Author Archives: WmX

50 years later

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A page from the 1975 Street Tree Plan


The City of Charlottesville builds great paper castles.
Fifty years ago, in the spirit of Lady Bird Johnson, Charlottesville had a plan. Ours is a southern city. Walking in the summer can be insufferable. Let’s plant some trees! A great idea. It costs about ten dollars to plant a tree. The plan was to plant about 72 trees along Market Street between Meade Avenue and the county line. The outcome was one tree planted. Yes! Give that child a gold star.
Download the plan

Labor Day

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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

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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

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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.

Local News

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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

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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

Changeless change

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City County boundary

Franklin Street is the City County boundary.

Many plans, one community, an aspirational name for a government program, Charlottesville and Albemarle syncing the development of their Comprehensive Plans. The request for comment form from a meeting in April 2011. Much remains to be fixed.

Free

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arbor day free trees

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – The Charlottesville Department of Utilities is excited to add the Arbor Day Foundation’s Energy-Saving Trees Program to its lineup of energy conservation initiatives. This partnership provides 200 free trees to Utilities customers within the City of Charlottesville, encouraging them to conserve energy and reduce energy bills through strategic tree planting.
The strategic planting of trees provides a variety of benefits for individual households, as well as the broader community. Properly planted trees can reduce the amount of energy a home requires to remain comfortable by providing a barrier to cold winter winds and delivering shade in the summer. When planted properly, a single tree that grows over time can save a homeowner up to 20% on energy costs. Trees also provide a number of benefits for the entire community, such as increasing capacity for carbon sequestration, improving air quality, and providing more effective stormwater filtration and runoff reduction to help keep pollutants out of water supplies.  

tree

With guidance from the Charlottesville Tree Commission, available tree varieties include Southern Red Oak, Serviceberry, Sycamore, Willow Oak, and Black Gum. Tree reservations are limited to one tree per service address and made on a first-come, first-served basis beginning Monday, March 14th. Reservations can be accessed through Utilities’ interactive tree portal provided by the Arbor Day foundation at www.arborday.org/charlottesville. This user-friendly portal provides simple step-by-step instructions that focus on homeowner education, and maximizing environmental impact, to calculate where to specifically and strategically plant trees for the greatest energy- and money-saving benefit.
Safety is essential to a successful landscaping project, and this program serves as a great opportunity to reinforce safe digging practices with the community – especially with the outdoor project season almost here. Prior to planting a tree, customers are expected to follow the law, and contact Virginia 811 at least three working days before planting to have the location of buried utility lines on their property marked by a professional. Knowing the location of buried utilities helps prevent their damage, and a potentially hazardous situation. The service is free, and allows customers to dig safely while planting their tree.

For more information about the Energy-Saving Trees Program and the Arbor Day Foundation contact Utilities Outreach at utilitiesoutreach@charlottesville.gov.