlighted the critical importance of the databank in solving crimes. In 1999, a man broke into a UVA student’s apartment and raped her while holding her boyfriend at gunpoint. The police had no suspects, just some saliva on a beer can.

Because of a backlog of cases, it took a month for the state crime lab to finally process the DNA. And then came the “cold hit,” an event Harding calls “my most exciting moment in law enforcement.” The DNA from the apartment pointed to a man named Montaret Davis as responsible for the assault and paved the way to a conviction.

The validation process
In late December– after lobbying by the Harringtons— the state came one step closer to making familial DNA searches a reality as the Department of Forensic Science received and installed the familial DNA searching software used in Denver crime labs. Currently, says Jaspen, the software is going through a validation process to “ensure that it does what it’s purported to do and that our people are qualified to perform the searches.”

But installing software and actually using it are two different things– particularly in the Harrington case, according to State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller, who says investigators must proceed cautiously with any further DNA testing because the “amount of the evidence available is limited.” (DNA evidence is destroyed when it is tested.)

Limited DNA samples aren’t the only potential stumbling block for investigators. The use of familial DNA searches has already attracted the attention of the ACLU, which filed a legal challenge against California’s policy of collecting DNA from arrestees (as opposed to only from convicted felons).

A July 15 editorial posted on the ACLU of Southern California’s website explains the concerns about familial DNA testing.

“Whether we should expand familial searching isn’t just about the success in this case,” the editorial states in the wake of the Grim Sleeper arrest. “It’s about whether familial DNA searching is really the silver bullet prosecutors suggest, and whether privacy and civil rights concerns have been adequately addressed. The answer to both questions, for the moment, is no.”

And any use of familial DNA here in Virginia will receive similar scrutiny, says Kent Willis, head of the Virginia ACLU, who sees DNA profiling of any kind– particularly of those arrested but not convicted of a crime– as a possible slippery slope.

“First it was just convicted felons, then they moved to anyone arrested for a violent felony,” he says of Virginia’s DNA collecting policies. “We’re concerned that what may happen with familial DNA testing is that once you’ve started the process, unless you create strict protocols, that its use will continue to be expanded and expanded.” For instance, he says, “there are always calls to expand [DNA collection] to anyone arrested for felony or misdemeanor. The ultimate extension is that we should take everyone’s DNA at birth.”

Harding, however, scoffs at the notion that the system would be abused, and says he believes concerns about privacy issues with DNA are overblown— and that old school investigative practices are actually far more invasive.

“I’d argue that intrusion was at its greatest in the old days, the late 70s, early 80s, when there was no such thing as DNA,” he says. Harding, who worked for the Charlottesville Police Department for three decades before his 2007 election to sheriff, recalls following up on tips by digging into the alibis of anyone whose name came up in the course of the investigation— in some cases, hundreds of people.

By contrast, he says, “If I get a list with five or six names on it from a familial DNA search– if one is extremely close, it’s a really good lead– all I’m seeing is who in the family tree might meet the profile, then I put them under surveillance and take a sample.”

“Taking a sample” helped Charlottesville police finally catch the Charlottesville serial rapist back in 2007. After one of Nathan Antonio Washington’s victims recognized the butcher at the Barracks Road Harris Teeter as the man who’d brutalized her, police followed Washington and plucked from the trash a Burger King soda cup he’d just discarded. DNA on the straw matched the profile of the assailant who’d eluded police for nearly a decade. Washington was arrested and is currently serving four life sentences.

The ACLU’s Willis says the capture of violent criminals like Washington– and DNA’s proven ability to exonerate the wrongly convicted– make objecting to its use in criminal matters complicated. But he hopes the state will proceed with caution.

“What we want to see come out of the Virginia Crime Commission is a proposed bill that would prevent police from implementing familial DNA and would instead create a study to determine its cost, efficacy, and consider potential invasions of privacy and its impact on fairness in criminal justice system,” says Willis, stressing that the ACLU is “not opposing familial DNA testing; just arguing that the state ought to move slowly into this and know exactly what it’s doing and what the consequences might be.”

The Harringtons, however, say moving slowly when their daughter’s killer remains at large is “crazy.”

“It’s a tool and a technology that exists, and it should be in the hands of law enforcement in this state,” says Gil Harrington. “I don’t know why it would require such prodigious time.”

Correction: Special Agent Dino Cappuzzo’s last name is misspelled in the print edition of this story.–ed

Convicted murderer Jens Soering tasted the possibility of going home last year when outgoing Governor Tim Kaine okayed his transfer to Germany. However, one week later, newly sworn-in Governor Bob McDonnell revoked the transfer, and now Soering is suing McDonnell, arguing that he doesn’t have the power to undo Kaine’s signed agreement with Germany.

The lawsuit was first revealed in the Daily Progress, and a new analysis by a top constitutional scholar suggests that this is one prison lawsuit that won’t quickly disappear.

Charlottesville attorney Steve Rosenfeld filed the suit for Soering in Richmond Circuit Court January 18 and says it raises important aspects on constitutional and statutory limits to the governor’s power.

“Here a governor a few days in office revokes his predecessor’s approval on an international treaty,” says Rosenfield. “The concern Governor McDonnell ought to have (more)

Back in August 2009, the City launched a design contest for the creation of a clock on the Downtown Mall that would honor Charlottesville’s relationship to its three Sister Cities and cost less than $25,000. Since then, a couple of things have changed: we’ve added another Sister, and it appears the clock will actually get built.

If you’re having trouble keeping track, the Sister cities would be Besançon, France; Pleven, Bulgaria; Poggio a Caiano, Italy; and the newcomer, Winneba, Ghana.

At the time of the contest announcement, officials weren’t sure if the winning design would get built, a reminder of the 2007 design contest that cost $150,000 in taxpayer funds to generate ideas for the development of the Water Street parking lots where nothing ever got built.

In November 2009, a jury of architects, artists, and business people selected a winning clock: a 12-foot tall granite obelisk called the “Meridian Clock.” Envisioned by local designer Edward P. Smith and headed for a location between the Transit Center and City Hall, it would include various timepieces including a noon mark, a simple sundial to note each day’s noon.

“I’m an amateur astronomer and geographer,” says Smith, who (more)

For weeks, people around the county have awakened to find their cars have been broken into. But on January 23, a complaint that people were going through cars in the Old Trail neighborhood led to the arrest of three teens who police say have broken into more than 200 vehicles.

Christopher Ballard, 18, is charged with five counts of grand larceny; Kristie Ryder, 19, is charged with two counts of grand larceny, and an unidentified 17-year-old faces eight counts of grand larceny, which is a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison.

The rash of car break-in reports has been coming in since November, says Albemarle police Sergeant Darrell Byers. Most recently, seven vehicles in Mill Creek were reported hit January 16, over 20 off East Rio on January 17, and more than 20 reported on January 20 in the Georgetown Green and Pantops areas. Most of the vehicles were unlocked, says an investigator.

Police were already looking for the alleged perps January 23 when the call came in from Old Trail in Crozet. The suspects “attempted to leave the area at a high rate of speed,” says Byers.

The alleged getaway vehicle, a Honda Pilot, was (more)

While relatively few area restaurants have begun using OpenTable, the growing online reservation service appears to have given some tech-savvy foodies the upper hand in securing a table for Charlottesville Restaurant Week.

“Fifty percent of our Monday night reservations for Restaurant Week came through OpenTable,” says Hunter Long, a front desk agent at Keswick Hall, where Fossett’s is once again a participant in the semi-annual food event. “And I would say that fifty to seventy percent of our reservations for Friday and Saturday night came through the service.”

What’s more, Long says that reservations for the week-long, Hook-sponsored event sold out nearly two weeks in advance.

(Note to Restaurant Week-goers: even without OpenTable, the C&O and Brookville have also sold out, and Orzo and l’étoile may be close to filling all tables for the January 24-31 event. Still, that leaves 12 more participating restaurants to choose from, including old favorite Bang! and newcomer The Bavarian Chef.)

Long says Keswick has been using OpenTable, founded in 1998, for about seven years, but says the service’s popularity has been skyrocketing in the last year or so. Indeed, the company now boasts 175 million subscribers. “It gives the customer and the restaurant a paper trail to monitor the dining experience,” says Long.

“It simplifies online reservations for the restaurant and diners,” says Melissa Harris, who handles public relations for the Clifton Inn, “especially now that there are OpenTable apps, and guests can make a reservation without even visiting the restaurant’s website.”

Last year, OpenTable’s stock soared from under $30 in January to over $80 in December, as the company now claims relationships with 15,000 restaurants around the world. However, only seven Charlottesville eateries use it: the Old Mill Room at the Boar’s Head Inn, The Melting Pot, The Ivy Inn, Horse and Hound Gastropub, Downtown Grille, Clifton Inn, Tastings, and the aforementioned Fossett’s at Keswick Hall.

Like mega travel site TripAdvisor, customers can post verified reviews on OpenTable that are seen by thousands of prospective diners. Diners earn “points” for the reservations they keep, and (more)

We say zee-bra, she says zeb-ra. Actually, we say crosswalk, and the one iconically depicted on the cover the Beatles’ Abbey Road album is now a protected English landmark, thanks in part to a former Charlottesville resident.

Even a crosswalk?

“We list anything that has special architectural significance,” says Emily Gee of English Heritage, Britain’s department of historic structures, which on December 22 landmarked the Abbey Road zebra. Earlier last year, the governmental body put the Abbey Road Studio, where the Beatles recorded the album, on its list.

Gee says the photograph for the 1969 album was Paul McCartney’s idea, and the London street was closed down for 15 minutes so the four former Liverpudlians could take their now-immortal stroll.

More recently, a debate erupted about whether a crosswalk was an architectural structure, says Gee. Ultimately, preservationists determined that the lamp poles on either side counted as structures.

“And the paint on the street is a chemical structure,” informs Gee. “We checked.” And of course the crossing met (more)

Three years after ground was broken and two years after lawsuits began flying, the towering skeleton of the planned Landmark hotel crept one inch closer to completion Wednesday, January 19, when a Georgia judge ruled against Halsey Minor on all counts in litigation between him and his lender.

“It was game, set, and match in favor of the bank,” says Connor Crook, attorney for another party in the morass, a company controlled by Lee Danielson, developer of the 101-room luxury lodging. “All claims are now resolved between those parties, pending any appeal.”

Appeal indeed, says Halsey Minor, a tech industry titan with a knack for waging litigation long after the first gavel has fallen.

“The decision was a travesty of justice,” Minor says in an email, “and will be reversed.”

The bank— Atlanta-based Specialty Finance Group— was suing Minor to recover the $10.5 million it fronted the project as part of a loan package that was to have eventually reached $23.6 million. The bank— now owned by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation— claimed that Minor defaulted; Minor counter-claimed that the bank and developer colluded against him.

Last June, Minor won a measure of support for that claim when (more)

It had been over 40 years since Jimmy Gunn had been behind bars, and he was terrified of going back. He began telling friends that it wasn’t fair that a 60-year-old with myriad health problems couldn’t serve his 30-day marijuana sentence on house arrest. He even called the Hook to complain about what America’s war on drugs was doing to him. And six days after entering the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, he was dead.

But a marijuana sales conviction last fall coupled with a 1969 possession conviction may have given authorities little option.

Gunn had a history of poor health. He was bipolar, took medication for panic attacks, and relied on an inhaler to treat his emphysema, according to friends and family.

Still, to his friend Teague Herren, Gunn seemed healthy enough when Herren drove Gunn to court on December 9. They were hoping the judge would consider a motion for home electronic monitoring and a restricted driver’s license. Instead, Gunn was taken to jail.

“I dropped him off at court, and a week later he’s dead,” says Herren, “for a pot charge.”

Gunn was an artisan carpenter whose work graced the home of the late Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore. But after a bout of cancer, Gunn had relied on disability insurance, and friends suspect he supplemented his income by selling pot.

According to his attorney, Jessica Phillips, who filed the motion requesting home monitoring, Albemarle Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Higgins and the Commonwealth’s Attorney were open to Gunn serving his time at home as long as the jail said he qualified.

It seems that in 1969 Gunn was convicted of possession of marijuana for five grams of marijuana, which is roughly the equivalent of a “dime bag,” ten dollars worth of pot. Then it was a felony. Today, it would be a misdemeanor.

Phillips checked with jail officials, and says she was told Gunn was wouldn’t qualify for house arrest due to his prior conviction, even though though it was handed down during the Nixon Administration. And even though he was in very poor health, according to Gunn’s ex-wife Debbie Davis.

“He wanted home arrest,” says Davis. “Given his age and his health, and given it was only for pot, I don’t understand why he wasn’t given it.”

Gunn’s recent legal troubles began last year after he sold marijuana to an undercover officer. After that, the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force raided his house and found approximately four pounds of pot in dozens of plastic baggies, according to an inventory sent to a forensic lab. An old shotgun added an additional charge: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Anyone who is convicted of a reefer offense in Virginia automatically loses his driver’s license for six months. That posed an additional hardship on Gunn’s ability to get his medications. He’d lived in the same Barboursville cottage for 30 years, but after his October 6 conviction, he was evicted.

When they learned that Gunn’s death followed the confiscation of his ever-present inhaler, some of Gunn’s friends initially cast blame in the direction of the Jail.

Other jail deaths: Four other inmates have died in the jail or after they were taken to the hospital in the past 10 years, according to information provided by the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Kenneth R. Banks was in for six months with a sentence revocation/probation violation. He’d been playing basketball in the recreation area September 1, 2009, and was found unresponsive on the ground. He was taken to UVA Medical Center, which notified the jail he died of cardiac arrest.
Jane A. Barbour had been sentenced to 90 days for possession of alcohol by an interdicted person, which means she’d been forbidden to have booze as a result of  other offenses. She came into the jail on June 6, 2006. Two days later, she was found face down and unresponsive in her cell, and pronounced dead by the emergency medical technicians. Official cause of death: accidental choking.
Lloyd L. Fitzgerald was serving a 10-day sentence on the weekends for a DUI when he was discovered dead in his cell when breakfast was served March 13, 2004. The coroner called it cardiac arrest.
Walter B. Ditchkus Jr. was brought in on a public drunkenness charge and tried to hang himself February 13, 2001. He was taken to UVA Medical Center and died February 21, 2001. The jail does not have a cause of death in its records.

However, Colonel Ron Matthews, the Jail superintendent, notes that Gunn had been placed on suicide watch December 12 because he’d tried to harm himself with a plastic fork. It was shortly after 11pm the next day, when Gunn told an officer that he was cold, says Matthews.

“Five minutes later, the officer finished his work and went to check on him,” says Matthews. “He was unresponsive.”

According to court records, Gunn was in a coma when he was taken to UVA Medical Center and placed on a respirator. On December 14, the charges against him were dismissed, and his family and friends were able to see him. The next day, he was taken off the respirator and died.

Prisoners with medical issues “get better care in jail than they do out on the street,” says Colonel Matthews. When inmates are on suicide watch, they aren’t allowed to have items that they could potentially harm themselves with, like inhalers, and they’re checked every 10 to 15 minutes, he says.

“As an administrator,” says Matthews, “that’s the worst thing that can happen when someone under your care dies.”

The medical examiner determined that Gunn died from a pulmonary embolism— a blood clot from the leg that blocks the main artery to the lungs.

Gunn’s emphysema would not have been a factor in the pulmonary embolism, says Dr. Samuel Coughron, who was Gunn’s doctor and who had prepared a letter for the jail detailing his patient’s condition.

“In general, when something like this happens, you’re screwed,” says Coughron. “You’re dead before you hit the floor.”

Jimmy Gunn’s family and friends still are grappling with his death, and some remain concerned about whether an inability to get his medications and inhaler could have played a role in his death.

“It was a needless death,” says Teague Herren. “He wasn’t suicidal.”

–updated 11:30am with Gunn’s November call to the Hook

–edited 11:25pm on Sunday, January 22

In September, Charlottesville City Council took a stand in favor of dredging to create more local water supply. But on Tuesday, January 18, the same day that one Albemarle Supervisor alleged that dredging might unleash potentially damaging fumes, City Council took a vote that appears to give Albemarle County and the Nature Conservancy what they want: a mega-reservoir to focus the local water supply in a massive lake that would hug Interstate 64.

Talking about the sacrifices made by previous generations, City Councilor Satyendra Huja— long the issue’s acknowledged swing vote— gave an impassioned speech in favor of building a large dam in the Ragged Mountain Natural Area. A moment later, fellow Councilor David Brown made a motion favoring the construction of a 30-foot increase in the height of the existing dam, a project that might require clearing 160 acres of mature forest. Councilor Kristen Szakos followed suit with a thumbs-up of her own.

Mayor Dave Norris and fellow Councilor Holly Edwards voted against the dam plan. But what does it all mean?

“Ratepayers will have to pay a lot more,” said a clearly perturbed Rebecca Quinn, a water resources engineer who has been speaking out in recent months, asserting that future water projections are based on outdated data.

“It may not be a steak and lobster plan,” said Quinn recalling some language once employed (more)

For former billionaire’s wife Patricia Kluge, the auctions, the lawsuits, and the loss of the winery bearing her name combined to make 2010 seem to be a very bad year, an annus horribilis as the Queen of England once quipped. Unfortunately for Kluge, 2011 may be worse.

Last year, Kluge put her jewelry, furnishings, and even her clothes up for auction in a bid to stave off creditors. Yet in December, she and her husband, a one-time state wine leader, lost their 960-acre winery to foreclosure, crushing the couple’s dream of bringing high-quality Virginia wine to the national market.

Now, another auction looms. Albemarle House, the mansion where Patricia Kluge once entertained kings, princes, and U.S. presidents in haute grandeur, has been foreclosed upon.

“That house was built at a time when an inkling of that style existed,” says architect David Easton, who designed Albemarle House. “The issue in this day and age: It is not 1900.”

On the steps
Creditors have slated February 16 as the day (more)

A new gym opened its doors two summers ago riding a wave of research asserting that short-but-intense bursts of exercise trump moderate-but-longer sessions. Eighteen months later, CrossFit Charlottesville is going so strong that it has tripled its footprint in the old National Linen building on Market Street.

“It’s not for everyone,” acknowledges co-founder Kyle Redinger. “But if people make it two or three months, they never leave.”

Now, says Redinger, he’s expanding to a younger demographic, with twice-weekly fitness class for children ages 5 to 12. The concept of the kids classes, which begin January 26 and cost $69, is similar to the grown-up version: relatively intense and varied movements. But while adults may grab heavy weights, the kids classes aren’t for turning children into mini-Schwarzeneggers.

“It’s a lot more body weight, more gymnastics,” says Redinger, who notes the classes will be taught by Gretchen Kittelberger, a former collegiate gymnast who recently obtained special training and certification for the kids’ classes.

Redinger attributes the success of the adult CrossFit program to its social nature, as the workouts happen in groups with no mirrors, no TVs, and— although there’s music playing— no one plugged into iPods. And in an industry that profits from no-shows, a recent internal survey Redinger cites shows his clients (more)

There were two car fires in Charlottesville on Friday, January 14, bringing the two-day total to three, as debate rages about the cause of the one that destroyed a driver education car at the Albemarle County gas pumps.

“We do seem to have more vehicles burn this time of year,” says Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner. “I don’t know why that is.”

However, ever since a scary experience in the 1980s, Charlottesville resident Steven W. Shifflett has held a theory about car fires— at least the ones that occur at gas pumps. And his theory runs contrary to the contention of the Charlottesville Fire Marshal.

Shifflett says he learned the hard way when he stopped for fuel at the Wilco station on U.S. 250 on Pantops Mountain on his way to a party one cold New Year’s Eve 25-30 years ago. While waiting for his tank to fill, Shifflett says, he was combing his hair while wearing a wool sweater and coat, a set of circumstances that may have stoked the static electricity in his body.

As he reached for the fuel nozzle, Shifflett saw “the largest spark I have ever seen” shoot between (more)

A trusty looking for a snack from a vending machine in the lobby of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail led to the facility being locked down for a week.

Metal rods were discovered missing from the vending machine in the lobby January 6 in an area only available to jail employees and trusties, says the jail’s superintendent, Colonel Ron Matthews.

“To be on the safe side, we closed down the jail and did a 100 percent search,” he says. The missing 16- to 18-inch rods did not turn up, and the individual suspected of having access to the machine denied having a snack attack.

“We stopped all inmate movement,” Matthews explains. “We were looking for something that could potentially injure someone.”

That meant that for approximately 530 inmates, all recreation and visitation came to a halt. At a jail built to house just 329 inmates, the lockdown left some inmates crammed into a 5′ by 8′ cell with up to three other people.

The inmates were only told that they were locked down for security reasons with no further explanation, according Marjorie Sunflower Sargent, who received a letter from a friend incarcerated there.

“We are very stressed out,” Kevin O’Connor wrote to Sargent. “Some people experienced panic attacks and others traumatic psychological and emotional consequences… What the hell is going on? Please help us.”

To Sargent, a human rights activist, locking so many people in an overcrowded facility is “unconscionable.”

When a search did not turn up the vending rods and a week had passed, Matthews tried a new strategy.

“We offered him immunity,” he says. The trusty ‘fessed up that when he tilted the vending machine to get candy, the rods came out. He said he threw them in the trash and they were taken out with the regular trash.

On January 13, the lock down ended.

As for the inmate responsible for his fellow prisoners being locked down for a week— how safe is he?

“He won’t go back to the general population,” says Matthews. And he has the option of going to another facility.

The jail superintendent says this is the second lock down he’s had since coming here in 2004, and observes, “That’s part of corrections life.”

–updated January 17 with the more common spelling of “trusty.”

Updated January 18 with the Marjorie Sargent and Kevin O’Connor remarks.

While Albemarle County officials have insisted that the new red light cameras are safety tools, not money generators, the first 26 days of active enforcement seem to show a tidy profit.

Between December 12 and January 7, according to figures just released, 412 tickets were mailed to offenders. At $50 a ticket, that represents potential revenue of $20,600.

In a release, County Police Captain John Parrent said he was pleased by “what appears to be a positive impact” on the intersection of Rio Road and Seminole Trail; and that, he said, “translated into improved traffic safety.”

However, the County offered no data on the number of intersection accidents, if any, since the cameras went live, how any new accident rate might compare to a pre-camera time period, or any data on how many tickets were for “rolling stops,” a relatively benign infraction.

Under the County’s agreement with Australia-based camera vendor Redflex, the company gets to keep the first $10,000 of monthly ticket revenue while the County keeps any overage for its general fund, an arrangement that’s received fire from the Rutherford Institute. In a report, the civil rights organization slams such systems as “revenue-raising devices” that create an improper financial incentive.

Specifically, the Institute contends that the arrangement violates a Virginia law prohibiting municipalities from making corporate deals in which compensation rises with the penalties. During a County budget meeting in April 2009, County Supervisor Dennis Rooker appeared to confirm such suspicions when he lauded the system not only for safety but also as a “revenue enhancer.”

Indeed, while Redflex’s profit is limited to $10,000 a month, the County can make as much as they want after they meet the 200 monthly ticket threshold needed to meet that $10,000 limit, an incentive that appears to benefit Redflex as well.  However, Annie Kim, a senior assistant attorney with the County, told the Daily Progress recently that the contract with RedFlex “fully complies with state code.”

That’s a claim Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead says he’s eager to challenge. “If we get a good client,” he says.

County data indicate that the system itself also has some problems. It seems that 998 drivers triggered (more)

Recently disclosed details of the Biscuit Run state park deal have prompted more than public outrage— they may have prompted an investigation into the transaction that some allege was a government bailout of wealthy investors at taxpayers’ expense.

“I can tell you and therefore reassure the public that the Biscuit Run matter is being reviewed by appropriate parties,” writes Brian Gottstein, spokesperson for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, in an email. “I cannot say any more than that without potentially compromising an investigation.”

As reported in the Hook’s January 6 cover story, “Bad Men? New numbers show spiraling costs of Biscuit Run,” the owners sold the 1,200-acre property to the state for $9.8 million in December 2009. Several months later, the Virginia Department of Taxation issued $11.7 million in tax credits, more than doubling the price. The former owners— who include developer Hunter Craig and music mogul Coran Capshaw— have appealed to the state to issue millions more.

Meanwhile, the new governor— a Republican who initially endorsed the deal— now appears to be distancing himself from something arranged by his predecessor, Tim Kaine, who heads the Democratic National Committee.

“The acquisition of this land occurred during the Kaine Administration, not this one,” writes Bob McDonnell’s spokesperson, Stacey Johnson. “This Administration was not involved in that process.”

The process, according to documents anonymously mailed to the Hook around Christmas, includes (more)

Since his release from prison two years ago for the infamous 1989 graduation rape, Jeffrey Kitze has had a hard time getting a date. Returned to prison last year for unwelcome dating overtures, he was found guilty Monday, January 10, of stalking a Charlottesville woman.

Singles are often told that volunteering is a good way to meet people, and that’s the avenue Kitze tried following his January 2009 release after serving 20 years for raping and beating his sister’s UVA Law School roommate. Kitze donated time to the Virginia Organizing Project, but it was the attention he lavished on a fellow volunteer at a group called Food Not Bombs that resulted in the stalking conviction.

Wearing prison stripes, Kitze, 49, did not testify during the three-and-a-half hour trial, but according to the victim, he had plenty to say to her.

She told the court she first encountered him while riding her bike on Water Street in October 2009. He allegedly remarked that he knew her name from watching her on public access television and said the two would have plenty in common even though she was in her 20s.

Kitze soon started showing up at Food Not Bombs events. While cooking with the woman one day, he said she wouldn’t believe how old he was.

“I bike 100 miles a day,” the victim quoted the lovelorn Kitze. “I’m in shape. I have a beautiful body.”

By November 2009, she saw him walking by her then-residence on Nalle Street in the Fifeville neighborhood.

“Here,” she said in court, “was the (more)

Snow flurries have decorated the skies over downtown Charlottesville intermittently this Tuesday morning, as several Central Virginia school systems have already decided to shut down, in anticipation of a storm system that hasn’t really erupted yet. According to the NBC29 list, the public schools in Louisa, Buckingham, Nelson, and Fluvanna Counties have shut their doors. One school that seems to have paid closer attention to the National Weather Service’s prediction that snow won’t begin in earnest until mid-day is Open Door Christian School, which will close at noon. At the time of this posting, the NWS prediction for Nelson today is this: “Snow, mainly after 1pm. High near 31. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Total daytime snow accumulation of around an inch possible.” Note to the new city manager: You’ve had a plow-equipped Public Works truck driving around in circles atop the Market Street Parking Garage for at least the past half hour. 12:28pm update: Albemarle has announced that it will close its middle and high schools in half an hour: 1pm. Now you can leave work, get in a car, and pick up them up. Have fun!

With snow moving east or on the ground by the time you read it, this guide may already be too late. But if the snow gets your attention, then maybe this will help you salvage some semblance of health, sanity, safety, and fun— at least for next time. The Hook news team has over 100 years of combined experience living in Charlottesville, and we thought we’d share with you some of what we’ve learned.

The value of a local hardware store - You may think you’re prepared with a single shovel, but sometimes they break. So, like the sad sacks who procrastinated in buying theirs, you could find yourself queuing up for supplies. Or driving around and wrecking. Recommendation: buy extra shovels and stuff. Consider this: just as two bodies seem to create more than double the usual BTUs inside a sleeping bag, two snow shovels may prompt enough competition to perform more than twice the usual shoveling. Even if you push back your purchase, you may be in luck. Last winter, during the height of Snowmageddon (the February dump), Martin Hardware on Preston Avenue took delivery of 1,000 shovels to meet the demand. While it’s quite possible that Lowe’s will have its own sleighload of shovels, Lowe’s doesn’t feel like a hike-to location— unless you’re squatting in the nearby Chik-fil-A. For your convenience, we called area hardware stores (more)

Reporters hoping to catch a glimpse of George Wesley Huguely V, the wealthy college lacrosse player who became a striped-jumpsuit-wearing inmate, were denied another opportunity on Monday, January 10, as his lawyer won a third continuance in the case in which Huguely is charged with slaying his ex-girlfriend.

“Judge, I can say that both sides have been moving with diligence,” declared Huguely lawyer Fran Lawrence. “There’s just a lot of stuff that’s still out there.”

Lawrence noted that the defense team, which also includes Rhonda Quagliana, has yet to examine about 20 of the approximately 112 items arrayed in the case against their client, a 23-year-old whose previous spurts of violence went unpublicized until he allegedly erupted last spring in a fatal rage.

On May 3 inside an apartment on 14th Street, Charlottesville police found the lifeless body of Yeardley Love, a fellow lacrosse player. They arrested Huguely, who lived next door, after he allegedly confessed to repeatedly bashing the young woman’s head into a wall of her bedroom and then returning to take her computer and toss it in a dumpster.

Lawyer Lawrence has termed the incident a tragic accident, and he seems eager to win a round in the public relations battle. On Friday, January 7, Charlottesville’s top prosecutor revealed (more)

This picture tells the story: snow sticking to rooftops but not to streets, so don’t cancel your events, people!

However, the National Weather Service is predicting that the Charlottesville area could be on track for a major snowstorm on Tuesday. It all depends on how the storm, now located over the American midwest, twists and turns on its voyage eastward.

Charlottesville’s top prosecutor has just revealed a new pack of charges against the silver-spooned scion of a Washington family who stands accused of killing an ex-girlfriend, a crime that shocked the University of Virginia and reverberated across the nation due to the golden lives cut short by the killing.

George Wesley Huguely V will face the five new charges— felony murder, robbery, burglary, statutory burglary, and grand larceny— at a 10am video feed to the Charlottesville General District Court on Monday, January 10, according to a release from Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman.

Hastening to note in the release that Huguely remains presumed innocent until proven guilty, Chapman also (more)

After spending nearly three weeks behind bars, accused wife-killer Eric Abshire was forced to wait seven hours past his scheduled hearing time before he was led into the Orange County Circuit courtroom at around 5pm on Thursday, January 6 for his first appearance in what appears already on its way to becoming a lengthy legal process.

Wearing handcuffs, leg shackles, and the orange-and-white-striped uniform of the Central Virginia Regional Jail, where he has been held since his December 17 arrest on first degree murder and perjury charges, the 36-year-old Abshire painted a bleak picture of his finances as he asked Judge Daniel Bouton for a court-appointed attorney.

Standing erect and speaking in a steady tone, the former dump-truck operator said he worked full-time until his arrest, and he denied having any assets, including a vehicle. His checking account balance, he said, is $120. (As previously reported, Abshire— who allegedly attempted to secure $300,000 of his late wife’s life insurance proceeds— declared bankruptcy in May 2009.)

(more)

If you’re one of those who bet that Albemarle Place, the mega-village to be built on 65 acres behind the 7-Eleven on Hydraulic Road that was approved in 2003, would never get built, well, you’d have won that bet, technically.

During a work session and presentation before the County Board of Architectural Review on Monday, January 3 representatives from Edens & Avant, the Columbia, South Carolina-based development company that took over the project, unveiled a plan to scrap the Albemarle Place name and call it Stonefield.

Edens & Avant reps could not be immediately reached for comment, so it’s unclear why the company decided to change the name. However, if the problems and bad publicity that have plagued the project are any indication—the change in developers, the discovery that the aging sewage infrastructure the development would hook into, politely called the Meadowcreek Interceptor, didn’t have the needed capacity (that’s in the process of being replaced at a cost of $24.5 million, and should be completed by August 2011), the economic downturn, and the simple fact that the name “Albemarle Place” has been attached to a non-existent place for so long—it’s not hard to guess why.

As already revealed, the development will feature (more)

2010 was a busy year for John Grisham. Not only did he come out with another legal thriller, The Confession, but he also found the time to write a novel for young adults, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer.

And now he wants to see what you can do. He has again accepted the challenge of wielding a gavel in the literary world by judging the Hook’s annual short story contest.

Prizes and such
The idea that one of the world’s top-selling authors wants to read your work should be incentive enough to enter, but wait, there’s also the $1,000 in cash prizes.

The grand-prize winner receives $550, second place $250, and third place $150.

Next comes the fame. The grand prize-winning story will be published in the Hook in late March when lots of literary types are in town for the Virginia Festival of the Book.

In addition, all three winners will be officially saluted at the opening event of this year’s Festival on Wednesday, (more)

The two occupants of a single-engine Cessna airplane are dead after after a mid-air collision with a medevac helicopter near the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport in the Augusta County community of Weyers Cave.

Jacob H. Kiser, 19, of the Rockingham County town of Grottoes, and Jason A. Long, 32, of the Shenandoah County town of Edinburg, died at the scene, according to a State Police release.

Police say the accident occurred at 2:27pm Friday, December 31 as the helicopter, known as “AirCare 5,” was returning to its base at the Airport after taking a patient to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. Although one skid on the copter was damaged, it landed with no injury to the occupants, a pilot and two medical personnel.

The four-seat Cessna Skyhawk, however, suffered serious damage and crashed. State police have notified both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration, and investigators from both agencies have arrived on the scene.

The medevac craft, a 2005 Eurocopter, is owned by a firm called PHI, Inc. which operates across the U.S. and 43 foreign countries. On board was pilot Paul Weve, co-pilot and flight nurse Joseph Root, and flight nurse Carolyn Booke.

According to an updated release, the 1967 Cessna was registered to Michael Price of Elkton, but Price was not aboard (more)

When Aaron B. Tobey decided to exercise his First Amendment rights by displaying the Fourth Amendment on his chest while going through security at the Richmond International Airport, he expected that he might be detained for further questioning.

“He was astounded he was arrested for disorderly conduct,” says his father, Charlottesville accountant Robert Tobey.

At the airport conveyor belt, Aaron, 21, removed everything but his shorts to reveal what he’d scrawled on his torso: “Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”

“He thinks like I do,” says Robert Tobey, explaining that his son, a graduate of Western Albemarle High School and now an architecture student at the University of Cinncinnati, finds that new airport security procedures that force passengers to choose between a full body scanner that produces what some consider a virtual strip search or an invasive body pat down are “security theater,” says Tobey père.

The account of the incident, first reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said Aaron stripped down to his underwear, but his father says it was just a pair of running shorts. And the elder Tobey, who took part in protests during his own youth, contends that his son acted respectfully and complied with the security procedures. But apparently the Transportation Security Administration was not amused with (more)

Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses close out 2010 with another foreclosure in their future, this time on five lots in their 24-lot Vineyard Estates subdivision.

The parcels in Meadow Estates, phase one of the high-end gated subdivision in southern Albemarle, total 122 acres and are assessed at $6.9 million. Vineyard Estates LLC owes $8.2 million, according to a property auction notice.

Partner First Colony Corporation from North Carolina went bankrupt, a demise that precipitated the first foreclosure of the year, when the 6,600-square-foot Glen Love Cottage, the only house built in the subdivision, according to county records, went on the block in March. Kluge and Moses bought back the property, assessed at (more)

Any homeowner seeking a loan or a refinancing might be wise to hire Patricia Filer. If her appraisal of Biscuit Run is any indication, she has an ability to find value above and beyond what the market will bear.

Biscuit Run— a massive undeveloped neighborhood saddled with debt and trapped by an unforgiving housing market— appeared to be rescued by a year-ago deal that hinged on a mysterious appraisal. When Courteney Stuart penned her investigative cover story two months ago, she theorized that the only way the tract’s wealthy investors could have paid off their delinquent loans and retained their investment was finding an appraiser willing to value the place four times higher than one arm of the state did.

Apparently, they found such an appraiser in the form of Filer at Orange-based Piedmont Appraisal Company. A story by freelance reporter Will Goldsmith asserts that Filer valued the land at $87.7 million.

“That’s a big number,” says State Senator Creigh Deeds. “That’s just a big number.”

But as Goldsmith reports (more)

The man who lived under a cloud of suspicion for 41 years as the main suspect in the murders of two young women at an ice cream parlor has sued the City of Staunton and as many as six unnamed individuals for more than $200 million for what he describes as decades of harassment that continued long after evidence cleared him.

A year after the 1967 crime at High’s Ice Cream, Bill Thomas was tried and acquitted of first degree murder in the death of 19-year-old Constance Hevener. However, he remained under indictment for another 40 years for the same-night killing of 20-year-old Carolyn Perry. In his suit, Thomas, who now lives in southern Augusta County, makes several shocking allegations.

Among them, he claims that the lead investigator for the Staunton Police, Dave “Davie” Bocock, knew the day after the double-slaying that Thomas was innocent and that Bocock also knew who did it: High’s employee Sharron Diane Crawford.

The suit alleges that Detective Bocock engaged in a cover up because he was romantically involved with Crawford and may have fathered more than one child with her. Surviving family members have refused DNA testing, even as relatives of the victims have pleaded for an explanation. Further, the suit states, Crawford, in a 2008 deathbed confession, told investigators that immediately following the murders, Bocock— who died in 2006— had helped her bury the murder weapon on his property.

The case rocked Staunton two years ago when the deathbed confession became known. Now, the case stands to further strain this picturesque Shenandoah Valley city because the current mayor, Lacy B. King Jr.— a 32-year police veteran and former deputy police chief— is named in the suit.

While acknowledging that Bocock was demoted (more)

While private sector construction nearly ground to a standstill in 2010, thanks to that bit of trouble American banks have been having, there were still a few standout additions to our physical world worth noting this year.

UVA’s South Lawn

After years of pre-publicity and considerable controversy, UVA’s big production number, the $105 million South Lawn Project, opened to much fanfare, but flopped at the box office.

Indeed, as the Hook asked in a cover story on the project, should the grassy area on the South Lawn, just a little longer than a tennis court, qualify as a “lawn”?

What began as a tremendously ambitious project when the University chose visionary architect James Polshek was eventually pared down by cost worries and fears among the UVA Board of Visitors that the design might not be “Jefferson” enough. In 2006, the University parted ways with Polshek and went looking for a new architect, a decision that prompted a protest from UVA’s architecture faculty. In 2005, over 30 faculty members signed an open letter condemning the University for perpetuating “faux Jeffersonian architecture” and characterized the direction the design was taking as “apologetic neo-Jeffersonian appliqué.”

When UVA hired California-based Moore Ruble Yudell to design the South Lawn, some faculty threw up their hands.

“This,” declared architect and letter signer Jason Johnson after seeing renderings of the new design, which featured familiar pergolas and red-brick columned exteriors, “is a disappointment on every possible level.”

After it was finished, University Architect David Neuman defended the project from the mixed reviews. “The South Lawn design was inspired by the integration of site planning, architecture and landscape that characterizes Jefferson’s Academical Village,” he said, “and we feel this project has been fully successful in living up to that inspiration.”

But some faculty members were adamant.

“It’s clumsy in its detail, its massing, its materials, its fenestration pattern, its effort to hide its bulk, and its relation to the street,” says one A-school faculty member. “On the interior, I look up and down those halls, and I feel as if there is a colonoscopy awaiting me behind every door.”

Not everyone, though.

“They did a pretty good job,” says UVA architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson. “I think it picks up the palette of the Academical Village, but doesn’t mimic it.”

Wilson, no stranger to bashing other recent designs, also likes the fact that the South Lawn offers places to gather outside the classrooms, in its light-filled conservatory area and gardens, and on the grassy terrace itself, which he sees as an extension of the experience Jefferson wanted to create on the Lawn.

Indeed, the jewel of the South Lawn— if there is one— may be the Conservatory, a semi-circular meeting place between Gibson and Nau Halls, which includes a Starbucks, a grassy courtyard, and seating on three levels.

Monticello

At Monticello, the upper floors of Jefferson’s home were finally opened to the public for the first time, including the mysterious third-floor Dome Room. In May, new Monticello boss Leslie Greene Bowman proudly displayed the parts of the residence that Jefferson designed for the enslaved workers who moved about the house relatively unseen, serving food, changing linens, and emptying chamber pots.

In addition to rooms for Jefferson’s granddaughters, and two narrow, almost-spiral staircases that allowed slaves to enter all the floors of the house from the basement, Bowman introduced the Dome Room, a beautiful chamber that features a Mars yellow Palladio-inspired “temple” with circular windows and an oculus skylight with beautiful views, but no apparent function.

“It was mostly constructed to be seen from the outside,” said David Ronka, Monticello’s manager of special programs. “But we don’t know what the purpose of the room was.”

It did for a time, however, offer a passage to a secret hiding place for Jefferson’s granddaughters, where they could escape the constant activity within the house.

Other changes included a new chrome yellow paint job for the dining room, the color Jefferson had chosen in his later years (after 75 years of Wedgwood blue), the newly renovated wine cellar, and the restoration of the South Pavilion, which served as living quarters for Jefferson and his wife during the two-year construction phase of the main house. All of this accompanied a new exhibit in the cellar level called “Crossroads,” which sheds light on the intersections between Jefferson, his family and guests, and the enslaved workers.

“We’re trying to make Monticello a more lively and entertaining experience,” says Susan Stein, Monticello’s senior curator.

Wood’s “cabin on the hill”

That’s how developer Wendell Wood characterized the 20,000-plus square-foot residence he was building atop Carter Mountain. However, not only is it one of the biggest houses ever built in the area, it’s also perched on the highest part of Charlottesville’s biggest mountain. Indeed, as Wood has now cleared a considerable number of trees around the property, it’s hard to miss.

“Have I seen the house?” asked Piedmont Environmental Council officer Jeff Werner. “Who hasn’t?”

While folks like Werner, former County Supe Sally Thomas, and current Supe Dennis Rooker believe the mammoth house is a scar on our mountain viewsheds, for Wood it’s the fulfillment of a life-long dream. As a kid, Wood says, he used to ride his bike up there and fantasize about someday calling it home. In 1982 his successes as a real estate developer allowed him to buy the 29-acre tract.With the recent purchase of 272 acres below the mountain along Route 20, he says, he now owns 700 acres of the mountainside.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for 30 years,” says Wood, 70, resigned to the fact that people have begun to talk about the house. “And I’m not getting any younger.”

Waterhouse

Finally, after five years, it has commenced: architect Bill Atwood’s $20 million Waterhouse project, a six-story mixed-use complex of offices, retail space, and apartments atop a parking garage that will span the gap between West Water and South Streets. Demolition began in October.

Originally, Atwood had a vision for a massive pedestrian village, complete with two nine-story towers, an underground parking structure, and a park of sorts that he hoped would “reinvent the block” by rescuing the beauty of the Lewis & Clark building from its isolated perch with a compatible neighbor along the streetscape. But when the economy tanked, so did the vision.

“Fundamentally, the world has changed,” says Atwood, meaning that the money for such creations simply isn’t available. “It’s so difficult to get things done these days.”

Casteen dedicates his last building

One of his goals during his presidency, joked former UVA president John Casteen at the dedication ceremony for Bavaro Hall, the $37 million addition to the Curry School of Education, was to see an open field where Bavaro Hall now stands. “I failed,” he deadpanned. What a card! Of course, the reason everyone chuckled: during Casteen’s presidency, UVA built or bought 134 buildings. It was kind of like George Bush saying he always wanted to see Saddam Hussein turn Iraq into an amusement park. Bavaro Hall— executed in neo-Jeffersonianism complete with brick columns and hints of Boston’s Faneuil Hall— transforms a stretch of Emmet Street by blocking the old view of Ruffner Hall.

Landmark Hotel

What a mess. What an eye-sore. The abandoned hotel project was actually included in last year’s round up, but since it went up two years ago, the 11-story shell of the planned Landmark Hotel continues to loom large over the Downtown landscape, a victim of delusions of grandeur, short-sightedness, hubris, a bad economy, and the ongoing legal battle between Halsey Minor, the hotel’s owner, and Lee Danielson, the hotel’s former developer.

When will it ever get built? Will it ever get built? Unlikely. Since Minor’s company Minor Family Hotels LLC declared bankruptcy, the worthless shell of a half-finished building has belonged to the bank that funded its construction, and if they wanted to sell it now, they would most likely have to accept much less than Minor owes them. Earlier this year, it was discovered that some people were squatting on the upper floors of the structure. And as those who’ve passed by it during heavy rain storms have noticed, it also has the distinction of being Charlottesville’s only 11-story urban waterfall.

For years, the old Frank Ix building has been one of the most unusual, interesting spaces in the downtown area, but as you may have noticed on your way down Monticello Avenue, demolition on the Ix is well underway.

“We’re tearing it down because we just can’t insure it anymore,” says Ix complex project manager Fabian Kuttner. After the demo, Kuttner says the owners plan to pretty up the lot and perhaps build a pond at one end of the 17-acre property, which also includes an office park. He also hopes the Charlottesville City Market might be interested in locating at Ix. More on that later.

The circa 1928 building, which until 1999 was home to a fabric factory called Frank Ix & Sons, has held several spectacular parties in recent years, including the Second Street Gallery’s first Artini dance in 2006 when 500 people danced into the wee hours as lightning flashed outside and torrential rains came through the cracks in the roof.

In addition to serving as the site for (more)

A kitchen fire fed by grease appears to have destroyed a house on the Southeast side of town and blocked Rougemont Avenue, according to a dispatch from fire chief Charles Werner.

Werner says that all occupants got out of the house safely, but the picture he sent along suggests that the house has been nearly or completely destroyed.

The flames leapt up a wall, according to information Werner received from an occupant. Fire crews battled to extinguish the fire and protect adjacent homes, but the street— between 6th Street and Hartmans Mill Road— has been blocked.

Eric Abshire will spend the holiday behind bars, according to Orange County Commonwealth’s Attorney Diana Wheeler, who says that the fact Abshire was directly indicted by a grand jury coupled with the court’s abbreviated holiday schedule means Abshire won’t get his first day in Orange County circuit court until the new year, when he’ll be asked if he’s obtained representation or wishes to have an attorney appointed.

“The court usually hears criminal cases on Thursdays and Fridays,” says Wheeler, but because of the holidays, January 6 was the “earliest possible hearing” for Abshire, who was ordered held without bond.

Abshire was arrested and charged with first degree murder and perjury late in the afternoon of Friday, December 17 as he drove south on Route 29 near the town of Culpeper, according to Virginia State Police Special Agent Mike Jones, who’s headed the four-year investigation into the death of Abshire’s wife, Justine Swartz Abshire. “He didn’t seem surprised,” says Jones, who adds that Abshire was taken into custody without a struggle.

Justine’s parents, Steve and Heidi Swartz, have long expressed suspicion of their former son-in-law, who claimed to have found his wife’s lifeless body on a dark country road sometime after 1am on November 3, 2006, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run.

“It’s been 4 years, one month and two weeks since Justine died,” the family announced in a December 18 statement. “Instead of living with her joy and beauty,we have been forced to live with the terror of murder in our family,” they wrote. “As we take one step closer to Justice for Justine, we hope for the whole truth to come out and for justice to be served.”

The case has been the subject of intense media scrutiny that included a one-hour ABC Primetime Crime episode that aired in July 2008. Abshire, who is being held at the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, has long maintained his innocence. Most recently, he did not return the Hook’s repeated calls for the November 11, 2010 Hook cover story on the case.

–Updated Tuesday, December 21 at 9:44am

Original post:

Just over four years after he claimed to have found his wife’s body on a winding country road in Orange County in the middle of the night, following what at first appeared to be a hit and run accident, Eric Abshire has been arrested and charged with first degree murder in the death of  Justine Swartz Abshire.

“He was arrested this afternoon in Culpeper without incident,” says Virginia State Police spokesperson Corrinne Geller, who says Abshire is being held at Central Virginia Regional Jail. According to a release, the arrest followed an indictment issued by a special grand jury. Abshire has also been charged with perjury.

Justine’s death– and her parents’ increasing suspicion of their son-in-law– have been the subject of intense media scrutiny that included a one-hour ABC Primetime Crime episode that aired in July 2008. Most recently, Abshire declined comment for the November 11, 2010 Hook cover story on the case.

Updated 8:10pm with perjury charge and special grand jury indictment.

Developing…

2010 was an eventful year in the local food world, as restaurants have struggled to survive in an economic climate that continues to be stormy. There’s no way Dish could mention all the news and events that tickled our taste buds this year, but here’s a menu of some of the year’s choicest dishes.  Bon appetit!

Chang chops
If you haven’t had them, you’ll be able to this coming February. Yes, Dish promised not to talk about him anymore.  But you know the story.  Just keep your eye on the space in the North Wing of the Barracks Road Shopping Center where Wild Greens used to be.

City Market Basket
All-you-can-eat local produce buffet. For nearly 20 years, the City has been telling vendors at the popular City Market in the city’s parking lot on Water Street that it should be considered a temporary location, as it was a likely place for some high-end development. While vendors and market organizers like the location, they’ve grown tied of the development threat hanging over their heads. Market Central, a non-profit organization formed to preserve and enhance the City Market, wants to change this situation and find a permanent home for the Saturday morning extravaganza. It’s an idea that City Council appears to support. The problem, of course, is finding a location. Now that the Ix building is coming down, could that be a place? And what about Oliver Kuttner’s idea of closing off parts of Monticello Avenue for the Saturday market?

Evolutionary soup
With a mix of beef, gripes, and libertarian ideals, the trials and tribulations of Tom Slonaker, owner of the Forest Lakes Arby’s, who has fought for the right to freely fly flags at his restaurant in violation (more)

No one teaches a lesson quite like Mother Nature, and last winter’s epic snowstorms revealed flaws in the city’s snow removal laws that Charlottesville officials hope have been addressed in a new ordinance approved in August.

“We absolutely think it’s going to make a difference,” says Jim Tolbert, head of the Neighborhood Planning Department on Wednesday, December 15, the eve of the area’s first snowstorm.

The old snow removal ordinance required residents and business owners to clear the sidewalks around their properties within 24 hours of the last snowflakes falling. Failure to do so was considered a crime, a Class One misdemeanor carrying the possibility of a jail sentence up to 12 months and a fine up to $2,500.

As it turned out, the threat of jail didn’t have the desired effect. After the city failed to clear its own properties, police enforcement was  practically nonexistent. Sidewalks remained impassable for weeks following the December 18, 2009 storm dubbed “Snowpocalyse” that dropped around two feet and the 18-inch February 6, 2010 “Snowmageddon.”

When police finally did begin to issue citations in February, the charges didn’t stick after judges ruled the ordinance was in violation of state law.

“Public Works did a terrible job and didn’t seem to learn lessons from the first snowfall,” says Kevin Cox, an avid pedestrian and outspoken critic of city’s handling of snow issues last year. Cox says he’s now hopeful that this is the year snow removal will finally be taken seriously in Charlottesville. (more)

When murder suspect and UVA lacrosse player George Huguely spoke with police in May, he allegedly described an altercation with former girlfriend Yeardley Love in which her “head repeatedly hit the wall,” and his lawyer called Love’s death “an accident with a tragic outcome.” Now, the defense is trying to prove that.

Lawyers for Huguely were in a Charlottesville court December 15 seeking access to Love’s medical records, a request the prosecution calls “a fishing expedition.”

Although the medical examiner determined that Love died May 3 from blunt force trauma to the head, Huguely’s attorney, Fran Lawrence, argued that the cause of her death was unknown, and that’s why he subpoenaed records from UVA Athletics Department, UVA Student Health, and from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad, the last of which Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman had already agreed to enter the court record.

Amphetamines were found in Love’s body, according to the toxicology report, in an amount that would be consistent with her prescription for Adderall, a stimulant widely used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, said Bill Gormley, who (more)

visit Bel Rio online

Nothing’s official yet, and the president has even delayed his announcement to the new year, but a report by the influential Politico news service suggests that outgoing Fifth District Congressman Tom Perriello could be in line for job with the Obama Administration.

“The administration is looking for fresh blood and is super-grateful to Congressman Perriello,” says Politico’s Mike Allen. “So I can see him getting a great offer if he decides to serve in the federal government.”

Charlottesville-based pundit Larry Sabato notes the midterm elections created quite a swarm of ousted Democrats. Of the two outgoing governors that Politico depicted along with Perriello to illustrate its story— Ohio’s Ted Strickland and Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm (the latter turned out not by voters but by term limits)— Sabato contends that each would get precedence over Perriello as Barack Obama prepares to hire.

“I’m sure Perriello’s on the list,” says Sabato, “but there’s a long list.”

Perriello is a native of the Albemarle County community of Ivy, and his (more)

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Less than three years after McGuffey Park received a controversial $700,000 make-over, work has commenced on a $75,000 repair job to correct several design flaws with what was promised to be a “world class” park.

For decades, sleepy little McGuffey Park sat at the top of Beck’s Hill relatively undisturbed, its trees lush, its shade plentiful, its play equipment vintage but serviceable; but ever since the extensive 2007 renovation, the park, which gave up 13 mature trees in the process, appears to have rejected the change.

According to city parks and rec director Brian Daly, play equipment has deteriorated, a faulty drainage system has turned the entrance stairways into waterfalls during rain storms; and new trees, grass, and shrubs have simply refused to grow.

“We have had a very hard time keeping things alive without irrigation,” says Daly.

Supporters of the park’s renovation, namely a group called Friends of McGuffey Park, a trio of Downtown moms who sold the idea to city planners and raised over over $279,000 in (more)

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A Charlottesville jury has awarded what’s believed to be Virginia’s largest wrongful death award— more than $10 million— and seemed to send a message to the family of a woman who died when a cement-laden truck from Allied Concrete rolled and crushed her car three years and a half ago.

“It speaks to the level of tragedy the family experienced,” says Bryan Slaughter, a trial lawyer who watched part of the December 7-9 proceedings. “It also says Allied’s conduct is not going to be tolerated in this community.”

Jessica Lester, 25, was driving to work with her husband, Isaiah Lester, on June 21, 2007, when they crossed paths with a mixer driven by Allied employee William Donald Sprouse, who chose curvy, two-lane Route 53 over Monticello Mountain to haul 36,000 pounds of cement to a bridge rebuild in Palmyra, rather than taking Interstate 64 and U.S. 15.

Trial testimony showed that Sprouse had a history of driving infractions. On the fateful day, the plaintiffs allege he was driving too fast around a curve when he lost control of the truck, which overturned on top of the Lesters’ Honda.

Jessica Lester grew up on an organic farm in Nelson County where she was home-schooled. A graduate of Piedmont Virginia Community College, she was training to become a nurse coordinator for UVA neurosurgeon Greg Helm. Instead she became his patient.

The neurosurgeon testified (more)

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Fairfax Deputy Police Chief Steve Sellers will be the next Albemarle County Police chief, county exec Bob Tucker announced Monday..

Sellers, a 28-year-veteran of the Fairfax County, has led the investigations division for Fairfax including heading a task force that successfully investigated snipers John Mohammed and Lee Malvo, who terrorized Northern Virginia in 2002.

Sellers succeeds John Miller, who retired September 30 after 21 years as chief.

“We are very happy to bring someone of Steve Sellers’ caliber,” says Tucker in a release.

Sellers, 49, says he’s wanted to be in law enforcement since he was five years old. He got both his B.A. in business administration and master’s in public administration at Virginia Tech. He’s also a graduate of the FBI National Academy.

Although the population of Fairfax recently topped the one million mark (to Albemarle’s less than 100,000), Sellers says Albemarle and Fairfax share similar demographics as far as an educated population. The two jurisdictions also face similar crime trends, economic uncertainty, and traffic issues.

“There’s a lot,” he says, “I can transfer from Fairfax.”

In November, two of Albemarle’s six supervisors said that personal integrity would be an important quality they’d seek in a new chief. Earlier this year, in March, four officers were disciplined for unspecified “inappropriate” behavior “while on the clock.”

“I don’t support or condone any behavior that erodes the public trust,” says Sellers. “I have 28 years with a highly regarded, ethically sound police department. Truthfulness is an absolute must. Truthfulness, integrity, and public trust are very high on the list.”

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It was quite a different scene from the Sotheby’s auction in June that drew throngs of people and sales of $15.2 million when Patricia Kluge decided to unload her household furnishings. The December 8 auction was less glitzy and had fewer bidders, who apparently hoped to pick up the foreclosed Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyards for a song.

The opening minimum was $19 million. And as much as the auctioneer cajoled bids— in $100K increments only— no one raised their paddles. The bank, Farm Credit, took possession.

More than 50 people milled about the auction pavilion before the sale, most of them curious onlookers rather than serious bidders; people had been warned to bring $250,000 in cash or cashier’s check for a deposit.

Trustee Bill Shmidheiser compared the crowd to a soccer team in which there are really only three or so players who matter, and the rest just show up. “Most of these are just showing up,” he said.

The auction was scheduled for noon December 8, but was delayed about 15 minutes until one of the five registered bidders arrived. Not present in the crowd: debtors Kluge and her husband, Bill Moses.

The pair ran into trouble when (more)

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Besides being accused of murder in the death of UVA classmate Yeardley Love, George W. Huguely V has been branded a spoiled rich kid. But according to an action taken by a local lender, the Huguely family appears to be enduring the kind of financial setbacks that have affected many property owners in the ailing American economy.

According to property and other public records, an 8.34-acre parcel of land along upscale Morgantown Road owned by a company controlled by the accused killer’s father, George W. Huguely IV, has fallen into foreclosure proceedings.

The auction, under the auspices of Charlottesville attorney Rick Carter, was slated for the steps of the Albemarle County courthouse at noon on Tuesday, December 7. According to a source, that auction was called off. The reason, says Carter, is that the land-owning company has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Purchased five years ago for $485,000 in a transaction funded by Virginia National Bank, the originally 10.34-acre property was replatted a year later with a two-acre parcel sold off as the building site. The remaining land appears to contain no house.

An early deed of trust from VNB shows indebtedness of $325,000. How much debt remained on the property at the time of the foreclosure action could not be immediately learned.

The Albemarle assessor values the tract at $333,800. The property is held by a West Virginia partnership whose general partner, and the person signing the documents, is George W. Huguely IV. The company’s legal address is a building in Bethesda, Maryland, that also serves as the headquarters for the Huguely Companies. Efforts to reach the elder Huguely were not immediately successful.

In 1993, a West Virginia firm (more)

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Ever since a woman walking her dog on Free Bridge Lane discovered the body of Anthony Lorenzo Johnson on the ground beside his ‘81 Buick Regal back on February 21, 2005, the case has remained open for Albemarle police. That changed December 6, when an Albemarle grand jury indicted a man who would have been a minor when he allegedly killed Johnson.

Nearly six years later, Joseph Michael Harris, now 22, has been charged with first-degree murder and three other felonies in the homicide and robbery of Johnson, 22, whom his family called “Bunny.”

Over the years, Albemarle police worked with Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents in investigating the case, according to a release.

Johnson, who was from the tiny James River town of Columbia, worked for Piedmont Concrete at the time of his death, and he left three children. He’d been shot once in the head. The investigation is ongoing, say police.

“It’s nice to be able to give a little bit of closure to the Johnson family,” says Albemarle Lieutenant Greg Jenkins.

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It was only a poster, but it meant everything to Wendy Marsters.

The Northern California high school teacher has been listening to Dave Matthews Band since 1995, and she catches the band’s show every time they happen near her home. But for the final show on the final tour before a fan-freaking hiatus, she decided to cross the continent.

“I knew it would be epic— ” she says in a phone call from Chico, “epic in Dave Matthews Band-ness.”

And she even found an epic seat in Charlottesville. As the 20th person in line for the November 20 show at John Paul Jones Arena, the 41-year-old parlayed her 12-hour wait into primo, second-row seats.

“I had the best seat in the house,” says Marsters “And I wanted a poster as a symbol of this trip.”

Every DMB show has a different, limited edition poster, and Marsters paid $40 for one of the 650 Methane Studios posters printed just for the Saturday event.

“There’s key shows that sell out and are important and people collect the posters,” explains Marsters. And because the Charlottesville show was the last one until 2012, there’s one offered on eBay for $400.

After the three-and-a-half hour concert, Marsters went to the nearby McDonald’s restaurant while the Arena traffic cleared. She started talking to a young man from Richmond who’d also been at the show, and who asked how much she wanted for the poster and offered her $250, she says. No way, responded Marsters.

“It’s priceless to me,” she says she (more)

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After a four-month job search that drew over 80 applicants from all over the country, City Council went with the tried and true and picked Maurice Jones, the acting city manager, to become Charlottesville’s CEO.

Former NBC29 sports reporter Jones has spent much of his career at City Hall, starting as director of communications in the late ’90s, a position he held for six years. After a stint at the Miller Center, where he served as director of development, Jones came back to Charlottesville as assistant city manager under Gary O’Connell, who left the city manager slot open earlier this year when he took a job with the Albemarle County Service Authority.

Although speculation swirled that Jones was the top pick earlier this week, it wasn’t until Friday that the city officially announced that Jones will take the $170K-a-year position.

How big a role did being ensconced (more)

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The woman whose website about a local drug task force landed her in jail for a month won a victory in court Wednesday on charges of stalking an ATF agent. Even as her own attorney calls her blogging and photography habits bizarre, Elisha Strom has been found not guilty for her behavior.

The brash 35-year-old maintains she was merely needling Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent John Stoltz when she posted photos of him, his car, license plate, and house on her blog, I HeArTE JADE.

“Ridiculing the ridiculous,” is how Strom characterized her activities in a eve-of-trial posting on her blog, which originally tracked the activities of the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force until she was ordered to cease contact with its members. She turned her attention to the other law enforcement officers including the ATF’s Stoltz.

“I was very concerned for my safety and the safety of my family,” Stoltz testified during the December 1 trial in Greene County General District Court. Aware of her history with JADE, Stoltz said he’d discussed her state of mind with those officers, and he noted that Strom, who lives in Bedford, had driven more than 70 miles to follow and photograph him.

Stoltz said he was troubled by an incident he heard about in which Strom admittedly fired a gun and by her previous connection to white supremacists. (Strom’s estranged husband is Kevin Strom, who led a local white separatist group until he was convicted of one count of child porn possession in 2008.)

Greene Commonwealth’s Attorney Ron Morris presented more than 20 entries from iHeArTE JADE, including (more)

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The man who drove the wrong way down Interstate 64 in June pleaded guilty to drunk driving, but not the attempted capital murder of a police officer.

Michael Dennis Hogberg, 26, of Crozet faces a maximum sentence of 15 years for his guilty pleas to driving under the influence for the third time, felony driving with a suspended license, and felony eluding.

After entering the three guilty pleas in Albemarle Circuit Court November 30, Hogberg said he was not guilty of attempting what Virginia code calls the “willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of a law-enforcement officer” on June 20, which was his birthday.

Defense attorney David Heilberg asked Judge Cheryl Higgins to dismiss the capital charge, arguing that attempted capital murder relies on circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s state of mind and intent to kill.

“On his birthday, he did a terrible thing,” said Heilberg. “He has not denied that. To convict him of attempted capital murder is a different thing.”

While it’s possible to kill without intent, said Heilberg, “You have to have intent to kill to be guilty of attempted capital murder.” And his client, said Heilberg, was too intoxicated to form that intent in the 15 seconds he drove toward Virginia State Police Trooper Kevin Frazier on I-64 at approximately 75mph without swerving.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Elliott Casey argued that Hogberg knew he was going the wrong way, recognized that Trooper Frazier was law enforcement, and recognized that if he hit Frazier head on, he would have killed him.

“The defendant never deviated or swerved from Trooper Frazier,” said Casey. “That period of time is a lot of time.”

“That’s a lot of time if you’re sober,” replied Judge Higgins.

Casey noted that when (more)

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For six years, the Starlight Express, brainchild of entrepreneurs Oliver Kuttner and David New, has ferried passengers to New York City and back. The two have sold their locally grown bus service to Ruckersville-based A. Goff Limo, and the new owner stands ready to get in Amtrak’s face for Charlottesville-to-NYC travelers.

Dan Goff is so confident that passengers will choose the bus over train that after the holidays, he plans to put the Starlight’s pick-up/drop-off point, which has been on East Market Street, literally in Amtrak’s face at its station on West Main Street.

“That’s the center of the city,” says Goff. “We don’t have a physical location on Market Street.”

And although the unpaved parking lot at the Amtrak station has been a source of controversy for years now, it does offer more parking, says Goff, in a location where passengers can wait for their departure in restaurants and find multiple transportation options when the bus returns at midnight.

Since purchasing the bus company in a deal consummated in August, Goff (whose wife, Ana, founded A. Goff in 2000) has added (more)

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Last Sunday, Orange County resident Michael Knight, his wife and three other couples piled into his Suburban and headed to the Downtown Mall for what they thought would be an enjoyable evening in Charlottesville. They had dinner at the Downtown Grille and took in a movie at the Regal Cinema, but when they returned to the Suburban, the festive spirit ground to a halt.

“There were only three cars in the parking lot, including ours, when we returned around 8:30pm,” says Knight. “And all of them had tow trucks behind them.”

Knight says the group had pre-paid for three hours of parking but had inadvertently overstayed by about half an hour. Knight says he would have expected some kind of grace period, perhaps a small fine, especially because it was a Sunday and there were so few cars in the lot.

Nope. This was developer Keith Woodard’s First & Market parking lot, and it’s not a place that tolerates customers who overstay.

Knight says he persuaded the tow-truck driver not to tow the Suburban, but he still had to scrounge up $125 in cash to reclaim his dangling vehicle. The other two parkers in the lot, he says, weren’t so fortunate.

“We were over the three-hour time limit by about thirty minutes,” explains Knight, admitting his group shouldn’t have overstayed. “But something is not right about that system. We thought we were fine with a three-hour ticket on our dash. Obviously, other people in the lot thought they were fine, too.”

Knight’s experience isn’t a new one for unsuspecting visitors. But recently released documents show it can be a painful one. (more)

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Last month, UVA held a ceremonial ground-breaking at the future site of the Ruth Caplin Theatre, a three hundred-seat, 20,500 square-foot “thrust stage” theater that will rise beside the Culbreth Theater on Culbreth Road— courtesy of Ruth Caplin, 89, and husband, Mortimer Caplin, 94, who donated $4 million for the $13.5 million addition to the Drama Building and whose lives have been as drama-filled as the plays and films they hope to nurture.

UVA alum and former law school prof Mortimer Caplin is a legend in legal circles, a still-practicing tax lawyer who served as IRS Commissioner during the Kennedy Administration and briefly into the Johnson White House, during which time he made the cover of Time magazine. As a law prof at UVA, he taught future U.S. Senators Ted and Robert Kennedy. And he’s a lover of the arts, it seems.

Indeed, back in his UVA student days in the 1930s Caplin was president of the Virginia Players, and appeared in a number of UVA productions, including the title role in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

“The theater will clearly advance artistic values cherished by UVA’s founder, Thomas Jefferson— music, dance, architecture, painting,” said Caplin in remarks prepared for the October 21 event, which he attended with his wife. “It’s our hope that it will enrich the studies of all University students, making the arts not only a part of their course work, but a part of their lives.”

So what’s a thrust theater? It has a stage that opens and extends into the audience, which allows theater-goers to watch the performance from three sides, allowing for more intimacy. In addition to theater productions, the facility will be used (more)

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According to the Hook’s latest count, there are 31 area wineries, which is enough to give Dish a hangover just thinking about trying to visit them all. Indeed, we appear to be surrounded by an army of wineries!

Well, it appears we will now have 32 wineries.

In early December, the Glass House Winery in Free Union plans to have its grand opening. Owners Jeff and Michelle Sanders, who moved here in 2006 and were featured in a story about “the lifestyle farming trend” in USAToday, have thrown their hats into the grape smashing ring with a few unusual twists.

Michelle is a chocolatier, so visitors will also be able to enjoy hand-made chocolates. But that’s not all. The tasting room features some unusual architecture, including a giant wine barrel turned into a doorway (which will be stained to smell like wine during the early December grand opening), a geothermal heat and cooling system, and a glass conservatory attached to the tasting room to house (more)

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Charlottesville writer Kathryn Erskine now possesses one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country: the 2010 National Book Award in young people’s literature for her book, Mockingbird.

Erskine was one of 20 finalists at the awards dinner at Cipriani Wall Street last night in New York. Also in the winners’ circle was singer Patti Smith in nonfiction for her memoir, Just Kids, about her youth in New York in the ’60s with her buddy, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; Jaimy Gordon in fiction for Lord of Misrule, and Terrance Hayes in poetry for Lighthead.

Richmond native Tom Wolfe (more)

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Before the Outback Lodge on Preston Avenue closed last year, it wasn’t unheard of to find it in the news when fights broke out and gunshots fired. The new owner of what’s now called Deuces Lounge is trying to turn that image around.

“We want to let people see the Outback is dead,” says Jerome Cherry. “They don’t have to be afraid.”

Cherry opened Deuces Lounge in September to handle a variety of musical genres— except hip hop. “We want hip hop,” he says, “but we don’t want the violence.”

Instead, the club has jazz night, metal, salsa, and a different take on karaoke that Cherry calls “Be Seen, Be Heard” on Wednesdays. “It can be karaoke, it can be poetry, it can be stand-up comedy,” says Cherry.

Another legacy of the Outback affects Cherry’s ABC permit. He only serves beer and wine, and the ABC stipulated that the club stop serving alcohol at midnight. Cherry, who doesn’t drink, believes the lack of hard liquor will draw a crowd more interested in music than drinking.

The interior has been spruced up, booths added, and the stage enlarged.

“This is the biggest stage outside the Jefferson and Southern,” says Cherry, who sees the upstairs of the two-level venue as a lounge, with the downstairs as a club.

And to further nourish a more family friendly atmosphere, Saturday afternoons are for teen bands to rock out in a place where parents can come see them play in an alcohol-free zone. Cherry is a bass player, and this is his first go at running a night club.

“This is my dream,” he says.

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A twenty-something-year-old couple allegedly had a 36-year-old woman turning tricks for them in Abbington Crossing Apartments, according to an Albemarle police release. An anonymous caller tipped off police.

Pablo Castro, 28, and Sandra Morales, 22, have both been charged with one felony count for receiving money or other valuables for the purpose of unlawful sexual intercourse. He’s being held on $10,000 bond; Morales has a $5,000 bond.

Gisela Martinez, 36, was charged with one count of prostitution, a misdemeanor, and released. She told police she was brought to the apartment in the 700 block of Lords Court from Washington to service men.

In June 2009, Albemarle police busted another prostitution ring on Commonwealth Drive that employed a woman from D.C.

“I don’t know if it’s coincidental,” says Sergeant Darrell Byers.

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Update:

The case has been continued to December 13 at 9:05am as Buck’s deep ties to the legal community have led Charlottesville District Court Judge Bob Downer to consider recusing himself. Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman says he has requested that a special prosecutor be appointed in the case.

–Updated Friday, November 19 at 1:56pm

Original story:

Lots of people have imagined throttling someone. Attorney and former Charlottesville mayor Frank Buck may have acted on the impulse.

Buck was arrested on Thursday, November 11, and charged with misdemeanor assault for his role in a day-earlier incident that his legal client and alleged victim, Milton Leo John, calls “outrageous.”

According to John, a 53-year-old airline pilot, the judge and bailiffs had stepped out of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on a recess when his attorney, Buck, began to discuss a week-earlier hearing. The topic was an old domestic abuse charge that, John says, was dismissed shortly after it was lodged and which should have already been expunged. John says he was calmly expressing his frustration over Buck’s alleged failure to press his case and presented a letter he’d sent Buck showing that he’d made the expungement request several years earlier.

John, who stands 5′7″ and weighs 160 pounds, says he began reading from the letter when his 6-foot-tall, 230-pound attorney suddenly and unexpectedly went berzerk. (more)

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“My uncles, my grandfather, me sat out here on the Downtown Mall,” says lifelong wreath-maker Sandy Cason, as he points out the boxwood, the tezzle, and the deer berry he collects to make his holiday creations at the farmer’s market founded by his father and brothers. But he won’t be there this year. He’s been banned.

“They have a personal vendetta against me,” declares Sandy Cason. “They don’t like me because I’m boisterous.”

Cason admits he told the assistant market manager to “go to hell” November 13 when discussing the fact that an anonymous jury had passed him over this season.

How did it happen that a scion of the Cason brothers— George, Jack, Billy, and Sandy’s father, Ezra, who founded the popular Charlottesville institution, the City Market— came to be black-balled?

According to Cason, he first drew the wrath of City Market management in late October when he lambasted a woman driving the wrong way down one-way South Street.

“Do you always do stupid things like that?” he concedes he said when she pulled into the market’s lot, and that remark led her to “cuss” him. Market manager Stephanie Anderegg-Maloy and her assistant, Lucy Lamm, asked (more)

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Crozet, the small village to the west, has ambitions.

Two decades ago it was known mostly for Mint Springs Valley Park and Crozet Pizza, the quirky, family-owned restaurant that was recently selected as one of the top 51 pizza parlors in the country by USA Today. Since then, however, the village with a population around 3,000 has grown in stature, welcoming the ambitious Crozet Master Plan in 2001, Starr Hill Brewery, Old Trail Village, the production of the Hollywood film Evan Almighty (which included the construction of an “ark” and visits from giraffes and elephants), various other popular eateries like Cocina del Sol, Jarman’s Gap, and the Mudhouse; the Crozet Music Festival, the Blue Ridge Shopping Center anchored by a Harris Teeter, an ACAC, and the brand-spankin’ new $10 million Crozet library soon to be built.

Charlottesville’s reputation as an attractive location over the same period, no doubt, has led to an interest in Crozet, which still remains relatively undeveloped, a new frontier that might harken back to Charlottesville’s earlier days, when UVA students weren’t even sure where the Downtown Mall was, and before we started making those number-one-places-to-live lists.

Indeed, that was the idea behind Old Trail Village, the ambitious 260-acre mixed use ‘village” with a town center, green space, a golf course, and beautiful houses nestled in a valley with spectacular views. However, while Old Trail has had some success, a drive through shows it to be (more)

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Unless something dramatically changes, the City is on course for an ever-swelling deficit that could top $8 million a year by fiscal 2016. That’s according to a grim presentation to City Council by City budget director Leslie Beauregard.

“The farther out we go, the wider the gap becomes,” said Beauregard.

She noted that state funding appears flat and that Albemarle County’s contributions to the City, via the so-called Revenue Sharing Agreement, will bottom out two years from now about three quarters of a million dollars below the current level of $18.5 million.

Another problem area is property taxes, which have fallen six percent below the current City budget. Despite the prospect of red ink, Beauregard doesn’t appear to be feeling blue.

“Things are looking better than this time last year,” said Beauregard. “We were pretty depressed this time last year.”

Indeed, during last year’s preliminary budget report, released two months before the announced retirement of former City Manager Gary O’Connell, the deficit was expected to swell much higher: to $11 million by 2015.

Further fueling optimism in Beauregard’s Monday, November 15 presentation was the fact that meals and lodging taxes have actually climbed above projections.

“We were pleasantly surprised by these— especially lodging,” said Beauregard, noting that the tax on hotel rooms appears on track to finish Fiscal Year 2011 about 5.5 percent ahead of Fiscal 2010.

Council has scheduled a work session on December 2nd to discuss the budget. On December 14, the capital spending program will be the subject of a public hearing before the Planning Commission.

Virginia law doesn’t actually allow localities to run deficits. The City will either need to raise taxes, cut spending— or pray for a sudden uptick in the economy that might cause tax collections to spike.

***

In another fiscally disappointing glance at a crystal ball, the City watched a presentation on a federal mandate to reduce pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay. The TMDL, or Total Maximum Daily Load program of the Environmental Protection Agency, could cost Charlottesville as much as $15.6 million annually to comply. Council endorsed a letter by the City planning director, Jim Tolbert, calling the proposed regulations too onerous.

Tolbert’s letter calls on the EPA to more aggressively pursue agricultural runoff before demanding that cities and developers retrofit their infrastructure.

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As recently reported, while weather and utility work delayed the installation of red-light cameras at the intersection of Rio Road and 29 North, Albemarle County’s high-tech attempt to curb red-light running will finally commence on Friday, November 12. There will be a 30-day grace period, during which violations will only be observed, but after that County police will start mailing out $50 tickets based on photographic and video evidence the cameras capture.

However, there’s one important detail (mentioned previously on Coy Barefoot’s radio program) that hasn’t been widely reported: the cameras won’t be monitoring the entire intersection. Say what?

According to a joint County/VDOT engineering safety analysis on the intersection, three cameras will monitor only two approaches: the through lanes of 29 Southbound and the two left-hand turn lanes, and the through lanes of Rio Road Eastbound and the left and right turned turn lanes.

“We are obviously hoping for a ‘halo effect’ that will impact driver behavior at all approaches to the intersection,” says county spokesperson Lee Catlin.

According to County police Lt. Ernie Allen, the camera systems can only be installed (more)

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Ask people how they want to die, and the two most common answers will be in their sleep or doing something they love. Renaissance man and longtime disc jockey Emmett Boaz, 63, has gone the second way— at the soundboard of radio station WTJU. He had a heart attack shortly after beginning his 6:30am show on Saturday, November 6.

Although best known for his traditional music show, “Leftover Biscuits,” which he hosted since 1996, the endeavor just skimmed the surface of Boaz’s range of knowledge and skills. In 2003, the Hook ran an issue in which Boaz was quoted in almost every story, with Boazian observations on topics as diverse as development, music, and colonics.

Born in 1947, the Covesville-raised Boaz grew up on his family’s apple orchard, and he received a degree in English literature from Marshall University in West Virginia.

He was drafted and served in the Army in Vietnam during that war. Later, he put his James Madison University master’s degree into a teaching career, but, as he told the Hook in 2003, “If I’d stayed teaching junior high, I’d have killed somebody.”

Boaz— who seemed to love Elizabethan drama and guns with equal passion— was also well-known for the 15 years he spent as the manager of the 7-Eleven store at Woodbrook Drive, where he described his duties mostly as “throwing drunks out of the place.”

What struck many of his colleagues at WTJU was the depth of his knowledge of traditional music, which encompasses old time, early country, bluegrass, and roots-era music.

“It was his voice that drew me in,” says Leftover Biscuits co-host Peter Jones. “Emmett had a deep, Southern accent that would bring you in. He told stories from his childhood, and memories associated with a song.

“He downplayed his knowledge,” continues Jones. “He even played up his Southern corn pone.”

“Don’t let my father’s accent fool you,” says Emmett Boaz IV, who’s here from Fairbanks, Alaska. “He didn’t need (more)

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Since their daughter’s mysterious death on a winding country road, the parents of Justine Swartz Abshire have made no secret about who they believe is responsible. But four years after the lifeless body of the 27-year-old school-teacher was discovered following what was initially reported as a hit-and-run accident, there’s been no arrest in the case.

That hasn’t stopped the woman’s parents from suggesting she was more likely beaten to death than hit by a car— and filing a $5 million civil suit alleging not only that Justine’s husband Eric Abshire is a killer but that he didn’t act alone.

While Abshire has long maintained his innocence and vowed to help catch his wife’s killer or killers, a bankruptcy filing shows that contrary to previous public statements that he wouldn’t attempt to financially benefit from his wife’s death, Eric Abshire did, in fact, go after some of the estimated $1.3 million in insurance money.

“His version of events is implausible,” says Justine’s father Steve Swartz, vowing to avenge his daughter’s death through any legal means available.

“The battle lines are drawn,” says Swartz.

Multiple conspirators

If Eric Abshire has long been the focus of the police investigation— and the Swartzes suspicion—the recent lawsuit offers some further insight into what Steve and Heidi Swartz believe actually happened to their daughter. In the suit, they accuse not only Eric, but also his brother, Jesse Abshire, the mother of two of Eric’s children, his cousin, and six unnamed co-conspirators.

The four individuals named “remain at the center” of a criminal investigation, the suit alleges, because they conspired with the unnamed individuals that caused the death of Justine Abshire via “unlawful actions.”

What were those unlawful actions? The suit doesn’t say, and while Eric Abshire, who appears to be representing himself, has not returned a reporter’s repeated calls for comment for this story, he has denied culpability in the past, and the attorney for brother Jesse Abshire calls the suit “without merit.”

“There are no allegations whatsoever,” says Jesse Abshire’s attorney, Lloyd Snook, essentially accusing the Swartzes of a fishing expedition.

“They filed the suit hoping that something might come out that they might be able to base their suit on,” says Snook.

But according to legal analyst David Heilberg, such vagueness is typical in the early stages of a civil action. He says plaintiffs typically “hold their cards close” early in the litigation process to avoid giving defendants a chance to craft a defense prior to depositions, in which they give sworn statements.

Indeed, on their lawyer’s advice, the Swartzes decline to share all their reasons for targeting as many as nine people in addition to the supposedly grieving widower. With painful clarity, however, they do share recollections of the days surrounding daughter’s death.

Devastation
It was the telephone call that every parent dreads. At 3am on the morning of November 3, 2006, the Swartzes were awakened at home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Their elder daughter, a kindergarten teacher at Culpeper’s Emerald Hill Elementary School who was working toward her master’s degree at UVA, was dead, the caller told them, hit by a car sometime after midnight. (more)

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Forest Lakes Arby’s owner Tom Slonaker has never been shy about promoting his business while expressing his libertarian beliefs, a tendency that’s got him in some hot water with County officials over the years, and those beliefs appear to have helped create a new restaurant concept.

Slonaker has repeatedly defied a County zoning ordinance prohibiting commercial flags (an ordinance that has been in place since 1969) by hoisting an Arby’s flag in front of his restaurant, along with signs for another business he owns. In 2003, Slonaker even hosted a “rally around the flag” event by handing out little Arby’s flags for people to put on their cars, and portraying the situation as a property rights issue.

Later, he claimed the sign ordinance was enforced unevenly against businesses along 29 North, and he filed a civil suit against the county with the help of the Rutherford Institute, which argued that Slonaker’s First Amendment rights were being trampled on.

Last year, however, a judge ruled that Slonaker had violated the sign ordinance and slapped him with $1,000 fines for several violations.

Meanwhile, Slonaker has also been having issues with Arby’s corporate rules, which have not allowed him to (more)

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Let’s say you’ve just had federal agents come by your house. For many, the last thing thing they’d do next is swing by another agent’s house and take photos. Yet authorities say that’s what Elisha Strom did.

Police portray the red-tressed 35-year-old as an unrepentant stalker who terrorizes men in blue with online musings and photos on her blog. But to Strom, the most recent escapade— for allegedly stalking an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms— it’s just another bogus charge intended to get her to take down the site, I HeArTE JADE.

The most recent contretemps arose in August when Strom was arrested for allegedly stalking ATF Agent John Stoltz. In his August complaint, Stoltz accuses Strom of stalking him from February 2008 to August 17, 2010. He notes that her website includes photos of him, his car, his license place, and his residence to bolster his allegation.

“Due to Strom’s postings, I fear she or someone viewing the website will locate and kill or harm me and/or my family,” writes Stoltz.

Strom claims she hasn’t seen Agent Stoltz since July 2009, but she readily concedes that she (more)

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At 10am on Saturday, with a day of screenings left to go, the Virginia Film Festival broke its all-time box office record, Festival director Jody Kielbasa announced before The Last Picture Show.

Bigger and better was the unofficial theme at this year’s fest, Kielbasa’s second but the first on which he really could impose his vision. (Last year, he inherited the “Funny Business” theme, a festival tradition that had pretty much run its course, and which he immediately ditched.)

Attendance jumped 25 percent over last year to 23,750, as did ticket sales, ringing up at $90,158.

Kielbasa also unveiled a new logo that says both Virginia and Blue Ridge Mountains, although one wiseacre we know sees a bondage theme in the celluloid wrapped around the state.

And Kielbasa did make us suffer, with more movies— 132— than ever before, making it even harder to choose what films to cram into the November 4-7 fest.

Innovations we liked a lot: The emphasis on contemporary foreign films and the “Six from ‘60,” a way to screen classic movies from 50 years ago. We’re hoping next year has “Six from ‘61.”

Adding a box office at the Main Street Arena on the Downtown Mall made it really convenient for us at the Hook a block away.

And Culbreth Theatre used to be a wasteland for food options. This year, the upgraded Fine Arts Café made it possible for famished filmgoers to find the sustenance to carry on.

Attracting star power has always been one of the toughest lots of (more)

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As platoons of volunteers uncover the old bones of the Rock Hill gardens, the historic Park Street estate that’s now the overgrown back yard of the Monticello Area Community Action Agency (MACAA), also unearthed has been the property’s complex history as a genteel country estate, a unique experiment in landscape design, a segregation era school, and a victim of growth.

The restoration effort has been largely organized by former City Council candidate Bob Fenwick, who, along with other preservation-mined folks, wanted to draw attention to the property so that the City and the FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, follow through on an agreement, according to a May 2010 memorandum, to restore the garden and add it to the park system as part of the new 250 interchange project.

“It’s important as the home of the violin playing brother of Jefferson’s master builder, James Dinsmore’s, and as (more)

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In one of the most closely watched congressional races, Democrat Tom Perriello conceded defeat to Republican challenger state Senator Robert Hurt shortly after 9pm on November 2.

“It’s been my honor to serve the people of the 5th District,” said Perriello to a packed room of the party faithful at Siips. “I’ve given it everything I’ve got.”

Freshman incumbent Perriello trailed Hurt throughout the race, and despite poll numbers putting him within the margin of error, Hurt showed a healthy lead of 10 percent as soon as returns started coming in.

Once all the ballots were counted, (more)

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The director of the Charlottesville High School Orchestra, a group whose students have been launched into Taylor Swift’s and other internationally acclaimed bands, will find herself performing cello onstage with a popular singer-songwriter headlining a show at Old Cabell Hall: A Fine Frenzy.

“I’m so excited,” says Laura Mulligan Thomas. “I’ve wanted to do this all my life.”

Normally confining herself to the classical arena, Thomas leaves the world of note-by-note work tonight as she joins an act known for heartbroken love songs— and the possibility of improvisation.

Thomas says she received MP4s of the six songs which she’ll accompany, including “The Minnow and the Trout” and”Almost Lover,” the latter an indie radio hit, just four days ago.

“It sounds like we’ll be winging it,” says Thomas, while driving over to the same-day rehearsal, “so that’s half the fun.”

~
A Fine Frenzy performs Tuesday, November 2 in UVA’s Old Cabell Hall at 8pm. Tickets cost $12-$24.

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It looks like Amtrak parking lot owners Gabe Silverman and Alan Cadgene have finally begun taking steps to pave the pot-holed dirt and gravel Amtrak station parking lot they own, which some West Main business owners say has become a health hazard to customers because of the dust.

Silverman has been publicly promising to pave the Amtrak parking lot at least since 2004, when he proclaimed it “was going to happen.” In January this year, Neighborhood development chief Jim Tolbert told the Hook that Silverman and Cadgene had told him they were going to pave the lot “as soon as the weather is appropriate.”

Eight months later, some West Main business owners have decided that it’s been bad behavior, not bad weather, that’s left the parking lot unpaved. For instance, Maya restaurant owner and Midtown Association member Peter Castiglione called the lot a “blight” on the neighborhood. Indeed, as an early morning photograph taken by the Hook shows, the dust from the lot can nearly block out the view of West Main. Along with several other business owners, Castiglione finally decided to talk about a lawsuit against Cadgene and Silverman to get them to finally do something about their dust. Not to mention the sizable potholes that have plagued the lot.

Apparently, Castiglione got the duo’s attention. He says that Cadgene suddenly promised to treat the parking lot with a product called Durasoil, a synthetic-organic fluid that controls road dust. Preparation for the Durasoil began on the morning of Tuesday, November 2.

“They have been very responsive since our lawyer (more)

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Despite recent cuts to its operating schedule and limits on what it will accept, the McIntire Recycling Center will continue to get the support of Charlottesville taxpayers— about $28,000 until the end of the calendar year— even while its usage has plummeted as more convenient options abound.

The City Council voted its position Monday, November 1 after the County of Albemarle, which also funds the operation, issued a request and City Public Works Director Judith Mueller explained how usage was dropping.

“The tonnage is down,” said Mueller. “For the current calendar year, it’s going to be about half of what it was in 2007.”

Mueller told the four present Councilors (Councilor Holly Edwards was absent) that even though the City offers free curbside recycling pickup, about a third of the McIntire’s traffic still comes from City residents.

“There’s a social atmosphere at McIntire that many people consider very special,” explained Mueller.

Yet two councilors gave other reasons why city residents should support McIntire, which typically sees people unloading materials from inside gas-chugging automobiles after painstaking sorting— a growing rarity in this area ever since a private firm began operating a MRF so efficiently that it won a City contract to sort and process the stuff left at curbside.

“We recycle so much,” said Councilor Kristin Szakos of her own household, “that we only put out garbage about once every four weeks. Ours is one of those cars coming in and unloading everything.”

Councilor David Brown pointed out that only by sorting can citizens and companies ensure that their old office paper becomes new office paper. “You can’t use newsprint or cardboard to make this,” said Brown, holding up a sheet of office paper.

The operator of the McIntire Center, the Rivanna Solid (more)

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The upscale wine businesses built by Patricia Kluge are under foreclosure, according to a pending legal notice, and although this marks the second forced auction this year on a Kluge property, this one— at nearly $35 million— looms much larger and could dismantle the award-winning winery founded 11 years ago by a billionaire’s ex-wife.

The latest foreclosure notice claims a total debt of $34,785,000 and lists assets of the Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyards to be auctioned off, including 907 acres in southern Albemarle, 164 of which are vineyards. The sale would also include the well-known Farm Shop and tasting room, as well as offices, production buildings, six employee houses, and a 34,000-square-foot former carriage museum.

The December 8 sale takes place at noon at the vineyard office building on Grand Cru Drive in the southeastern part of the county. Another auction on December 11 in Madison would sell off 15,000 cases of Kluge Estate wine, including its 2005 New World Red and sparking wines. (The Madison sale is open only (more)

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They waited for hours. By 4pm— an hour before the gates to the Pavilion opened— the line of people waiting to see President Barack Obama stretched to the Omni on the other end of the Downtown Mall, soon to wrap around to Water Street.

More than two hours after the gates to the Pavilion opened, at 7:40pm, a roar went up from the crowd as Congressman Tom Perriello came on the stage to introduce the man he hoped would inspire voters to say “yes we can” in the hotly contested 5th District Congressional race.

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to make sure you go vote Tuesday for the best representative Charlottesville has ever had,” said Obama to the enthusiastic crowd.

The President acknowledged that he and Perriello, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable congressman in this year’s midterm elections and has trailed his Republican opponent, (more)

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The last time Barack Obama came to the Pavilion on the Downtown Mall he set an attendance record for the facility. And he was just a candidate for President.  This time, as President, his visit could turn the Downtown Mall upside down.

(The County has also issued traffic advisory concerning the President’s route from the airport to the Downtown Mall.  The information is at the bottom of this post)

Indeed, as the following list of street closures and restrictions indicate, it’s going to be a challenge to get to see the President (Arrive early!).

Several streets will be closed during the visit, and pedestrian and vehicle access may be restricted to accommodate the security needs of the Secret Service. The majority of closures will occur between 6:30pm and 9pm. Most notably, the area typically used for Pavilion events by pedestrians will be closed at 2pm. (more)

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For decades, “Protect the rural areas” has been the veritable mantra of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. That spirit has helped anyone driving on U.S. 250 west of Charlottesville view grazing cows instead of the clustered subdivisions that been popping up around Crozet, a designated growth area. But sometimes the ideals of the Comprehensive Plan collide with reality.

Take, for instance, the strip of U.S. 250 between Western Albemarle High and Interstate 64. Long dotted with commerce, it includes gas stations, an auto body shop, a chain-fenced equipment storage yard, the Moose Lodge, and a lumber mill. And yet it’s zoned rural.

That’s why when Will Yancey tried to a build a light industrial park behind the heavy industrial R.A. Yancey Lumber site two years ago, he (more)

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It seems like a simple question: How much will taxpayers pay to make Biscuit Run a Virginia park?

Nearly a year after the state’s under-the-wire purchase of the 1,200-acre tract that had been slated to become Albemarle’s biggest subdivision, the would-be developers and state officials appear to have successfully deflected inquiries about the value of tax credits that made the deal possible— even as the Virginia state senator who penned the legislation establishing such tax credits now calls the secrecy “disturbing.”

Meanwhile, tranquility-quashing plans remain to build 100 houses within the new park’s perimeter.

Such revelations come as sources point out that the 850-acre Panorama Farms– a recreation-ready tract owned by a family eager to protect scenic terrain from development– was passed over for the honor of becoming Albemarle County’s state park. Yet, it’s the secrecy surrounding the Biscuit Run deal that has drawn fire from both sides of the political spectrum.

“It ought to be transparent,” says State Senator Creigh Deeds, who served as patron of the land preservation tax credit system that became law a decade ago. “People ought to be able to judge for themselves whether its a good deal or not.”

In a rare occurrence during politically polarized times, conservative radio show host and former Republican city councilor Rob Schilling agrees.

“It would be one thing if the developers just decided they weren’t going to build it,” says Schilling. “But for the state to get involved, and then start wheeling and dealing behind closed doors? I don’t think that makes many people very happy.”

***

Located south of Charlottesville, sprawling Biscuit Run farm was purchased in 2005 for a record-shattering $46.2 million by a group of investors called themselves Forest Lodge LLC. Publicly headed by developer Hunter Craig and including Dave Matthews Band manager Coran Capshaw and at least one member of the Dave Matthews Band, the team justified the gasp-worthy price by the promise of a 3,100-home development inside the County’s designated growth area. The plan promised— in addition to giving the developers a return— to give Albemarle $41 million in proffers (deal sweeteners such as money and roads) in addition to a 400-acre park and a permanently expanded tax base.

But as the real estate market tanked in the years following the purchase, Forest Lodge found itself shouldering an immense debt load and unable to move forward on the development. By November 2009, Bluefield, West Virginia-based First Community Bancshares alerted shareholders that the Biscuit Run loan was in “early stage delinquency” but assured that it was “adequately secured” by the large tract of undeveloped land.

Were wealthy developers about to get bailed out by high-level politicians? (more)

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Some female singer-songwriters try humor (Ingrid Michaelson), some try angst (Alanis Morissette), and some just try sex (Katy Perry). But only one swirls tales of fantasy and hopeless romance quite like Alison Sudol, who makes music that seems haunted by the spell of a love she’s never truly known— while performing under a moniker borrowed from Shakespeare. “A Fine Frenzy,” says Sudol of her stage name, “is just sort of this magical state. It’s the flurry of ideas. It’s a state of inspiration where you’re both exploding with thought and yet you’re very focused and clear-headed.” At the tender age of 25, Miss Sudol may still be finding her way in the world, but the world is finding her. She’s played Letterman, the Lilith Fair, and penned a to-be-published children’s book. She and her piano also starred in a recent episode of CSI:NY; and she hints, in a telephone interview from her West Coast home, that the future could include more appearances on-screen. Already, music videos show her flying on feather wings (”Blow Away“) and tumbling into an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole (”Sleepwaking“). Clearly, this woman loves fairytales. With a visual style marked by electric red hair and bee-stung lips, she presents a musical style that crystallized on “Almost Lover,” a fond farewell that offers just enough sultriness to make the listener picture the heartbroken goodbye boy crawling back, after the credits roll, over nails and glass. [youtube width="320"]lsWsasqIoyk[/youtube]When it hit the airwaves three years ago “Almost Lover” quickly landed a fine endorsement from VH1. (It also captured the attention of UVA student turned semi-professional dancer Gina Consumano, who built an 18-person performance around it. “From the first notes,” the choreographer recalls, “I was already dancing in my head.”) The same year that song began charting, A Fine Frenzy came to the Charlottesville Pavilion as the third-stringer for Rufus Wainwright. Now, she’s fielding artistic questions about her since-released sophomore album,  Bomb in a Birdcage, which is rowdier and more, well, bombastic, than her freshman effort, One Cell in the Sea, a 300,000-selling hit whose title sprang from a metaphorical plea for world harmony. “One Cell was more of a peaceful record, while Bomb in a Birdcage was more of a fight,” says Sudol. “In order to find yourself, you’ve got to rip open certain aspects of your life. And that ripping can be a lot more violent than a gentle search.” Yet the playfulness remains. Consider the opening lines of “What I Wouldn’t Do”: If we were children, I would bake you a mud pie Warm and brown beneath the sun Never learned to climb a tree, but I would try Just to show you what I’d done. As the following interview reveals, Charlottesville concertgoers may not find a redhead on stage, but they will find someone eager to carry them up, up, and away. ————— The Hook: Where’d you get that red hair? AFF: Well, I was really identified by red hair, which led me to change it back to my natural color, blonde. It’s just hair. The Hook: Do you feel upset that you didn’t go to college? AFF: When I go to a college campus and look around and see the experiences people are having, it does give me a little pang. College seems rad; college seems wonderful. The Hook: Hah. AFF: Why are you laughing? The Hook: Because you’ve done other— possibly more important— things. AFF: That doesn’t mean that every now and then I don’t wish that I had taken the normal route. I graduated from high school at 16— young, young, young. The Hook: You’re not on tour, so why play Charlottesville? AFF: I actually didn’t want to play any shows for a little while because I am writing and sort of hibernating. The offer came in, and I looked at the Hall, and it just looks like such a wonderful place. And it is lovely to connect with people. The Hook: Paul McCartney said the Beatles were all about love, but what motivates your music? AFF: Music is about love and imagination and creating a world you can escape to— a beautiful, full, extraordinary world that you can slip into when you put on your headphones or climb in bed and get carried away somewhere wonderful. ~ A Fine Frenzy performs on Tuesday, November 2 in UVA’s Old Cabell Hall at 8pm. Tickets cost $12-$24. Correction: The above story has been corrected to reflect the fact that there is A Fine Frenzy song called “Sleepwaking,” not “Sleepwalking,” as it was first incorrectly spelled above.
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You’ve seen photos of giant check presentations, but that shot wasn’t available at a recent Jefferson School event because the $850,000 heralded for the African-American Heritage Cultural Center hasn’t exactly landed in anyone’s happy hands. The appropriation has passed a House of Representatives subcommittee, and while it’s expected to pass the full House, it’s still got to get through the U.S. Senate.

Despite that uncertainty, several dozen Jefferson School alumni and supporters showed up October 19 to celebrate with Congressman Tom Perriello, who has been pushing the appropriation.

Martin Burks, president of the private citizen-owned entity that’s going to rehabilitate the school into a multi-purpose civic center, announced that some demolition will start in November and that a $3 million private donation has been made to the Heritage Center foundation. Anticipated occupancy date: spring 2012.

“Soon it will be a destination for people coming to Charlottesville,” said Vice Mayor Holly Edwards.

Already, the City has committed nearly $6 million in economic development funding, and last month, City Council approved an option that will let the Jefferson School Community Partnership buy the historic school for $100,000, an amount the city is funding through another economic development pot.

The city will rent back the bulk of the space as a renovated Carver Recreation Center. According to an October 18 letter of intent, the City’s rent will start at $32,442 a month for 33,133 square feet, a price of $11.75 per square foot.

PVCC president Frank Friedman and the YMCA’s Dennis Blank, whose non-profit organizations plan to become future tenants of the so-called Jefferson School City Center, were among the several dozen attendees. Still needed, however, is an $11.5 million construction loan.

“We hope to have it wrapped up this week or next,” says Partnership member Frank Stoner.

The celebratory event came just four days after Perriello wrecked his 2005 Ford Ranger (and was charged with an improper lane change). So how did the barnstorming incumbent get there? The old-fashioned way: he borrowed his brother’s Mercury Mountaineer.

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When Mark Brown purchased the Charlottesville Ice Park this past summer, he said the key to its success would lie in turning it from a single-purpose to a multi-use facility. Brown will put that plan into action— full contact action— on Friday, October 29 with a Mixed Martial Arts tournament. Dubbed “Battle at the Arena,” the event is put on by a Fredericksburg MMA gym called Barbarian Fight Club and will feature 22 match-ups, according to the Fight Card, ranging from Super Heavy Weight (over 265 pounds) down to Bantamweight (125.1-135 pounds). Two of the fights are between women. MMA fighters utilize moves from a variety of different martial arts styles, and although the matches are tightly regulated and refereed, they can get rough— as anyone reading the rules might imagine. Among legal moves: strikes using hands, knees, shins and feet, and all judo, jiu jitsu, and wrestling takedowns and throws. The lengthy list of fouls, however, suggests just how wrong things could go if a fighter went rogue. Included on that forbidden list: eye-gouging, clawing, pinching, or twisting of flesh, throat strikes, one or two-handed chokes applied directly to the throat/windpipe, “fish hooks” to eyes, nose, ear, or mouth, and putting a finger into any open orifice including cuts or lacerations. The sport was deemed so dangerous by a group of Canadian doctors that they called for an outright ban, but other sources claim that (more)
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In a county where over 60 percent of the high school students receive advanced studies diplomas, anything that gets in the way of relentless achievement can send angry villagers, er, parents, to confront the creators of the Frankenstein creature known as block scheduling.

The Albemarle School Board got a more than hour-long earful during an October 14 meeting, as 16 parents and students denounced block scheduling— also known as 4×4— and demanded that the board renounce classes compressed into one intense semester.

“I don’t want the kids to be guinea pigs,” protested pediatrician Lori Balaban.

“My daughter cannot keep up,” said Dawn McCoy of her ninth grader.

“I see no clear justification for this program, which has been abandoned by many other school systems,” said parent Mark Echelberger. Invoking Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, he added, “I fear teachers and students have been left standing on the shore.”

At press time, 369 people had signed an electronic petition on the website of the organization formed to fight squeezing a formerly year-long class like algebra 2 into just one semester.

The plan gives students four 90-minute classes every day for a semester instead of spreading out shorter classes every other day throughout the school year, and it has created something of an uproar— at least among a group known as CASE: Citizens of Albemarle Supporting Education.

“We knew it would be difficult,” says Superintendent Pam Moran. In the face (more)

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The same day the Hook published a cover story [Conflicting Tales: The unfolding tragedy at the VQR] on the conflicting tales surrounding what went on at the Virginia Quarterly Review before the July 30 suicide of its managing editor, UVA released an anticipated audit report (with responses written by UVA President Teresa Sullivan) on the magazine’s finances and management that presents even more conflicting information.

While editor Ted Genoways and other staff members will not be losing their jobs, unspecified “corrective action” will be taken regarding Genoways’ handling of VQR finances, his poor management style, his failure to provide his staff with the information they needed to do their jobs, and his failure to adhere to UVA policies in the treatment of his staff.

While Genoways hasn’t yet responded to the Hook for comment, he told the New York Times that the report lacked “a clear statement of the facts.”

“I suppose they don’t want to state my innocence too plainly, because it makes their actions — cleaning out my office, canceling the winter issue — look panicked and ill-considered,” Genoways told the Times. “But I think moving on will require greater honesty.”

The report concludes that while complaints were received about Genoways’ management of the magazine, no “specific allegations of bullying or harassment” were made before Morrissey’s death. However, as the report later recommends, “the current structure for receiving employee complaints needs to be re-evaluated by the University.”

In addition, what was revealed about the inner workings of the magazine has prompted the creation of a University-wide “task force” to “strengthen the institution’s policies and structure with regard to acceptable workplace conduct,” which includes “developing a structure within Human Resources in which employee complaints about their supervisors can be taken, registered, and followed up.”

Essentially, the report appears to have ignored the numerous complaints made after Morrissey’s death, as well as charges of harassment made by one former VQR staff member, 30-plus-year veteran Candace Pugh, in 2005. However, as UVA spokesperson Carol Wood points out, the audit report covers operations at the magazine only during the last two years.

The report did cite reports of Genoways “not being courteous or respectful with some contributors and colleagues,” and “problems with certain employees” in the past, but concluded that no reports “ever seemed to rise to the level of a serious, on-going concern.” However, that conclusion appears to conflict with comments made by Genoways himself, who has said (more)

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A University Transit Service bus driver who reportedly failed to secure the brakes on the vehicle while attending to some sort of cleaning operation resulted in extensive damage to a sidewall of historic Beta Bridge on Wednesday, October 21. The Bridge, which carries Rugby Road over the CSX railroad tracks, has long served as a canvas for student messages uttered in paint.

Moments after this photo was taken the following morning, a two-bulldozer crew from the Charlottesville Public Works Department arrived to stop traffic and— with industrial-strength chains— pull down the damaged section.

A photo and video captured by the Newsplex shows that the bus missed the adjacent fire hydrant (currently wearing a silver coat of paint) by what appears to be just an inch or two. The Newsplex is also the source for the cause of the crash.

According to the unofficial UVA historian Coy Barefoot, Beta Bridge got its first documented freelance paint job in 1926, three years after the steel-reinforced concrete structure was built. The current paint layers— as revealed in the massive bus-caused crack— appear at least two inches thick.

Most poignantly, the bridge served as a months-long condolence to Virginia Tech after the 2007 massacre on the Blackburg university’s campus.

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Just when it seemed the acrimony had peaked, the leader of an ostensibly free market organization has submitted a proposal to accomplish what he hasn’t been able to accomplish through normal channels: seizing hundreds of acres of City-owned land. Ever since the Supreme Court smiled on land grabs in 2005 in Kelo v. City of New London, conservatives have rallied against the power of eminent domain. Not here. Not in the war over water. “The Free Enterprise Forum believes since the Ragged Mountain Reservoir is in Albemarle County there may yet be a trump card yet to be played in this game, eminent domain.” So writes Neil Williamson, the Forum’s president, who for years has been doggedly urging politicians to build a new reservoir, despite environmental destruction and unanswered cost questions. Most recently, the Albemarle County Supervisors provoked City outrage by putting their names on a document alleging that the project— widely believed to cost around $200 million— could be constructed without raising water bills. Williamson acknowledges that free-marketeers rarely endorse the use of the power of eminent domain, but citing Virginia Code, he asserts that the water utility “may be one such area.” He contends that the landowner, the City, is “preventing a community from access to a community water resource.” The proposal landed with instant controversy. Richard Lloyd, an engineer who has been pushing a dredging alternative at public meetings (and in two-page advertisements he and local businessman Keith Rosenfeld have run in the Hook), thinks that the Forum seems to have strayed from its limited-government mission. “Ready to compromise all their core values to get their way?” Lloyd asks in an online comment. However, Williamson says the discussion has been positive and characterizes his essay as more of a set of questions than an outright proposal. “The debate’s been good,” says Williamson. In another matter, the Albemarle County Service Authority, the waterworks for county homes and businesses, voted on Thursday, October 21 to pay Schnabel Engineering $869,000 for final design of an earthen dam in the Ragged Mountain Natural Area. One board members, Jim Colbaugh, noting the seemingly unprecedented nature of funding something outside the usual channel, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, noted that the City has in recent months spent approximately half a million dollars for independent engineering studies for such matters as dredging and repairing the existing Ragged Mountain dam. The vote was unanimous. The ACSA later took another vote that wasn’t unanimous. Board members Rick Carter and Liz Palmer were expressing an interest in limiting an upcoming RWSA effort to issue Request For Proposals on dredging. Palmer declared that anything beyond “phase one” dredging would drive up costs. “You want to make a decision before you see the results,” an irritated Colbaugh told Palmer. “You’ve got your three votes,” Palmer dejectedly told Colbaugh. Indeed, Palmer and Carter were outvoted by the other three board members. —last updated 11:37am, Thursday, October 21; last section further clarified at 2:02pm
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“911,” the dispatcher says.

“Hi,” says the male caller. “You need to send a police car and an ambulance to the dirt road that runs off Water Street.”

“Okay, what’s going on?”

“Ah, there’s been a shooting,” says the caller.

“Okay, how many people are shot?”

The caller hangs up. The dispatcher calls back, gets an answering machine.

“Hi, this is Kevin Morrissey. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…”

–Transcript of Kevin Morrissey’s July 30, 2010 911 phone call.

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Nearly three months after Virginia Quarterly Review managing editor Kevin Morrissey took his own life, stories are still being penned about what the tragedy revealed about the troubled inner workings of the award-winning magazine: charges of favoritism, spiraling spending, poisonous tensions between staff members, and the hot-button suggestion that the magazine’s editor, Ted Genoways, bullied the 52-year-old Morrissey in the last few weeks of his life.

Documents recently made available to the Hook show that Genoways was burning through VQR’s endowment, hiring an intern for a key office role without going through the usual state procedures, and— perhaps most surprisingly— planning to take advantage of the intern-turned-employee’s million-dollar-plus donation to another program to save his own struggling enterprise.

Meanwhile, as the official UVA investigation into the management of the magazine continues (web update: the report was issued shortly after this story was posted), two recent stories have taken a different tack: casting Genoways, not Morrissey, as the hapless victim of a reckless rush to judgment.

Genoways unbound

Since Morrissey’s July 30 suicide, Genoways has declined interviews (though a long email he wrote to colleagues two days after Morrissey’s death was obtained by the Hook), citing the confidentiality inherent in personnel matters and referring (more)

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SLIDESHOW
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Cars backed up for miles on Saturday, October 9, snaking from Route 53 onto Route 20 South and then even further— onto Interstate 64 at exit 121. It prompted the temporary closure of  Route 53. But those who assumed an accident was to blame for the traffic-stopping snarl were wrong: it was the allure of apples and the call of Carter Mountain, where the annual Apple Festival was taking place.

“It probably was one of our best attended festivals,” says Cynthia Chiles, whose family owns both Carter Mountain Orchard and Chiles Peach Orchard in Crozet.

The mountain-top business doesn’t keep attendance records, says Chiles, but she believes the possibly record-breaking turnout was thanks to a confluence of events: a perfect fall day, the ripening of popular varieties Fujis and Granny Smiths, and the fact that there was no home UVA football game to distract families looking for some bonding time at a mountain that stands 1278 feet above sea level and over 400 feet above nearby Monticello. (more)

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Albemarle County’s latest salvo in its war on dredging— an info sheet purporting to dispassionately explain the community water supply plan— has outraged members of City Council, including mayor Dave Norris who blasted the sheet as loaded with “misinformation” during Council’s October 18 meeting.

“Have you no shame?” intoned citizen Richard Statman, recalling the famous query that brought down U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s “red scare.” Statman and other speakers pointed to questionable assertions in the document, which County spokesperson Lee Catlin revealed last week would arrive with personal property tax bills at Albemarle households.

Among the insert’s contentions is that building a massive new reservoir system— despite felling over 50,000 trees in the Ragged Mountain Natural Area— would be more environmentally friendly and cost-effective than dredging the existing Rivanna Reservoir. Moreover, the insert alleges that the plan— which requires a pipeline of unknown cost and path—- can be accomplished with no increase in water bills.

Engineer/builder Bob Fenwick, who unsuccessfully ran for City Council last fall on his interest in dredging, expressed shock that anyone could assert that a plan widely believed to cost over $200 million would not spike water bills, which have already more than doubled over the past decade with no increase in water storage capacity.

“Who then will bear this enormous cost?” asked Fenwick. “The concept that you could build a public works project of this magnitude and not raise water bills is absurd and disrespectful to the community.”

The leaders of the anti-dredging faction also had their say. City resident Jim Nix, a Democratic Party leader, suggested that (more)

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When director Brian Wimer first conceived of the zombie-laden running race as a guerrilla marketing tool for his new film, Danger. Zombies. Run., he figured he might get a hundred people or so willing to don deathly makeup to run after willing victims through the streets of downtown Charlottesville.

Apparently, the director of the award-winning Mantra and other horror fare tapped an unrecognized demand for zombie-related athletic events, as approximately 500 runners, some who traveled from out-of-state, participated in the inaugural “Zombie 5K” on Sunday, October 17. They filled the streets with staggering— or sprinting— undead hot on the trail of human runners.

“Everybody had a good time,” says Wimer, who expressed relief that his biggest fear was not realized. “No one got hurt!” he exclaimed.

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While some might have believed that Wimer sponsored another zombie-related event the night before the race– the decidedly adult-themed “Sexy Zombie Jello Wrestling” at R2 nightclub– Wimer says he did not, but he did film it as a possible DVD extra for his film. He does hope to hold a family-friendly zombie bake sale at the City Market before the Saturday, October 30 premiere of the new film at the Paramount. (It will screen again on Friday, November 5 during the Virginia Film Festival.) (more)

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Phil Bradley knows what it’s like to wonder if rescue will ever come or if you’ll die without anyone even knowing you’re there. He’s watched the 33 trapped miners in Chile emerge from deep in the earth, and says, “I can empathize with those people.”

Bradley is the sole survivor of Piedmont Flight 349, which crashed into Bucks Elbow Mountain nearly 51 years ago. The 26 other people on that flight died, and Bradley lay alone on that mountain for 36 hours before rescuers found him.

“I know they were there a lot longer than I was— 17 days before they were found,” says Bradley of the miners during the more than two weeks when no one knew they were alive.

Bradley was aboard the doomed flight on Friday night, October 30, 1959. “The first night I didn’t think about [rescue],” he says, nor did he too much the next day.

“Sunday morning, it was nice, warm and pretty, and I could see planes flying over,” recalls Bradley, in a telephone interview. Finally, after two bone-chilling nights surrounded by dead bodies and occasionally burning wreckage, he heard people coming down the mountain— which surprised him, because he’d expected rescuers to come from below.

Bradley, who grew up in Clifton Forge and now lives in an exurb of Charlotte, North Carolina, is a retired labor organizer; and it was a union mission to Oklahoma City that (more)

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Christmas. Her 21st birthday. The beginning of a new school year. Over the past 12 months, Dan and Gil Harrington have marked one milestone after another without their daughter, Morgan, who disappeared after attending a Metallica concert last fall and whose remains were discovered on a remote corner of an Albemarle County farm in January. On October 17, the Harringtons will mark another grim milestone: the one year anniversary of Morgan’s disappearance.

As they have done frequently over the past year, the Harringtons will visit the Copeley Road bridge— the place Morgan was last seen alive— where a shrine grew to cover most of the southeast corner of the bridge with mementos, messages, and banners dedicated to Morgan. But while on previous visits the Harringtons have stood alone, speaking to supporters and members of the media, this time they will be accompanied by representatives of the university for a dedication of a permanent plaque that will take the place of the multi-colored memorial, whose array of photos, candles, flowers, and other mementos were packed up and sent to the Harringtons on October 4.

“Morgan’s disappearance, the hopeful search and later the heartbreaking discovery of her remains had an enormous effect on the University community,” said Patricia Lampkin, UVA’s vice president and chief student affairs officer, in a released statement about the event. Although there seemed to be a break in the case in July, when police announced that DNA evidence linked Morgan’s killing with a 2005 assault in Fairfax, there have been no significant developments announced since then. (more)

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When Tim Kindrick went into his bank on September 23, he thought it would be business as usual to deposit a $2,100 insurance check he and his wife received for water damage. Kindrich ultimately got the check deposited, but when he complained about how it was handled, First Citizens froze his debit card and said it didn’t want his business.

“It kind of floored me and my wife, the way we were treated,” says Kindrick, 45, who’s retired from the Army.

He’d been banking with the Forest Lakes branch of First Citizens— motto: “We value relationships”— for about three years, had over $20,000 in his account and had deposited three or four similar checks already (more)

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The gardens of Rock Hill, a historic Park Street estate that’s now the overgrown back yard of MACAA, the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, are getting a makeover thanks to some community activists. Event host Sabrina Youry convened teams of volunteers on Sunday, October 10 to remove deadfall and debris from what she calls a “magnificent but neglected” eight-acre space. It was all part of a worldwide set of events conducted on 10/10/10 and said to consist of over 7,000 projects in 183 countries— a “global work party” to fight global warming. “What better way to bring appreciation/awareness/reverence for the environment than to offer the community a beautiful, accessible green sanctuary,” Youry said in an email before the event. Afterward, Youry described the turnout as “great,” with over 20 people showing up to lend a hand. However, restoring the Rock Hill gardens has been on the radar of local preservationists for some time, especially after it was discovered in 2008 that the historic landscape would be affected by the interchange for the Route 250 Bypass and the future Meadowcreek Parkway (part of which opened Tuesday, October 12 as a temporary Rio Road construction detour). Pedestrian and bicycle access into McIntire Park has been designed to pass through the intersection, but preservation activists argued that the Rock Hill gardens should have been studied as a place that would provide such access to McIntire Park. Indeed, former City Council candidate Bob Fenwick has been organizing efforts (more)
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