Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and today looks like our last dry, hurricane-remnant-free day for a bit. Expect highs around 70 °F with a cloudy sky while we finally get ready for some rain. NBC12's Andrew Freiden says that while the wet weather will wait until tomorrow to show up, "the early arrival of rain means the weekend (although cloudy) will likely have a lot of rain-free time with clouds and some scattered showers but likely NOT A weekend washout." This seems like a great combination of much-needed rain and some time to spend outside over the weekend!
Water cooler
The 2022 Market Value Analysis is now available for all of your housing data needs. The MVA "categorizes local market conditions within communities by compiling home sales, owner occupancy rates, bank sales and other indicators between 2018-2021." Sounds boring, I know, but it's basically an extremely data-heavy picture of the housing market that you can poke around in. For example, two stats, just pulled from the press release, that paint a grim picture: 1) The number of homes selling for less than $250,000 fell from 48% to 34% between 2018 and 2021 as the number of homes selling for more than $450,000 rose from 15% to 21%, and 2) MVA data reveals that in areas with lower-priced homes, 25% of home sales were from owners to investors compared to less than 5% in stronger market neighborhoods. Like I said, grim. Anyway, take some time to scroll through the overview, and, if interactive maps aren't your thing, you can download the 110-page PDF here.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Eric Kolenich and Michael Martz continue their reporting on Bon Secours and Richmond Community Hospital in the East End. This piece is worth reading to get some of the context and history around what services Richmond Community Hospital offers currently and how that has changed over the years due to disinvestment.
GRTC announced that over the next five years they plan on installing 160 shelters and 225 benches at bus stops across the region, thanks to combination of local, state, and federal grants. Today, just 21% of bus stops have a place to sit, and this new project hopes to bring that number up to at least 50%. Put another way: GRTC will install one new place to sit, every week, for five years, and, after that, about half the bus stops in the region will have seating. The current state of affairs is not great, and this initiative is much needed. Also, you'll probably want to download the Essential Transit Infrastructure Plan PDF and save it to your files—tons of good data, charts, and maps.
City Council's Urban Design Committee will hold a special meeting this morning at 10:00 AM to look over the proposed, temporary-ish plans for Marcus-David Peters Circle. Remember, UDC didn't have a quorum last time this popped up on their agenda, couldn't approve or deny it, so they're back at it again today. I'd really hate for the Department of Public Works to miss the fall planting season due to unrelated procedural delays—I definitely don't want to end up stuck with scrubby grass and the Horrible Fence for another entire year.
I'm thankful for Richmond BizSense's Jonathan Spiers for letting me know that City Council approved the rezoning of the area around the Coliseum this past Monday! How did I miss this important zoning news!? This easy, breezy rezoning sets the stage for a future redevelopment process that, fingers crossed, will look more like the Diamond District and less like Navy Hill. There are lessons to be learned from both, for sure.
The Memory Wars podcast, which you should really listen to if you haven't yet, will host a live episode recording tonight at 6:00 PM at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. While listening to the podcast over the summer, I ended up wanting more episodes where Mallory Noe-Payne and Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams just chatted about Richmond, history, life, whatever. I hope tonight's episode is more of that! Tickets are free, but I wouldn't be surprised if they sell out.
What exactly happens at a naming ceremony for a bike-lane street sweeper? I don't know, but you can find out today at 1:00 PM down on the Sugar Pad (3115 Wharf Street). The City will official name (christen?) their first bike-lane street sweeper as MF BROOM, and I hope someone plans on smashing a bottle of Champaign on it. I know there are bigger, better, and more important things, but the City has really done an excellent job rolling out this tiny, adorable street sweeper. I've even gotten texts from friends when they've seen MF BROOM out in the wild (which may say more about me and my friends, but still)! I think Richmond would have a collective meltdown if we got Nutzy to drive MF BROOM around and sweep some bike lanes.
Logistical note! I'm taking tomorrow off, so your inbox in the morning will be one email lighter. Think of it as a precious gift, from me to you. I'll be back on Monday to—in the time-honored tradition—increase your unread email indicator by one (1). Until then!
This morning's longread
Axios's 'Smart Brevity' and Questionable Book-Selling Tactics
I will never get enough of journalists dunking on AXIOS's "smart brevity" formatting—which, for the record, I think makes things harder to reader. I especially like when Ned Oliver and Karri Peifer at the local Richmond AXIOS franchise have some self-aware fun with the format.
The intrigue: An internal Axios memo encouraged each employee to buy six copies of the trio’s new book. Workers could then get those purchases expensed by the company—a practice that could cost Axios more than $70,000, according to Defector.
📈 If employees followed through, such a practice could send Smart Brevity soaring up the New York Times best-seller list. But it’s not entirely fair play, publishing insiders say.
Why it matters: Becoming a New York Times best seller can bring fame and notoriety—not to mention five-figure speaking gigs at big companies and conferences. It’s no wonder that Axios’s co-founders are chasing that kind of clout.
But: The Times is wise to these kinds of ploys. The paper has long attached a typographical mark called a dagger (†) to titles that may have been bought in bulk by authors hoping to worm their way onto the list.
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