Good morning, RVA! It's 49 °F, and it’s raining. It looks like it’ll keep raining until after lunch, so bring your coat or umbrella if you’ve got somewhere to be this morning. After the rain moves through we might have a decent, if windy, day ahead of us.
Water cooler
As folks continue to remember and pay their respects to Representative Donald McEachin (including President Biden), Jahd Khalil at VPM has some of the complicated date math involved in setting a special election to fill McEachin’s seat. The Governor, who gets to decide when the special election will take place, says “there are folks that I’m going to want to listen to as to the best time in order to call this [election],” which, depending on how you read that may sound ominous. The gist, however, is that Youngkin can call a special election any time between today and April 26th. After April 26th, it’s too close to the June 20th primary, and the election would fall on that day instead. Once the date is set, candidates have 60 days to file—unless the special election is fewer than 60 days away, which then means they have five days to file. Clear? Depending on the state of readiness among candidates, you can see how accelerating or slow-walking the timeline could be a big strategic decision for the Governor and his party.
Speaking of, if you’re looking for a good remembrance of the congressman, take a minute to read this one from Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams. Williams and McEachin grew up together in the same neighborhood in Henrico called Middletown Gee, “a neighborhood built on 33 acres owned by an African American brick mason, contractor and developer named George Washington Gee.” Surely that’s the same Gee of McEachin and Gee, the law firm run by the congressman before he launched his political career? This piece from Williams is like a tiny lesson in 1970s Richmond history, and now I want to know more!
This afternoon, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, City of Richmond, Virginia Department of Forestry, and University of Richmond will plant a bunch of native trees in a (former) piece of pavement adjacent to the Family Dollar off of Westover Hills Boulevard. This small project depaves a 120-foot section of parking lot and sidewalk “while still meeting accessibility standards,” creates new space for trees, and will reduce runoff while providing some amount of relief from ever-increasing extreme heat. The project follows similar work at Branch’s Baptist Church, also on the Southside, to depave a portion of their parking lot. I love this kind of stuff! Even in a small, forever-finite city the size of Richmond (62.5 square miles), we can find thousands of paved-over places and revert them back to some semblance of nature. I can easily think of a half dozen pieces of pavement just blocks from my house that would be much better off as trees.
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense took a tour of the City Center project area with a bunch of the developers interested in putting in bids for that project. Tap through if you want the nitty-gritty on who showed up for the tour, or, even better, for pictures from inside the abandoned Sixth Street Marketplace and Blues Armory.
Axios Richmond has pictures of The Park, that new indoor entertainment all-everything spot near Hardywood (which opens today). Ned Oliver, who I deeply trust on these sorts of things, says The Park’s mini golf course is “easily the nicest course in the region.” High praise!
This morning's patron longread
The Exceptionally American Problem of Rising Roadway Deaths
Submitted by Patron Lisa. It’s nice to see street safety covered in the New York Times and for them to clearly point out—with graphs!—that the only thing keeping the United States from protecting the lives of people walking, rolling, and riding on our streets is that we don’t care enough to do better.
The fatality trends over the last 25 years, though, aren’t simply explained by America’s history of highway development or dependence on cars. In the 1990s, per capita roadway fatalities across developed countries were significantly higher than today. And they were higher in South Korea, New Zealand and Belgium than in the U.S. Then a revolution in car safety brought more seatbelt usage, standard-issue airbags and safer car frames, said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute. Fatalities fell as a result, in the U.S. and internationally. But as cars grew safer for the people inside them, the U.S. didn’t progress as other countries did to prioritizing the safety of people outside them. “Other countries started to take seriously pedestrian and cyclist injuries in the 2000s — and started making that a priority in both vehicle design and street design — in a way that has never been committed to in the United States,” Mr. Freemark said.
If you’d like to submit a longread, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
Right on time, Thanksgiving cactus.
