Good morning, RVA! It's 31 °F, which, brrr. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 40s, but, no joke, on the long-range forecast we’ve got a few days with temperatures back in the 60s. I think I’ve given up hope for a big snow this year.
Water cooler
Last night, Mayor Stoney delivered his State of the City address, and you can read through the remarks as prepared here (PDF). It’s a lot of review of what he’s accomplished over the last couple of years plus the new policy and programs he wants to focus on during the final year of this term. He started with housing, and says the city will unveil its own Affordable Housing and Equitable Housing Strategy. This comes hot on the heels of the release of the Partnership for Housing Affordability’s housing framework (which I just got around to reading in full yesterday and have some thoughts for another time), and I hope this city-focused strategy is both informed by the framework and about twice as bold. As per my question yesterday, Stoney did mention public housing, but just to promise to work with RRHA and Council (who appoints the RRHA board) to “change the landscape of public housing in our city.” Also related to neighborhoods, the Mayor announced a goal of creating 10 new parks and mentioned the urban heat island work done by Dr. Climate Scientist Jeremy Hoffman. Over on the youth tip, Stoney announced the creation of an Office of Children and Families, which I would like to learn more about. Finally, he mentioned a “Third-Party Plan Review and Inspections Program that will give developers and property owners the ability to contract directly with qualified, third-party inspection agencies to perform building plan reviews and building inspections in a timely manner.” As we all know, permitting is a thing that developers constantly complain about—it’s kind of like how I constantly complain about sidewalks being closed by...developers. I wonder if I can get a Third Party Closed Sidewalk Inspection Program in next year’s budget 🤔. Stoney closed the speech with a pitch for NoBro, and I desperately want to see a track-changes version of this section before and after Monday night’s shenanigans. I think the framing of his possibly final public NoBro plea is smart: All of the recent changes and new bells-and-whistles aren’t Hail Marys to drag a flagging project across the finish line, they’re the natural outcome of extensive community engagement. Now, whether you believe that frame or not is up to you, and I think smart folks can land on either side. Me personally, someone who is not necessarily a smart folk, think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. Anyway, can you believe we’ll have a mayoral election between now and the next State of the City address? Wild!
Speaking of NoBro, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson talked to Councilmember Trammell after the State of the City address, who said about her plan to vote NO on the downtown arena project, “I’m not changing my vote...No. Never.” So that makes three who’ve publicly said they are NOs and will not change their vote under any circumstance: Hilbert, Larson, and Trammell. Remember: the land sale ordinances required for the project need seven of nine votes to pass Council. 9 - 3 = 6??
It is still super early in the lightning-quick General Assembly session, but Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury checks in on a bill that would outright ban gambling machines. Hold your horses, because, like I said, it’s early, and this vote was a House committee vote—the Senate feels differently and would like to, instead, approve and heavily regulate the machines. This is one of the smaller, more interesting issues the GA has decided to take up this year, and I’m fascinated by it. The way Virginia pretends that its “skill-based” gambling machines are somehow morally superior to plain ol’ slot machines is hilarious.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says a butt ton of apartments are headed to the frontish part of Innsbrook. I’d love to know the transportation plan to connect the SEVEN HUNDRED units proposed for this part of Innsbrook to Broad Street. If it were me, I’d put together a solid plan to build a bunch of multi-use paths, sidewalks, and probably run a super-frequent Innsbrook shuttle situation. 700 is a lot of units and a lot of people to move around.
This is neat: via /r/rva, links to four construction crane webcams in downtown Richmond. There’s even this pretty cool, possibly seizure-inducing, time lapse of the demolition/construction of the new Dominion tower.
Also from /r/rva, reddit user /u/vertazontal took a bunch of great photos of the Pulse Corridor on January 1st specifically so we can look back in a bunch of years and see how everything has changed. Flipping through these, you can’t help but see all the empty, but transit-accessible, space that could be filled with stuff.
This morning's longread
The Hidden History of American Anti-Car Protests
Love this and the accompanying pictures of baby carriage blockades taking over entire intersections.
This 1949 demonstration was not the first of its kind, but it appears to have been the first to be dubbed a “baby carriage blockade.” It bears much in common with typical traffic safety demonstrations of its era: Most of the participants were women, in the company of their children. Their demand was primarily a plea for child safety, but without depriving children of their use of the streets. The demonstrators did not object to the preeminence of cars in their city, and they did not demand playgrounds so that children would not need streets; they demanded streets safe for children.
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