Cherry Street neighbor Todd Woodson has written a short post for social media…
Regarding the disastrous “Code Refresh” and it’s harmful affect on Oregon Hill, let me give you some historical perspective on the current zoning and how it was achieved in 2002.
Before we were appropriately rezoned to R7, the majority of Oregon Hill was zoned R63, a moderate density zoning. The year was 2002. I was serving as president of the newly formed Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association and also as representative on the Near West Neighborhood Teams coalition- a wonderful, solid group of diverse community representatives, supported by the City. Our City’s excellent planning department, led by Director Mark Strickler, had put in countless hours working out an appropriate rezoning classification known as R7 for Oregon Hill. R7 was perfect because it encouraged the preservation of our historic single family homes while shunning large high rise apartment complexes. This was important because at the time, the overlook area was owned by Ethyl Corporation (now New Market- upon whose land now stands the Allianz Amphitheater). Ethyl had bought up all of the historic housing (listed on both Federal and State Registers of Historic Places) in the southern part of Oregon Hill and summarily demolished the homes in order to realize their grand investment opportunity. The problem is that the pending R7 zoning preserved single family and so jeopardized Ethyl’s scheme to allow a developer out of Texas to put up HUGE student apartment complexes, which would ruin the aesthetic of the neighborhood and overstress the infrastructure. The community solidly backed the R7 rezoning but for some unknown reason, that rezoning had stalled out as the student high rise plans were on the table. At the time, there was not a strong mayor system- we had a City Manager named Calvin Jamison, who had formerly been Human Resources Director for… ETHYL CORPORATION! At a neighborhood teams meeting, I questioned Jamison, in front of Near West community members as to what was holding up our rezoning and he responded he didn’t know of anything holding it back. The wonderful City planning department (at the time) was frustrated because they had put in so much work on a seriously good plan (R7) for Oregon Hill and it was going nowhere. I was at City hall a lot back then- trying to unblock the progress for our neighborhood. A young planner (who shall remain nameless) took me aside to a secluded area and told me to FOIA the minutes of a meeting with Calvin Jamison and his former employers on such and such a date. This planning hero had taken the minutes himself. Now, I had never heard of FOIA, which stands for the Virginia Freedom of Information Act but I did as he told me. Those minutes spelled it all out: the City Manager was holding up the rezoning until his pals could get their high rises built. A neighbor and lawyer David Gammino and I marched into a City Council meeting and called Jamison on his actions. City Council’s collective jaw dropped (at the time, there was much corruption in the City and two City Council members had been sent to prison for taking bribes from developers). Amazingly, our R7 soon came up for a vote and we were successful! A great developer named Steve Middleton stepped in and built the overlook as can be seen today- pretty much matching the rest of Oregon Hill!
Fast forward to today, when the City’s incompetent Planning Department led by DEVELOPER RODNEY POOLE, who has led the planning commission for over two decades, is trying to take away our R7 zoning to incentivize DEVELOPERS to come in, demolish historic, reasonably affordable and dense housing stock to build high rise student housing. History repeats itself.
I ask my dear community members to support our quest to keep our neighborhood intact and historic. The “Code Refresh” initiative needs to be completely scrapped and Poole and director Vonck replaced with competent people, determined to do what’s best for our community.
Thanks, Todd.
