Category: neighborhood

Riverview

riverview cemetery dawn
THE RIVERVIEW CEMETERY COMPANY was incorporated by a group of local businessmen on December 29, 1892 with a mission to establish a cemetery “near and convenient” to the City of Charlottesville and properly ornamented with “trees, shrubbery or flowers.” In February 1892 the Company made its first land purchase of 27.95 acres from the Charlottesville Land Company for $6,987.50. Riverview continued to amass small quantities of land over the years from neighboring lot owners, residents and the Albemarle Golf Club on its western border. Local residents Henry Clay Marchant, Mrs. M.J. Burgess and J.S. Barksdale purchased the first burial plots on December 6, 1894. Seventeen more were sold between 1894 and 1899, several to board members and officers of the Cemetery Company.–Lara Day Kozak

Rivanna Renaissance

Rivanna River Woolen Mills
“The degradation of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem took place more than two centuries; it will take more than three decades to reverse. The newly signed Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement—with its clear, well-defined and achievable goals and outcomes, its flexibility to respond and adapt to changing conditions and its public engagement—sets the course and provides the watershedwide commitment to get us there.”–Nicholas DiPasquale, Director of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program (left, DiPasquale paddling the Rivanna, October 1)
DiPasquale one of the speakers at today’s Rivanna Renaissance conference.

Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM)

Miss Chelsea
SAK Construction’s TBM, Miss Chelsea is on the move, headed NNE, grinding through 1700+ feet of bedrock, going where no one has gone before.
Interesting boring job.


operator conveyance
Drive to work, ride the man-basket down into the hole, fire up the TBM. How is the machine moved forward? What protective gear does the operator wear? At the moment it’s a horizontal short walk (100+ feet) from the tunnel entrance to Ms. Chelsea. Later on it’ll be longer. Bike to work? What is the lighting like in there? Any chance of a live video feed?

old soldier, Carl D. Proffitt

Chubby fetches the DP
Olive and Chubby built their Woolen Mills house in 1939. I admire his service record. Daily Progress has that story.


2009 Dogwood Festival Parade
Additionally, I admire his persistence, his neighborliness. He always had a kind word. He lived on, beyond Olive, beyond five siblings. It takes a lot of courage to age in place. Chubby Proffitt had courage.

A million cubic feet

CAT 740B
Work was paused temporarily Monday at RWSA’s excavation for members of the public to visit the site, the location of the future Rivanna pumping station.


nobody looks good in a hardhat
First up. Schooling from Dr. Richard Gullick on this great project, using gravity to transport waste water to the sewage plant instead of building a massive pump station adjacent to residences, a state scenic river and a park. The influent to the new pumping station will flow through a pipe in a tunnel bored through 1600 feet of bedrock.


big hole
Attendees at the edge of the excavation.


release the Kraken!
The tunnel boring machine, the mechanical star in our community drama of doing the best, not the cheapest, thing. Enduring thanks to the public and the RWSA Board for this outcome.

words are wind

Market Street plan
Meetings I remember. Huge category. This the meeting that laid out improvements to Market Street east of Meade Avenue. Plantings, stormwater BMPs, profile changes. I’d been canvassing residents of the street the day before (9/7/2008), encouraging their attendance at the meeting. Charles said he wasn’t coming, a waste of time: “the City will never do this for us, it’s all about the money, the river will rise up and wash us away.” I tried to persuade him, encouraging him to be more sanguine.
Hey Charles! You were right. The improvements weren’t forthcoming.