Good morning, RVA! It's 34 °F, and today’s highs are in the 60s. Enjoy it while you can, because it looks like we’ve got some rain and colder temperatures later this week.
Water cooler
WTVR reports that a driver hit and killed Shelly Johnson, 41, as Johnson walked along Bethlehem Road towards the Wawa on Staples Mill Road. Bethlehem Road is one of the few ways to connect to Libbie Mill while avoiding both Broad Street and Staples Mill, but, unfortunately, the street lacks side walks and the intersection is massive, unsafe, and designed to maximize vehicle speeds. It’s unsurprising that “the preliminary investigation indicates that [neither] speed nor alcohol were factors in this crash” because the area is not designed as a place for people to safely exist. What will Henrico do to make this part of the County—where they plan on adding thousands of people and jobs—safer for folks moving around? Will they respond to Johnson’s death and change how this intersection works?
You should read this column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Ebony Walden, about building a more equitable Richmond. She doesn’t explicitly state it, but this column asks the question that sits on all of our plates after Council rejected the mayor’s proposal to redevelop downtown: How will we move forward and implement—citywide—the community benefits that the mayor’s proposal sought to address? Things like affordable housing, public transit, safe pedestrian and bike infrastructure, jobs, disinvestment in Black communities, school funding, and environmental sustainability. In her words: “We did not get here overnight. Federal, state and local policies and private industry practices like urban renewal, redlining, deed restrictions, exclusionary zoning, highway construction and subprime lending have created a segregated city. In the face of these trends, urgent action is needed to develop a racial equity strategy rooted in equitable development, ensuring that all can thrive.” Remember, City Council could begin passing legislation to address some of these issues immediately, while the Mayor’s upcoming budget could bring much needed funded to equitable solutions. Keep an eye on our elected leaders over the next couple of months to see if they move to, as Walden says, make “a solid and actionable commitment to racial equity rooted in equitable development in 2020.”
Related, you should also read this column in the RTD by Corey D.B Walker and Thad Williamson about how Richmond—its citizens and its leaders—should build a new, better, and more democratic economic development process. This is important stuff to think through as a community! Those empty blocks of downtown will not (and should not!) stay empty forever, and as VCU moves forward with building a ballpark the City will suddenly find itself with lots and lots of prime real estate along Arthur Ashe Boulevard. Before we kick off either of those projects, it makes sense to do some introspection, learn from these past two years, and deploy a much-improved economic development process. Right?
Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has a really great explainer on the General Assembly’s plan for the Commonwealth to create its own health insurance marketplace. Is this a good idea? I would love to know! Health insurance is totally not my jam, but it kinda seems like this would creat a lot of new overhead for not that much benefit—now folks looking for insurance would need to check both the federal and state marketplaces while doing some compare/contrast work. Who’s got the definitive longread about whether or not state-run exchanges work?
Also at the Virginia Mercury, Graham Moomaw has the disappointing but not altogether unexpected news that the Virginia Senate pushed the assault weapons ban bill to the 2021 GA session. Great quote from Sen. Louise Lucas: “I didn’t have enough people who had enough backbone to do what two million voters asked us to do...They sent us here to vote for good, common sense gun measures. And they wimped out and were just too afraid to do it.”
I enjoyed this Q&A in Richmond Magazine where Kelli Lemon asks a bunch of restaurant people how the scene has changed over the last forever. This picture of Richmond in the 90s makes me feel warm feelings: “In the ’90s, I was at 3rd Street Diner, and out front it was cigarette-smoking waitresses in Suicide Girl outfits and [a member of] Lamb of God working the line in the back…So many were just VCU students. It was the Wild West.”
The City’s Planning Commission meets today and will consider a handful of papers to rezone the unnamed area around Hardywood (best suggestion I got on Twitter: Rhoadmiller). Also, on their regular agenda sits ORD. 2020-030, the Special Use Permit for the 12-story residential tower proposed for the northwest corner of Broad & Lombardy. I’m pretty stoked about it and can’t remember the last time I saw a big residential project like this with fewer than .5 parking spaces per unit (79 spaces for 168 units—some of them below ground and none of them visible from the street!).
Richmond’s planning folks will present the results from the recent Scott’s Addition survey tonight at Diversity Richmond (1407 Sherwood Ave) from 6:00–7:30 PM. If you show up, I think you’ll get first crack at the Greater Scott’s Addition Conceptual Plan, which is a PDF I look forward to reading—don’t we all!
This morning's patron longread
Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build
Submitted by Patron Lisa. It’s shocking to see such strong support for more and more housing from a local official—of course, it cost him his job, but still.
What this suggests is that the real solution will have to be sociological. People have to realize that homelessness is connected to housing prices. They have to accept it’s hypocritical to say that you don’t like density but are worried about climate change. They have to internalize the lesson that if they want their children to have a stable financial future, they have to make space. They are going to have to change. Steve Falk changed. When he first heard about Dennis O’Brien’s project, he thought it was stupid: a case study, in ugly stucco, of runaway development. He believed the Bay Area needed more housing, but he was also a dyed-in-the-wool localist who thought cities should decide where and how it was built. Then that belief started to unravel. Today, after eight years of struggle, his career with the city is over, the Deer Hill Road site is still just a mass of dirt and shrubs, and Mr. Falk has become an outspoken proponent of taking local control away from cities like the one he used to lead.
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