Letters To The Editor

The Times Dispatch featured this letter about the new 2nd St. connector road, echoing concerns brought up by Oregon Hill residents as well as the local Sierra Club:

Connector road should have sidewalks

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

As I biked home recently and saw the Second Street connector road under construction, I pondered the design, which calls for two narrow travel lanes and a sidewalk on only one side of the road. This road will connect Second Street just north of the Lee Bridge to Tredegar Street and descends at an extremely steep grade.

The lack of an uphill bike lane and sidewalks will increase delays for motorists and compromise safety for everyone. This new road is in the middle of the city and immediately adjacent to Belle Isle, the Canal Walk and the James River Park System — some of the most popular places to walk, run and bike in the city. For even more evidence that a sidewalk on both sides of the street is needed, look no further than Tredegar Street itself, which lacks a sidewalk on the north side and has a worn dirt path there instead. Fixing this is one of the recommendations in the new Riverfront Plan. What about the thousands of pedestrians who descend this hill to attend the Folk Festival?

Dominion employees will probably have the most time to ponder the road design as they wait behind bicyclists traveling uphill at 5 mph, a problem that would have been easily avoided by adding a mere 5-foot bike lane. It is always more expensive to retrofit a road than to build new, so please, Richmond, let’s stop being pennywise and pound foolish.

John Bolecek.
Richmond.

Also, Oregon Hill resident Todd Woodson implored for a change of leadership in the 5th District:

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Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

This Wednesday is a red Wednesday, which means trash and recycling pickup. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night. They do not belong on the sidewalk after tomorrow night (let’s keep the sidewalks clear for the Halloween Parade!).

In recycling news, The Eugene (Ore.) City Council voted 6-2 to approve a ban on single-use plastic bags at retail stores on Oct. 22. The ban will take effect in six months. Single-use paper bags are still allowed under the ordinance, but retailers are required to charge at least 5 cents each for those bags.

Hurricane Sandy Cancels This Week’s Byrd House Market

From email announcement:

Good afternoon everyone,

It seems prudent to go ahead and cancel the market for tomorrow. The weather will at best be miserable and we don’t yet know what the specific results of the storm might be in terms of power outages and what our farmers may need to do to harvest and processing crops for market. Better to let Hurricane Sandy play out, assess and get ready for better conditions.

We look forward to seeing all of you next week, in better weather, and with the spirit of community that is strengthened by shared experiences – which in this case we hope are merely inconveniences!

See you then.

Ana
Market Manager
byrdhousemarket.blogspot.com

Flying Brick Library Celebrates 10 Years

From the Flying Brick Library’s website:

On Halloween Night, 2002, 4 Richmond anarchists and organizers moved into a house at 506 S. Pine St in Oregon Hill. The 4 aimed to expand the lending library they had been a part of in a previous home, but little did they know their little project would still be alive 10 years later!

They are planning their 10-year celebration (sober/no alcohol!) for Friday, Nov. 2. Bring food, and memorabilia if you have it! Go to the site for more details.

RVAnews.com On EAT Oregon Hill

RVAnews.com writer Nathan Cushing has a feature on EAT Oregon Hill.

Excerpt:

The restaurant has also diversified by adding a mixture of small plates (chicken pot pie, char grilled baguette crostini), medium plates (Canadian style poutine, BBQ lettuce wraps), and large plates (seared duck breast, quinoa and black bean cakes). “People who don’t eat seafood have a plethora” of options now, ranging from $8 – $30. The restaurant will also brew its own beer.

Each beer will be named after a street running through Oregon Hill. The first one slated for debut will be the Idlewood IPA, scheduled to premiere in the coming weeks. It’s precisely this local focus that Manley feels was missing during the restaurant’s first incarnation.

The changes in the restaurant’s menu and approach culminated with a new name, EAT Oregon Hill. It’s derived from three large red letters mounted to the wall of Pescados China Street: E-A-T. It was a simple, playful command that Manley thought encapsulated the new restaurant, one he believes “feels more city-like, more Richmond-like…more Oregon Hill-like.”

Ferly Is Missing

He is a small gray and white neutered male, 16 months old and loves to be petted. he is known for approaching people on the sidewalk for petting and has been kitten napped before. He lives with myself, his mother and brother kitties and we miss him very much and want him back. Please call Todd at 783 8829. No questions asked and reward is offered. He is on right in picture with his Mom on the left.

Somebody Should Be Going To Jail

The local corporate media is playing all coy about the recent demolishing of the historic canal wall. They keep referring to it as if it was an accident and was bound to happen. (It was not. There were witnesses.)

Not me (and yeah, this is marked as editorial).

I believe somebody, despite knowing the many concerns of our neighborhood and larger Richmond community, thought they could sneakily order and get away with, under the lingering goodwill glow of the folk festival, and before the Riverfront Plan comes up at City Council, the destruction of an important part of Richmond’s history (built with slave labor, designed with the help of no one less than George Washington). And, I guess they figured this sort of thing has been done before in Richmond, so they did think they could get away with it.

As others have pointed out, the work crew did not even bother to put up erosion controls as required by the Chesapeake Bay Act, before beginning this work that included a deep bulldozer rut down the side of the canal.

Imagine if a regular citizen tried something so arrogant, so pernicious. This was not like a kid spray painting a monument, this was someone destroying a large swathe of historic artifact. I don’t care how big or small of a figure the guilty party or guilty parties are, or which corporations they are leaders of, somebody should be going to jail.

Corporate accountability should mean something and not just political buzzwords. Speaking of which, where’s our Councilperson on this? After all, he was very recently quoted- “We need a council to do the people’s business of being watchdogs over the public purse, to be watchdogs over waste, fraud and abuse, to be watchdogs over massive mismanagement,” Jewell says. Really, Marty, then why aren’t you publicly calling for a criminal investigation?