Good morning, RVA! It's 30 °F, and warmer weather returns today! Expect highs in the 50s as the weekend approaches. Cooler temperatures prevail this evening, with maybe a bit of rain thrown in on the side.
Water cooler
Yesterday evening, Richmond Police officers were called to the 400 block of Byswick Lane and found Maurice Watson-Bey, a man in his 40, "suffering from trauma." Watson-Bey would die at the scene.
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,959 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 58 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 297 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 114, Henrico: 102, and Richmond: 81). Since this pandemic began, 687 people have died in the Richmond region. As we slide down the backside of a coronacurve both locally and across the state, check out these hopeful national graphs from The COVID Tracking Project. I think their commentary on the deaths chart gets it right: "We have seen the 7-day average for new deaths decrease for over a week. At the same time, states are reporting an average of 3,000 people dying per day. The data is hopeful and devastating." I think this applies generally. Two vaccines exist: hopeful; extremely limited supply: devastating. 15,000 people vaccinated in our region last week: hopeful; folks with// 2021.02.04 the largest burden of the disease still experiencing barriers to accessing the vaccine: devastating. I think we'll continue to live in this tension for the next several months. Speaking of tension, the Governor has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow at 11:00 AM to "provide updates on the Commonwealth's continued response to COVID-19 and vaccination efforts." It's always a trip to tune into these, because who knows what we'll learn!
I keep saying that you can't get too attached to your favorite bill in the General Assembly so early on in the process. There are just a million and one ways to kill a bill—some of them surprising, all of them painful. But, despite that reality, yesterday the Senate passed SB 1165, which would abolish the death penalty in Virginia on a 21-17 vote. The House will consider a similar measure, HB 2263, soon. Now I just need someone to read through the legislation and let me know all of the asterisks and caveats. Given yesterday's litany of grossquotes from legislators on both sides, I'm sure there are some important details in the language of whatever version of this bill escaped the Senate. That sounded unnecessarily negative! Ultimately, I agree with the Governor when he says, "Virginia has executed more people than any other state. The practice is fundamentally inequitable. It is inhumane. It is ineffective....It’s time for Virginia to join 22 other states and abolish the death penalty." Frank Green, at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has new, less gross quotes from legislators and a bit of the explanation I'm looking for.
Gregory J. Gilligan, also at the RTD, reports that the truck-leasing site just south of the Wawa on Arthur Ashe Boulevard will become...something for people! Although, because I'm never satisfied, the rendering provided shows not nearly enough height and way too much parking visible from the street. Let's create these outdoor spaces for people and retail options for residents, but let's do it with some dang density, you know?
Speaking of, the City's Planning Commission "backed Eagle Construction of VA’s plan to replace two houses at 509 and 511 Libbie Ave. with a 14-unit townhome development," says Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense. GASP! Townhomes! As you can imagine, some neighbors were concerned about the very things that make this project appealing—density and height. Also, to be clear, this is not affordable housing by any stretch of the imagination: "...the townhomes would range between 3,000 and 4,500 square feet in size, and each unit would have between three and five bedrooms, at least 3½ bathrooms and a two- or three-car garage accessed by the shared alley." Now just imagine how many homes you could build on those two lots if they were smaller and built for just one car per unit?
This, on /r/rva, is a deeply coronavirus post: "Does anyone know of any large, open fields in RVA? I’m new here and lonely and really need to just lay in a bunch of flowers or something. Any nature would do."
This morning's longread
Nextdoor Is Quietly Replacing the Small-Town Paper
No matter the platform, I don't love the idea of a huge part of our local civics conversation happening inside a walled-garden social media platform.
The app boomed in popularity during the pandemic, reporting an 80% jump in user engagement in the first two weeks of March 2020, as neighbors sought advice on where to find toilet paper and masks, and stay-at-home orders hindered in-person interactions. It also became an important communication tool for local authorities about shutdown measures, mask mandates, and testing sites. As Nextdoor begins to outcompete local news sites for readers and ad dollars, it’s worth asking what’s gained and lost by that shift — and whether it is in the public interest. What makes that question hard to answer is that Nextdoor is fundamentally opaque.
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