Category: neighborhood

Our Town

4 of 5 Council members
City Council came to our neighborhood Thursday night. They brought a delicious dinner, a good audio system, and a complement of City staff. Staff and Council engaged in an extended (1:29:00) exchange of substantive information with neighbors. Many people-hours go into holding such an event. People out on the town at night investing their time, the elected and the citizens, striving to make their City a place worth caring about Audio is available on the Woolen Mills Neighborhood Association website.

Jim Tolbert

Mr. Tolbert at work
Neighborhood Development Services director Jim Tolbert is headed south to a new job in Georgia.
Jim has been in charge of the department that oversees the fate of neighborhoods so we’ve had much contact over the years.
His is a critically important, tough position which he has handled with grace and good humor. I will miss him.

Jim’s last official words to me were encouraging, about getting long standing zoning issues rectified. That work now falls to his successor.

Following Mr. Tolbert’s departure I hope we can find an owner’s manual for the City.


30 x1028 px box

The city, sixth-largest in the state with a 2010 population of 93,853, wanted to separate itself from what it saw
as wasteful government spending in surrounding communities. The city benefits greatly, though, from the number of Fortune 500
companies headquartered there, boasting an extremely high per capita income, with the median family household income,
according to a 2008 census estimate, approximated at $129,810, and the average family income $169,815.–Huffington Post

Sandy Springs, Mr.Tolbert’s new town, has a considerably different socio-economic profile and governmental services structure than Charlottesville.

Spencer house

woolen mills neighbor
The house at 1809 East Market Street (DHR # 002-1260-0073) was
built in two stages, the second addition sitting almost on the street. Its lot retains its original one-acre as platted and sold in 1887 in addition to a portion to the north.
The house consists of two parts: a two-story, three-bay, hipped-roof, frame, vernacular I-house sitting right on East Market Street and a two-story, hipped-roof section attached to the north elevation. The rear section raised on a high English basement.
Louis, working at night.

making a hole

Please note that a blast at the Moores Creek Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility on Moores Creek Lane
has been scheduled for Wednesday, October 1, 2014. A single blast is anticipated mid-day.
Several seismographs will be set up in the Woolen Mills neighborhood to gather additional vibration data.
We appreciate your cooperation to adhere to all signage and personnel regarding blasting for your SAFETY!–RWSA

Work continues at the former MCWWTP, digging a hole which will eventually house the wet well, the drop off point
for the Rivanna Interceptor, the pipe that catches the sewage from 42 square miles of Charlottesville and Albemarle.
This is a big hole being excavated in solid rock.
At some point a TBM (tunnel boring machine) will be introduced to this hole and it will bore its way to Riverview Park
allowing the installation of a gravity flow line, replacing the current force main from Riverview to the sewage plant.

Also in the works, Monticello, home of Th. Jefferson, is in the process of hooking up its sewage to the MCAWTF
(MCAWTF = MCWWTP = Moores Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant = sewage plant) Monticello is located about 3350 feet
from where the blasting is going on.

We know that water runs downhill. I wonder if the smell will waft uphill? The stink plume certainly wafts laterally,
To sample, drive from the east into Charlottesville on Interstate 64 with a window cracked in the morning…