Good morning, RVA! It's 69 °F, and today looks hot and humid with sticky highs in the 90s. Hold on tight, though, because (slightly) cooler weather shows up tomorrow.
Water cooler
A quick update on two papers floating around during yesterday's Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meeting! First, the Richmond 300 amendments resolution (RES. 2021-R026) which I say bad things about was recommended for continuance, and, second, Councilmember Jones's resolution to ask the CAO for a report on how to evenly distribute affordable housing across council districts (RES. 2021-R043) was recommended for approval. Stoked on the latter, and wondering if the former is in the process of death by a thousand continuations. Introduced back in April, RES. 2021-R026 is now one of the older items on Council's agenda. Shoutout to current Methuselatic Ordinance titleholder, ORD. 2019-275, which was introduced way back in October...of 2019!
There's not a ton of new information in this article by VPM's Alan Rodriguez about the School Board's decision to issue their own RFP for a George Wythe replacement. However, I do think it's worth reading to squeeze out a little more of the situation's flavor. With School Board now having drawn a end-of-August line in the sand for issuing an RFP, how do we react when the RPS administration fails to meet that possibly (probably?) unrealistic deadline? Or what do we do if the administration somehow crushes it out of the park and pulls off getting an RFP out the door in the next 41 days—while also reopening in-person school for the first time in over 400 days?
Look at this great news: Jessica Nocera in the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Henrico County will give Church Road, way out by Short Pump and 295, a road diet! Not only will the County reduce the number of lanes, thereby slowing traffic, but they'll use the newly created extra space to install bike lanes. Check out these incredible results from their public engagement process: "71% of respondents overwhelmingly favored the final option."
Rich Griset in Style Weekly has an update on all of the the updates going on at a lot of the city's museums. The VMFA, Virginia Museum of History & Culture, Science Museum of Virginia, and the Valentine are all in the midst of expansions, renovations, and reorganizations. I'm glad these museums survived the last year and are even in a place to expand.
I've spent the last 18 months aging in place and have lost track of the number of new arcades/barcades in Scott's Addition. So it is new news to me that DawnStar Video Games and Arcade will open not one but two mini pinball rooms. One, the Starcade will feature "brighter, more nostalgic machines" while the other, the Mooncade, will host "darker, horror themed machines." Honestly, I love everything about this article by Noah Daboul in Richmond BizSense, especially the header image.
This morning's longread
The new real estate normal
This is what a housing crisis looks like!
They’d seen more than 50 houses in the past three months, and the only thing that had changed about their housing search in Boise was that the prices continued to rise. They’d gone from looking at homes listed for a maximum of $400,000, to stretching their budget up to $450,000, to now considering spending $500,000 or more. “It’s on the far, far end of our range,” Craig said. “We’d be looking at five times our old house payment.” “We need somewhere to live,” Heidi said. “If we keep going like this for another few months, we might be looking at the same places for $600,000. What choice do we have?”
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