Good morning, RVA! It's 65 °F, and, while today looks lovely, there is a persistent chance of rain thought the day. Enjoy, of course, but keep an eye to the sky and a rain jacket handy.
Water cooler
Some good news from RPS Superintendent Kamras’s email this past Friday: “The Virginia Department of Education just released official graduation results for the Class of 2021. I'm proud to share that our Hispanic/Latino/a/x students had the largest growth of any division in the entire state – up 24.8 percentage points! And overall, our graduation rate increased 7.3 percentage points to 78.8%! That means we officially no longer have the lowest rate in Virginia. Of course, we're aiming MUCH higher and have a tremendous amount of work to do, but it's clear we're on the right path. Please join me in congratulating the Class of 2021, along with their families, teachers, counselors, principals, and so many others who taught, led, and served them with love—all through a global pandemic. Simply incredible.”
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has an update on Brookland Park Boulevard’s already-approved parklet and now-removed bump outs. I don’t love this quote from Bobby Vincent, Director of Public Works: “‘Anybody can go and sit inside that parklet for any reason,’ Vincent said. For the parklet to be placed, he added, ‘only to be used in a negative capacity by those who can legally occupy it, I needed to put a pause on it until we all have an understanding of what in fact it does, and what the rules are in regard to a parklet.’”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz has a long piece on how building a cap over the highway could reconnect Gilpin Court, North Jackson Ward, and other parts of the Northside back to downtown. This idea, capping the highway that destroyed a huge portion of Jackson Ward, is already included in Richmond 300 and definitely does not require any sort of magical fantasy technology. In fact, Richmond has done this at least once before: Kanawha Plaza sits right on top of the Downtown Express Way.
Richmond’s Planning Commission meets today with a big agenda. Of note to readers of this, Richmond’s premiere zoning and rezoning daily email, CPC will consider a resolution of intent to rezone Broad Street west of I-195. A resolution of intent is one of the early steps needed to kick off a full and official rezoning, so we’ve still got miles to go, but, in the mean time, check out this presentation on the rezoning which shows how the changes will bring the area in line with Richmond 300. Two things stick out to me from this lovely PDF: First, a new Pulse station at W. Broad and Kent Streets, and second, “of the 86.3 acres of real estate in the rezoning area, 42.0 acres are devoted to parking or circulation (49%).” That’s a lot of wasted space along our biggest and broadest corridor. I’m excited for next steps, which should be some public meetings this month, but fully anticipating the standard set of NIMBY complaints once we get there. Also, while we’re talking Planning Commission, in addition to their regular agenda, they’ll hear a presentation on the City Center Plan, which, I too would like to hear.
I’ve got two quick ARPA updates for you this morning. City Council will get the gang back together for another ARPA work session today at 4:00 PM, which you can livestream here. Also today is both the last day to fill out the City’s ARPA survey and the final ARPA community meeting—6:00 PM at the Boys and Girls Club Metro Richmond Teen Center (1830 Creighton Avenue). Honestly, I’ve done a bad job at tracking Council’s progress on this and don’t really have a great sense for either how unified Council is on their own vision for spending ARPA money or how close that vision is to the Mayor’s plans. My poorly-informed sense is that there’s a lot of work left to do.
Have you signed up for RVAgreen 2050’s monthly email yet, because I feel like I mention it constantly. Here’s September’s edition, which you should definitely read—I love the new monthly call to action, and I would steal that idea if I could ever get my act together. Anyway, sign up and you’ll learn all sorts of interesting things like how the Governor recently renamed the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy to the Virginia Department of Energy. The name officially changed on October 1st, and is so fresh and new that energy.virginia.gov is still a bit 404’d as of writing this morning.
This morning's longread
Did Pfizer Peak Too Soon?
Ignoring the unnecessary headline (see: Betteridge’s Law of Headlines), this piece will give you a really interesting oral history of the early days of COVID-19 vaccine development.
Moving fast meant navigating significant uncertainties. Dosing was a particularly fraught issue, and the prospects for producing a successful mRNA drug or vaccine hinged on getting it right. A smaller dose would be easier to manufacture and less likely to produce side effects. At the same time, previous experimental mRNA vaccines had not been shown to induce the kind of long-lasting cellular immunity one could get from, say, an adenovirus vector vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s. Back in 2019, Moderna published data from a Phase 1 trial of two mRNA-based bird-flu vaccines: The results had looked solid in the first month or two, but antibody levels dropped back toward baseline by month six. The two doses of those vaccines had been spaced just three weeks apart, which may have limited the body’s immune memory.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
