Infrastructure Walk Scheduled For April 12th

The Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association has scheduled an ‘infrastructure walk’ with Councilperson Lynch’s office.

From announcement:

Last fall’s Infrastructure Walk was a great success, with many long-standing issues reported to 311 and addressed within weeks. Join us for Round 2 on Friday, April 12, at 4pm in Pleasants Park, where will document those things we missed, as well as new problems. If you cannot attend, please email OHNArva@gmail.com the issues you’d like to see included (photos and exact location are helpful!)

Pine Street Baptist’s Easter Celebration This Saturday/Pleasants Park Workday

Easter Celebration for Children ages 2 yrs old through 5th grade. Crafts, games, devotion, and Easter egg hunt. Contact the church at 804 644-0339 if you are able to join on March 30th!

Also, Friends Of Oregon Park have a scheduled volunteer work day on Saturday as they continue with plantings in Robert Pleasants Park. This is a collaborative effort from Verdant Richmond, the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association, and the City’s Parks and Rec Dept.

OHNA Meeting Tonight

From email announcement:

Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association
Monthly Meeting Agenda
Tuesday 26 March 2024
7:00PM
This meeting will be held by Zoom, at the link below.

Topic: OHNA Monthly Meeting – February 2024
Time: March 26, 2024 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting (Editor’s note: Meeting information redacted, please contact OHNA at ohnarva@gmail.com for that information)

Welcome:

Community Updates:
Lt. Brian Robinson, City of Richmond Police Section Lt, 4th Precinct
Officer Luke Schrader, Police Liaison, VCU
Ms. Verenda Cobbs, VCU
Ms. Stephanie Lynch, 5th District Councilperson
Ms. Colette McEachin, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney
____ from DPU

Announcements:
Oregon Hill Open Garden Day: May 18, 11a-2p, centered in Pleasants Park
Open Garden Day Signup: put your garden on the itinerary, volunteer!

Updates and Continued Business
The Friends of Oregon Hill Parks
Volunteer signup: Pleasants Park watering duty
Volunteer workday #2: planting flowers in Pleasants Park, March 30
Second Infrastructure walk

New Business?

1. Forming an Ad Hoc Committee OHNA Budget Delegate Committee to represent us in the RVA Participatory Budgeting process that will begin in the fall.

Valerie L’Herrou, President
Bryan Clark Green, Co-Vice President Harrison Moenich, Co-Vice-President Jennifer Hancock, Co-Vice-President Mike Matthews, Secretary
John Bolecek, Treasurer

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which means trash and recycling pickup.

Please go over what can be recycled.

NOTE: CVWMA (Central Virginia Waste Management Authority) has announced that all curbside recycling must now be INSIDE the CVWMA containers with lid closed. Items beside the container or on top of it will not be collected. In fact, incorrect setouts may not be collected at all. This is new as of July 1 for all our curbside recyclers, with the exception of townhomes/condos still using small bins. (And yes, this also applies to flattened cardboard boxes.)

Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.

If it seems like pickup did not happen, use this online form:
https://cvwma.com/programs/residential-recycling/recycling-service-request-form/

In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.

In recycling news, TES, a Singapore-based subsidiary of South Korea’s SK Group, has announced the grand opening of its IT asset disposition (ITAD) repurposing and processing facility in Fredericksburg, Virginia.The company says the site is dedicated to extending the life cycle of technology assets and data center equipment, ensuring that valuable materials are not sent to landfills and supporting the flourishing data center industry in the area.TES says the new facility is located with nearby access Interstate-95, and the 128,000-square-foot site “is optimized to process hyperscale and enterprise equipment, meeting the specialized needs of the local data center sector.”

5th District Town Hall On Wednesday

Councilperson Stephanie Lynch is holding a 5th District Town Hall this Wednesday, March 13 at 6pm at Maymont Foundation (1000 Westover Road). Attendees can use the parking lot on Spottswood.

DRAFT Agenda:
• Welcome
• Sheila White, Finance Director (confirmed)
• April Bingham, DPU Director (invited)
• Matthew Slaats, Senior Civic Innovation Manager (invited)
• Legislative Updates
• Q&A

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which means trash and recycling pickup.

Please go over what can be recycled.

NOTE: CVWMA (Central Virginia Waste Management Authority) has announced that all curbside recycling must now be INSIDE the CVWMA containers with lid closed. Items beside the container or on top of it will not be collected. In fact, incorrect setouts may not be collected at all. This is new as of July 1 for all our curbside recyclers, with the exception of townhomes/condos still using small bins. (And yes, this also applies to flattened cardboard boxes.)

Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.

If it seems like pickup did not happen, use this online form:
https://cvwma.com/programs/residential-recycling/recycling-service-request-form/

In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.

In recycling news, WasteDive.com is reporting that solar panel recycling company Solarcycle is investing $344 million to establish a solar glass manufacturing facility in Cedartown, Georgia.
The company will use recycled solar panels to produce five to six gigawatts of crystalline-silicon photovoltaics, or solar glass, annually. The site will create 600 jobs in manufacturing, engineering, research and other sectors. Construction is expected to begin later this year, with production slated to start in 2026.

Editorial: Save Community Hospital!

Richmonders have become somewhat used to Oregon Hill residents protesting the VCU administration’s encroachment and demolition of more of the historic Oregon Hill neighborhood.

With no ‘memorandum of understanding’ with the neighborhood from the VCU Board of Visitors, (despite many requests), the Wayne Commission plan never repudiated, the ‘Richmond300’ and re-zoning breathing down the neighborhood’s neck, and a future amphitheater designed to blast residents off the hill, Oregon Hill still faces a number of existential threats.

But that is not the focus of this editorial.

Virginia Union University, a small but noteworthy HBCU (Historic Black College and University), is emerging from a period of financial uncertainty and moving ahead with its own ‘master plan’ for growth. And while much of that is worth celebrating, one aspect that many Richmond residents are objecting to is the scheduled demolition of the old Community Hospital in Church Hill. This building, where so many people were born and cared for, has incredible resonance for the African American community.

Appropriately, local Black media and Black leaders like Viola Baskerville are rallying with VUU alumni to create a groundswell of support for renovating and repurposing the building, instead of bulldozing it.

From the Richmond Free Press:

Clearly, the structure is more than just a building. In the early 1900s, the hospital was founded in Jackson Ward by Dr. Sarah Garland Jones and other Black doctors who weren’t allowed to work at white hospitals in Richmond. For many years, Richmond Community Hospital was the epicenter of care for black people in the city, especially during segregation.

The hospital moved to Overbrook Road in the 1930s and to its current location in Church Hill in 1980. In 1995, the doctors, who owned the hospital as part of a for-profit partnership, sold it to Bon Secours, according to news reports.

Dr. Jones, it should be noted, was the first Black person and first woman to be certified to practice medicine by the Virginia State Board of Medicine.

VUU, so far, in response, is taking a page from the callous VCU administration in promising to ‘memorialize’ Community Hospital while moving forward with demolition.

As shortsighted as it is for this historic Black college and university to destroy this significant part of Richmond’s Black history, there are additional reasons to change course.

Historic preservation is inherently a sustainable practice. Study after study have proven that preservation and reuse of historic buildings reduces resource and material consumption, puts less waste in landfills, and consumes less energy than demolishing buildings and constructing new ones.

Historic buildings, often energy efficient from inherent characteristics, can be upgraded with new technologies to maximize energy performance. Historic features such as windows can be repaired and restored for higher efficiency. In addition to saving existing resources and historic character, historic preservation means environmental, cultural and economic benefits for communities, something that Oregon Hill residents have championed over time.

This is where the City’s Sustainability Department could and should take a stand, and prove it’s doing more than tiptoeing around developers and corporations’ profit making. And, as has been noted here repeatedly, City and State officials have a sworn duty to protect historic landmarks, though in recent years they have increasingly turned their back to it. This is a chance for them to make some amends.

This is a good time for Oregon Hill residents and ALL Richmond citizens to join together and recognize and support this cause.

This Sunday, The Gary Flowers Show, on 101.3 FM & 990 AM, will address the current discussion around the old Richmond Community Hospital building. There is also a rally scheduled for 1 pm outside the abandoned Community Hospital building at 1209 Overbook Road (see photo above). But what might make even more of a difference is if citizens make a point to contact the Virginia Union administration and board and The Steinbridge Group developers (at info@steinbridge.com).