Category Archives: News

Hit & Run at Idlewood and S. Cherry Street

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From eyewitness:

At 12:43am on Saturday morning, September 27, I heard a loud crash. Came outside and saw a young man on a scooter had been the victim of a hit and run crossing Idlewood on Cherry.
911 rang for 4 minutes before picking up to answer. Cars were flying down Idlewood, almost hitting the downed scooter rider. A civilian car blocked traffic so the victim couldn’t be hit again.

It’s worth noting that the neighborhood association has been asking for about a decade for the same type of traffic calming measures (signs, speed bumps/tables) that are seen on VCU’s campus and other neighborhoods in the City.

Newspaper Coverage And ‘LTE’s’ Bring Strong Calls For Government Reform

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While local television stations bandied ongoing amphitheater concerns and new signs (more on those at a later time), Richmond Times Dispatch reporter Samuel Parker examined the details in regard to another City Hall threat against the neighborhood- rezoning.

Oregon Hill residents have been contemplating on this matter from the beginning- going back to the original ‘Richmond 300’ meetings on land use and calling foul on the narratives that came forth from them. City Hall brushed off the heartfelt complaints by neighbors and in what has become a horrible pattern, self-congratulated itself and celebrated dubious awards. The City government did the same thing with its water utility even as the water plant failed, something that surprised even longtime critics, exposing the real rot underneath.

Thankfully, in the last week or so, Mr. Parker, in a few in-depth newspaper articles, focused on who City’s Planning Department officials really are and brought significant light to conflicts of interest and tenures that should have ended decades ago.

Laurel Street neighbor Charles Pool wrote a well-written and complimentary Letter To The Editor (LTE) in gratitude for Parker’s work and the Times Dispatch newspaper published it this past Saturday morning. Pool’s correspondence also served to underscore the result of Planning Department problems- “an illegitimate process with a bonanza of new zoning proposals by developers, for developers”, that have more to do with profiteering than City’s well-being or affordable housing. Pool also described some of the disastrous impacts of these current proposals on this historic neighborhood and strongly called for immediate reform.

(By the way, also see the poignant LTE (“Correspondent Of The Day”) from the president of Chesterfield’s NAACP, Nicole Thompson-Martin, on Dominion’s dirty fossil fuel ambitions – “Letter: Clean energy isn’t just cheaper, it’s more equitable”)

Cherry Street neighbor and former president of the neighborhood association Todd Woodson re-posted Pool’s letter on social media and further challenged the City government.

I’ve been civically active in Richmond, Virginia for 25 years because I love our historic City and recognize the amazing progress we can and must make to ensure equity and prosperity in all corners. That said, I have seen it so damn corrupt here in the past that the FBI has had to intervene, sending lawless developers and City Councilors to jail.
If you care about our community, please read this LTE in today’s Times Dispatch. We are on a precipice of destroying much of what’s good and beautiful in Richmond because the developer “foxes are in the henhouse”. Our Department of Planning and Review has acknowledged paying for and using compromised data to implement terrible zoning changes in our historic neighborhood. Oregon Hill was appropriately rezoned to R7 in 2002. R7 maintains the character of this family oriented enclave (which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places) while at the same time promoting a dense fabric of reasonably affordable housing.
I call on Mayor Avula and City Council to DO THE RIGHT THING! Remove the bad leadership from our Planning Commission and Department , scrap the current Code Refresh abomination and start from scratch with the added voices of environmentalists , social activists, historians and other grassroots community members. If it aint broke dont fix it. The current Code Refresh is simply Urban Renewal 2.0 and only benefits the greedy that are currently wielding power.

Mr. Parker does deserve gratitude and laurels for bringing more attention to longstanding problems with Richmond’s Planning Department, and citizens and residents are both cheering and adamant. Will Mayor Avula and City Council represent the citizens and residents of this city, or will they continue to cowardly adhere to developer money? (And yes, this does include issues with the new corporate amphitheater as well as debate over the future of public housing).

Amphitheater Closing Belle Island Parking Lot

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Editor’s Note: Closing the Belle Isle parking lot for private amphitheater use is in violation of Venture Richmond’s lease agreement, which requires the parking to be open for public use.

OUR PUBLIC PARKS ARE NOT LIVENATION’s PARKING LOTS!

Once again, we see the City leadership/’business community’, Powers That Be (PTB), whatever you want to call them, putting corporate priorities over public ones.
Someone needs to SLAP THEM HARD IN THE FACE, otherwise, they will keep coming back, trying to TAKE from the public. (Like they are doing with their Richmond300 rezoning).

‘Is Oregon Hill Under Attack?’

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The Richmond Times Dispatch ran a front page follow up to an earlier article about how homes in Oregon Hill were deemed ‘nonconforming’ by City planning officials.

“If you ask Valerie L’Herrou, she’ll tell you that there is a “historical feeling that Oregon Hill is under attack.”
L’Herrou, who is president of the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association, attributed that feeling to decades of mistreatment — from racist redlining that denied financial resources to residents, to Ethyl Corp.’s acquisition and demolition of historic homes, to being rent in two by the Downtown Expressway, to Virginia Commonwealth University’s attempt to snap up land and tear down significant landmarks.
Oregon Hill’s residents managed to weather Ethyl and the interstate, and to stave off VCU’s expansion bid. Had they not done the latter, the parcel of land on which L’Herrou’s house is built would now host a college soccer field.
But 43 years later, she said it seems as if the war is back on.
L’Herrou said residents are anxious about the city’s zoning overhaul process, which has deemed more than 80% of Oregon Hill’s buildings out of conformity with the current zoning ordinance. The so-called nonconformities will influence possible zoning changes, which L’Herrou and others fear could result in the demolition of the quaint historic homes that define the neighborhood in favor of large, modern developments.”

Many residents are very thankful for this attention by reporter Sam Parker and urge him to keep investigating. For Planning Dept. officials to not seem to care about the accuracy of the ‘pattern book’ that Richmond taxpayers paid for is shocking. This sadly corresponds with incorrect data from the ‘Richmond300’ team that declared that Oregon Hill was ‘mixed use’.

Hopefully the media spotlight will continue when the neighborhood is barraged later this spring, summer, and fall by crowds and noise from the new amphitheater and Brown’s Island concerts. It’s not lost on Oregon Hill residents that their stages are pointed right at the neighborhood.

The feeling is certainly one of being ‘under siege’.

Shooting At High School Graduation At Altria Theater

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A just graduated high school student and his father were shot and killed Tuesday when a gunman opened fire in Monroe Park following Huguenot High School’s graduation ceremony at the Altria Theater in Richmond, Virginia, near Monroe Park and Oregon Hill.

The 19-year-old shooter was taken into custody. He had multiple firearms.

The motive for the shooting, which injured at least five other people, remains under investigation.

Open High school posted this message in response:

We are heartbroken for our RPS family and all of Richmond. Stay safe and keep your loved ones close.

Train Horn Wakes Neighborhood And Then Some

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Around 4 am this morning, Oregon Hill residents were woken up by a train horn. Now, since the neighborhood is very close to CSX train tracks that are along the Kanawha Canal on the old tow path, the neighborhood is very used to trains sounds and hearing a train horn or two. Usually, folks just roll over and go back to sleep. But this horn kept going off pretty much nonstop. Some called 911, fearing another emergency along the tracks.

But the neighborhood was not alone. Evidently the horn kept going for the train’s entire journey, as Fulton neighborhood residents and Williamsburg, VA residents were reporting it this morning also.

Unofficial reports say that an air valve was stuck and that is why the horn kept sounding.

Between this and the early morning trash trucks, expect a lot of bleary eyed neighbors today.

Public To Pay For More Corporate Takeover Of Riverfront

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From (recently re-elected) Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association President Todd Woodson:

On Monday, December 16th at 1:30PM, the City Planning Commission will hear a conceptual plan presented by Venture Richmond for a $17 million, taxpayer funded “improvement plan”, including a CORPORATE HELICOPTER PAD and DYNAMIC LIGHTING PLAN for publicly owned Browns Island, located on a flood plain in downtown Richmond. Venture Richmond and 3north held a planning charrette last April and invited DOMINION ENERGY, ALTRIA CORPORATION, NEW MARKET CORPORATION, certain developers, attorneys and City planning staff yet excluded the stake-holding public from the conversation. After being approved by only 3 members of the ten member Urban Design Committee last week, the proposal is poised to be approved “under the radar” by the planning commission on Monday. If you aren’t interested in building a corporate helipad on public property with taxpayer funds, I would urge you to attend and speak out against this ill conceived plan!

Of course, the corporate media has been silent about this, as they do not want to raise the ire of Venture (aka Vulture) Richmond. Remember, Richmond’s leaders don’t want to PUT SCHOOLS FIRST! Remember, corporate corruption takes from the public– even if most citizens agree with the improvements being made, they should not be excluded from the public planning process!