Labor Day

Join Preservation Piedmont for the second annual Labor Day Open House at the Woolen Mills Chapel on Monday, September 2, 9:30 AM -11:00 AM!
Enjoy coffee, donuts and conversation with friends and neighbors, and a chance to hear the latest on Preservation Piedmont’s work to repair and revive the chapel.
Additionally, ReLeaf will be at the Chapel Open House to provide you with information on this fall’s Woolen Mills neighborhood free tree planting program.

Roy

In 1987, 73 year old Roy Jackson Baltimore introduced himself to me. Explained that I was living in his uncle John Baltimore’s house. The explaining started then and continued for decades.

Roy had much to share. He loved his neighborhood. (1516 E Market visible in the background)

Parks and REC

Parks and Recreation is doing a master plan. Consider participating..

Parks and Recreation Dept <ParkandRec@charlottesville.gov>

Dear Charlottesville Parks & Recreation Stakeholder,

This is a reminder email to respond to the invite below for the Parks & Recreation Master Plan Focus Group Meetings. If you have already responded, please ignore. Thank you.

Planning is underway to develop a Comprehensive Parks and Recreation Master Plan for the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department. This document will guide future planning, policy, and development of Charlottesville Parks and Recreation programs and facilities for many years. The goal of the Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Master Plan is to provide a concise and user-friendly roadmap that will incorporate the community’s values to assist the City with decision-making regarding key issues.

We know you are passionate about parks and recreation and we are respectfully requesting your valuable input at an upcoming Focus Group Meeting so that the collective park and recreation vision of the community in Charlottesville can be developed.

The City of Charlottesville has contracted with PROS Consulting to conduct and develop this study and they will be in town the week of February 5th to conduct focus group meetings in-person. Our consultant, Mike Svetz, is copied on this email to assist with scheduling. We are very excited to have PROS on board as they did a fantastic job with our 2005 Master Plan. Once we hear back from the majority of you all, Mike will email to you a calendar invite for the meeting. The focus groups will be conducted IN-PERSON and will last approximately 50 minutes.

Please respond to this email by MONDAY, JANUARY 22nd with your two most preferred dates and times from the list below or if you are unable to participate.

Monday February 5th:

10-10:50am, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
11-11:50am, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
1-1:50pm, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
2-2:50pm, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
6-6:50pm, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street

Wednesday February 7th:

9-9:50am, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street

10-10:50am, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
11-11:50am, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
1-1:50pm, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street
2-2:50pm, Parks & Recreation Admin Office, 501 East Main Street

If you are unable to attend a focus group meeting, we hope you will provide feedback on Charlottesville Parks and Recreation on the project website Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Master Plan | EngagePros (mysocialpinpoint.com).

Thank you for your interest in Charlottesville Parks and Recreation and we look forward to hearing from you one way or the other by Monday January 22nd.

Once we receive responses from most people, we will send out meeting invites to confirm your date and time no later than Wednesday January 24th.

We are looking forward to hearing back from you all.

Tool Use

At this point the driver has failed to see several signs regarding street usage. Tell them, tell them again, tell them again

Zoning is a tool that legislators use to direct the day to day life in their territory. Zoning can be a glass of water for a thirsty person or club against the head of an enemy.
For 40+ years, neighbors have corresponded with legislators and folk in Government about Woolen Mills zoning. This year, an advisory board member responded (thank you Lyle) but otherwise, no member of the City Council, of the deciders, has chosen to engage us in conversation.

In 2000, for the Comprehensive Plan, NDS came to the neighborhood and requested input. It was a different era.

This post is a cursory examination of zoning when used without the consideration of The People whose neighborhood will be shaped by the zoning. We are interested in why zoning practice is repeatedly bad zoning practice. We interact and interact and little changes.

Mr.Tolbert on the “very hard line between industrial and residential.” Now the hard line is between IX-5, NX-3 and residential. Carrying forward the vision of Council from 1957.

South of Market Street/Woolen Mills Road subdivision plat

A neighborhood is a living thing composed of topography, culture, people, plants, pathways, businesses, animals and architecture. Neighborhoods require planning and care. It has been So Discouraging trying to obtain planning and care from our City. Neighborhoods are sensitive.
The land affected by split parcel zoning lies in the area of the Woolen Mills between Carlton Road and Franklin Street. It is the land north of the C&O railroad tracks and south of East Market. This acreage has been the seed for multiple conflicts in the past 35 years.

HBA

7 years before the annexation of the area in eastern Woolen Mills and Harland Bartholomew and Associates has a plan to line the south side of Market all the way to the Rivanna with Industrial.

In the beginning, In the 1950’s, around the time that Council approved Harland Bartholomew’s “Workable Program for Urban Renewal” they looked down the road with guidance from HBA and made decisions regarding future zoning of Woolen Mills backyards.

AlbCo adopted zoning in the late 1960s (1969?) Zoning wasn’t a concept familiar to Woolen Mills people, planning for the zoning was done to them in advance of the 1963 annexation. We are not aware of a public process.

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This is the region of split parcel zoning, residential in the north, industrial in the south.

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2013 ZM detail

With the passage of the decades the green residential boundary bordering the southern edge of Market Street has gradually been eroded.


The proposed zoning map removes another 390 feet of the residential gateway to the neighborhood on the south side of Market. For decades we have fought lot by lot to determine the zoned future of the WMN.

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The current Council expresses the intention to remediate the damage done by their predecessors in the 1950s in selected neighborhoods. I wish that Council would act with an awareness that the damage of HBA’s planning advice extended beyond Charlottesville center city.
The split parcel zoning, residential contiguous to industrial, has resulted in numerous land use conflicts over the decades. Thousands of staff and resident hours have been invested in addressing the incompatible zoning district pairings in PUD, SUP, rezoning and BZA public hearings. There have been zoning violations and lawsuits. Neighbors have breathed particulates, smelled stink and been exposed to debilitating noise.

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The proposed zoning map needs adjustment in the Woolen Mills neighborhood.
1-pause the proposed Woolen Mills R-B zoning to avoid displacing current residents and motivating the destruction of modest homes. Talk to those who will be affected!
2-abide by the mapping logic and hold with NX-3 zoning instead of NX-8 for the Wright’s property. No ten story buildings at present!
3-Complete the Small Area Plan (SAP) formally requested by Joe Rhames on behalf of the Woolen Mills in August 1988 before up-zoning Woolen Mills residential properties beyond R-A.

Local News

Rivanna River

Rivanna River

honey truck

septage hauler

Tomorrow night, City Council is expected to officially refer the new “Development Code” to the City Council.
Local journalist Sean Tubbs is interested in receiving community responses to a line in the staff report which accompanies the Development Code, it reads:

“There has been extensive community engagement over the entire time period of the Cville Plans Together process as well as specifically in relation to the Zoning Ordinance,”

Please let Mr. Tubbs know what you think.

230807 staff report

visualization Chesapeake and Meade


Since the city and consultants first introduced the Future Land Use Map in 2021, right up until the most recent pop-ups held by consultants and NDS on the Draft Zoning Ordinance (DZO), residents have asked for visualizations of what actual Charlottesville streetscapes could look like under the new regulations. Neither the city nor its consultants have obliged. We believe that while visualizations do not function as arguments for or against the DZO, they are an indispensable tool for residents trying to form an opinion on various aspects of the proposal. We have therefore prepared several simulated visualization of specific blocks in Charlottesville — both to provide the tools that residents asked for and didn’t get and to show that there was no difficulty involved in preparing visualizations that could have reasonably prevented a competent consultant or NDS department from providing them. You can find the videos below. We anticipate the we will add more over time. If you have an area for which you’d like to see a visualization, please reach out to us via email. Please bear in mind that the purpose of the videos is to help give viewers a concrete sense of height, massing and coverage. These are not architectural renderings or surveys and are necessarily approximate. We do not suggest that the generic 3D models we used are predictive of the architectural styles developers would use or that the blocks we simulate are more likely than others to be redeveloped.–A Nonymous

The houses on Meade and Chesapeake that are to be loaded with R-B and R-C zoning are and have traditionally been the houses of working people. They are peoples homes.

petition to dial back proposed zoning

Randy Scruggs

1609 E Market

Betty Lou and Randy

Lucian Randolph “Randy” Scruggs was born on October 6, 1936, to Lucian Scruggs Sr. and Virginia Hall Scruggs. He died on March 2, 2023.
Survivors include the love of his life, Judy Lang Scruggs; a daughter, Dr. Katherine Scruggs and her husband, Pete Smith, of Pittsburgh, Pa.; a granddaughter, Kristina Scruggs of Va. Beach, Va.; two grandsons, Patrick Scruggs and his wife, Nicole, of Richmond, Va., and Wyatt Smith of Pittsburgh, Pa.; a sister-in-law, Peggy Howdyshell and her husband, Dr. Larry Howdyshell, of Roanoke, Va., and Vicki Miller and her husband, Brian, of Charlottesville, Va., as well as a number of cousins, nieces and nephews. Randy was predeceased by his parents, Lucian and Virginia Scruggs; a sister, Betty Lou Scruggs; and a son, Rick Scruggs.
Randy lived in Charlottesville all his life where he attended McIntire School. He served in the Air Force in Korea. After his service in Korea, he worked for the U.S. Postal service for 33 years. After retiring from the Post Office, he worked at both Teague and Hill and Wood Funeral Homes. He attended University Baptist for a number of years, and belonged to Aldersgate United Methodist Church. He was a lifetime member of Elks Lodge # 389, and also belonged to the American Legion Post # 74 for over 30 years.
In his younger years, Randy was a master gardener, his gardens being the envy of the Woolen Mills Neighborhood. He enjoyed reading western novels, listening to country music and watching sports, especially the UVA Women’s Basketball teams.
Randy was generous to a fault. He lived his faith quietly and loved his family dearly and unconditionally.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 1500 East Rio Road, Charlottesville, VA 22901 or St. Jude’s Hospital.
A visitation will be held from 6 until 8p.m. Monday, March 6, 2023, at Hill and Wood Funeral Home, 201 N. 1st St., Charlottesville, Va. Funeral services will be held 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 1500 East Rio Road, Charlottesville, VA 22901. A graveside service will follow at Riverview Cemetery, 1701 Chesapeake Street, Charlottesville, VA 22902. Condolences may be expressed to the family at hillandwood.com.