Good morning, RVA! It's 57 °F, and we finally say farewell to the doom-and-gloom weather from the last several days. Today you can expect highs near 80 °F, dry skies, and a triumphant return of sunshine. I hope you can find the time to get out there and enjoy it!
Water cooler
End of an era! Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that, “After nearly 60 years in business, Varina's only waterpark is up for grabs. Hadad’s Lake and its surrounding acreage at 7900 Osborne Turnpike have been listed for sale for $975,000.” I have a hard time believing that the new owner, whoever they end up being, will want to run a weird-but-charming rural water park that, for some reason, has a pretty big place in the history of Richmond’s grungier music scenes. It’d be pretty easy to instead throw up a bunch of condos and call it a day—like what’s happening at a couple different spots out that way. But who knows, maybe someone who grew up spending the hot summer days of their youth at Hadad’s has a new vision for the place!
Jonathan Spiers, also at Richmond BizSense, has a really fun update on the developers vying for the City Center redevelopment project. The four finalists have all released public 1-pagers describing their plans for the area bounded by 5th, Leigh, 7th, and Marshall Streets. I’m just so stoked that we’re actually moving forward with a plan for some our city’s most valuable land, and none of the options include a huge, wasteful arena. I kind of can’t believe it!
Beginning this coming Saturday and continuing through next Friday, Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities will perform its annual floodwall testing. Like some epic scene from a fantasy movie, DPU will rumble the huge floodwall doors closed, making sure they’d actually work in a real flood (or zombie horde) situation. I think this is so neat and have, in previous years, taken a minute just to head downtown and check out how the floodwall looks when closed—something we haven’t seen outside of these testings since November 2020. If you’re curious, you can find the full list of when each part of the floodwall will close for testing here.
Nick Russo at NBC12 reports that the National Weather Service at Wakefield will take their radar offline for two weeks to make some repairs. Tap through for some interesting facts on how our national weather radar system works. What I want to know, though, is will this impact the radar map on my weather app??
Alas, nothing gold can stay, and today is the final day of the 10th Annual RVA Bike Month—and what a month it’s been! We’ve had the opportunity to learn how to pop wheelies, ride through historic neighborhoods, grind out some gravel, and remember the folks who died while riding on our region’s unsafe streets. I’m very appreciative for BikeWalk RVA for putting the whole thing together; it’s very impressive and I’m sure requires a ton of work to pull off. Today, you can close out the month with one final event: a Bike and Pizza Capital Trail ride (meet at 5:30 PM at Triple Crossing in Fulton). Also, yesterday’s Advocate’s Bike Lane Tour was rescheduled to this coming Tuesday due to the gloomy, wet weather. And, of course, nothing says that, just because we turn the page on May tomorrow, you have to stop riding your bike! Around these parts, every month is bike month!
This morning's longread
10 Thoughts From the Fourth Trimester
I’m many years removed from the fourth trimester of my son’s life, so this might be a more enjoyable piece for me than for someone closer to that (utterly exhausting) phase. I definitely empathize with a lot of the sentiment in here—especially the deep and constant feeling of “what am I even dooooooing here.” Honestly, more than 55 trimesters in and I still frequently feel that way about being a parent.
It’s pretty amazing how bad babies are at everything. They’re terrible at thinking, at knowing anything, at moving all parts of their body. The cool thing is that spending time with a super unimpressive baby has made me super impressed by myself. Like I’ll watch the baby sitting in a baby bouncer trying to reach for a little wooden flower one foot in front of her and she just flings her arm in the general direction and misses by a lot. Then I’ll reach for a glass of water and all of my joints work together to send my hand on a perfectly straight path through three-dimensional space, gracefully clasp my fingers around it using the perfect amount of pressure, raise it to my mouth, tilt it in perfect sync with the movement of my lips, and then return the glass to the table and gently place it down like an absolute genius.
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Picture of the Day
Cool S extends beyond generations.
