Hotels & Motels Long Gone

As Dave McNair reported back in November, the old Air-Port Motel on Rte. 29 North (at Proffit Rd.) was recently slated for demolition to make room for a new Walgreen's. (I hear tell they call that "progress.") Here's what the place looked like back in the 1950s:














Well, I drove by the site the other day and sure enough, the Air-Port Motel is now gone. Dustbin of history and all that.

I have dozens of postcards of old Charlottesville hotels & motels (from back in their heyday) and it's sad to see how few of them are left. The ones that are the most interesting to me are the hotels that have been converted to new uses. How many of you have been out Ivy Rd. (Rte. 250 West) and driven by the small retail/office complex now known as "Ivy Commons"? Did you know that for decades it was better known as...













Siesta Motor Court? (Owned for a time, incidentally, by the same H.N. Neeley who used to operate the Air-Port Motel.)

And how many of you have ever browsed in the aisles of the Quest Bookshop on West Main St.? Perhaps you did not know that you were standing in what used to be the ground floor of...




















The Albemarle Hotel -- here pictured in the 1920s. (Description on back says: "A cordial welcome awaits you at THE ALBEMARLE HOTEL. Rates $1.50 to $2.50. Fire Proof--Free Parking. Our Air Conditioned Coffee Shop is widely known as Charlottesville's Smartest and Best Eating Place.")

I could go on -- there are many interesting examples of adaptive re-use around here. I'll post some more sometime. Too bad the Air-Port Motel was not able to meet a similar fate....

10-Miler Training Update

Good news: I completed a 10-mile run today (new personal record) in preparation for the Cville 10-Miler. Bad news: It was at the track. And the streets of Charlottesville hardly resemble a running track. So I either need to use the powers of the Mayoralty to flatten the hills of Charlottesville between now and March 29 (now there's a constructive use for mountaintop removal!) or I better start training on some hilly roads....Either way, I've got my work cut out for me.

Wanna Make an Easy and Honest $500? Here's How

Help find a buyer for my minivan and I'll give you a $500 finder's fee. (Which means, if you buy the van, you get $500 off!)

FOR SALE: 2003 Chrysler Town & Country LX 7-passenger Minivan. Good condition, runs great, 84,000 miles. This is a very reliable family vehicle. Beige exterior with grey cloth seats. Automatic transmission. A/C, AM/FM/CD, power steering, power windows, power door locks, cruise control, dual front air bags, anti-lock brakes, fold-down seats for transporting bulky items. Retails for $10,000+, yours for $9,000 OBO. Call 220-1095 or e-mail cvilledave@hotmail.com.

Peter Kleeman Blows Up Monticello...

...to demonstrate a point about mountaintop removal coal mining.* Click here.

(* I have been assured by Peter than no actual historical landmarks were harmed in the making of his blog post.)

Voting Day

Tomorrow is the Presidential Primary in Virginia. Whoever your preferred candidate and whatever your political affiliation, please go vote. As I told a group of local boy scouts a couple of weeks ago, too many people died for our right to vote for us not to exercise it.

As for me, I'll be stationed at the Clark Elementary School polling place tomorrow from 10am-2pm, handing out fliers for a certain United States Senator (and former community organizer) from the great state of Illinois. Come say hi.

"No Longer Homeless"

In case you missed it, Seth Rosen has an excellent piece in today's Progress about the merits and costs of providing supportive housing for the chronically homeless. Charlottesville has about 2-3 dozen residents who have been living on our streets for years and who are struggling with some sort of severe mental disorder. Over the past four winters, we at PACEM have gotten to know them all. In the bad old days, many if not most of them would be warehoused in state institutions by now, typically against their will. Starting in the 1960s, however, this country launched a broad "deinstitutionalization" campaign and pledged to invest in community-based care for the mentally ill. Well, no surprise: we never fulfilled that pledge. As a result, many people fell through the cracks and ended up right out on the streets. Many others continue to do so today. A critical component -- nay, THE critical component -- of a successful strategy of community-based care is supportive housing. It's heartening to see that Charlottesville is finally coming to understand that supportive housing for the chronically homeless not only improves their quality of life (and ours), it also saves us money. Ironically enough, you see, in many cases it costs more to keep people out on the streets than it does to provide them with stable housing and support services. For more info., read Seth's article here.

Mitch Van Yahres, RIP

Mitch Van Yahres, former Charlottesville Mayor and longtime state delegate, passed away unexpectedly yesterday -- a sad loss for his family and for our whole community. As Bob Gibson writes in today's Progress, Mitch was a well-loved figure whose decency, cheerfulness, and tireless commitment to progressive causes made him just the kind of leader we in Charlottesville were proud to call ours. One of the many things I admired about Mitch is that he was never afraid to 'tell it like it is' and stand up for what was right, even when it wasn't always popular to do so. Mitch was a gentle soul, a wise statesman, and a wonderful mentor and example to many (including myself). He will be missed.

Affordable Housing Ordinance Doesn't Move Forward

Vote was 3-2 against creating a dedicated affordable housing fund via ordinance, despite overwhelming public support for the idea at tonight's public hearing -- largest turnout of citizens for a public hearing in recent memory, which was gratifying and affirming (even if I can't shake the feeling that I let them all down). Was interesting/eye-opening to see how hard certain people (including a number of former Democratic City Councilors) lobbied, mostly behind the scenes, to help derail the proposal. All is not lost, however; thanks to a resolution drafted by David Brown and adopted unanimously at tonight's meeting, there's a chance we may yet be able to secure some additional funds for housing in the months and years ahead, even if we're unlikely to see the level of investment (or the sustained commitment of funds) that many of us had hoped. Such is the nature of politics -- compromise is the name of the game. And to Council's credit, what we have now in the funding pipeline for housing is at least a lot more than what we had 2 years ago....

My thanks to Holly Edwards for supporting the ordinance, and to my fellow Councilors for giving it a fair hearing. And special thanks to all who came and spoke at tonight's public hearing, especially those who shared their personal stories about struggling to get by in this "World-Class City" of ours. Your testimonies will not be forgotten.

Oh, and I've just got to pass on a word of appreciation for former Vice Mayor Meredith Richards, who stood up to say, this ordinance is a good start, but the problem is, it actually doesn't go far enough. That is a woman of vision!

Affordable Housing, Front & Center

We've been trying to take something of a thematic approach to City Council meetings so far this year. Our first meeting (Jan. 7) focused on a range of environmental topics. Our second meeting (Jan. 21) was heavy on alternative transportation (pedestrian safety, transit improvements, etc.). Tomorrow's session (Feb. 4) features a subject that citizen survey after citizen survey and community needs assessment after community needs assessment consistently points out as one the biggest frustrations that people have with the City of Charlottesville: the lack of affordable housing for our residents.

You know the litany of challenges: People paying 50% or 60% of their income on their housing costs. People working 2 or 3 jobs to keep up with their mortgage or their rent. People doubling up with family members or friends. People going homeless. People moving 30 or 40 miles away to find housing they can afford. Employers struggling to attract or retain workers because of the high cost of living (i.e., the high cost of housing) here. There is hardly a household in Charlottesville that hasn't been affected by this situation. The people at the top may have it good and may not recognize there's a problem, but most of us see it, experience it and hear about it every day. Yes, housing costs aren't skyrocketing like they were in the years following 2003, but wages still have a long, long way to go to catch up. We remain the region in Virginia with the largest gap between housing costs and wages. Not an enviable position to be in.

Tomorrow night, we will be considering an ordinance that would create a dedicated stream of revenue for affordable housing in the City budget. (Seth Rosen had the story in yesterday's Progress.) Unfortunately, for this coming year at least, it would actually represent a decrease in affordable housing funding from FY08 (when we used one-time surplus funds to significantly increase funding from the year before). But the idea is that as revenues increase in future years, a small percentage of them (the equivalent of 2 cents on the property tax dollar and 25% of lodging taxes) would be automatically set aside each year in a fund for the promotion and preservation of affordable housing.

In total, the ordinance would result in a little over 1% of the City's overall budget being dedicated to the affordable housing fund each year, which is a pittance really when you consider the true scope of the problem and the high priority that our citizens have assigned to it. (It's important to note, though, that these limited City funds will be able to leverage substantial sums of additional monies from state, federal, and private sector sources; of the 300+ localities across the country that have established dedicated housing funds, many of them routinely see their local dollars multiplied six or seven times over [or more] by other sources of funding. It's also important to note, as we're entering a period of economic slowdown, that housing development is one of the best economic generators we know of, in terms of promoting local job creation & business activity and recycling dollars in our community.) The ordinance also encourages the creation of stronger incentives for developers to be part of the solution through inclusion of affordable units in new developments and/or the contribution of monies to the City's affordable housing fund. I am pleased to say that our local developers have been very cooperative in working with the City on the creation of such incentives. Some real win-win potential there.

In addition to considering the dedicated housing fund ordinance, we'll also be making a final round of housing-related allocations from our FY08 budget and hearing a status report from Noah Schwartz, Executive Director of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA), about CRHA's plans for redevelopment of public housing in Charlottesville. The Council meeting starts at 7:00pm tomorrow and the public hearing on the ordinance will begin around 7:40pm. Please feel free to come and share your thoughts on any or all of these subjects.

UPDATE: Christina Mora of NBC 29 does a great job of breaking down the issue with this report.