Charlottesville City Council has voted to issue a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) for a 7-story luxury housing development despite strong opposition from Fifeville residents.

On Monday night, City Council voted to overturn a December 2025 decision by the Board of Architectural Review to deny the COA — an official document approving exterior changes to properties within designated historic districts or landmarks — to Landmark Properties, the developer of a large student housing complex called The Mark.

In practical terms, City Council’s vote means that Landmark Properties can now move on to the next phase of development, which includes submitting a final site plan to be reviewed and approved by city staff and obtaining all necessary construction permits. 

In an email on Wednesday, Charlottesville Development Planning Manager Matthew Alfele confirmed that since the project is by-right, site plan approval will be an administrative process and there will be no additional review by the Planning Commission or City Council.

As proposed, The Mark would stretch from 7th Street to almost 5th Street and would house more than 700 people. The developer has stated that it plans to market the apartments to University of Virginia students.

The BAR denied the certificate on the basis that the development encroaches on, and is incompatible with, two individually protected properties containing historic worker cottages from the late 1800s. Landmark Properties appealed the decision to City Council.

“At each and every meeting, BAR members expressed concern about the building’s height, scale and massing,” BAR Chair James Zehmer told City Council on Monday night before the vote. “The simple truth is that a 180-unit, 770-bed, 7-story building is not compatible with two, one-room deep, 2-story buildings.”

The developer has offered to renovate the historic homes, saying that they will “thoughtfully incorporate into the project two individually protected cottage home structures on the site.”

Steve Blaine, serving as attorney for Landmark Properties, also argued on Monday that the “evolution of the building has significantly evolved over the last year,” with height reductions and changes to the facade of the apartment complex.

The proposed development has sparked concerns among residents of Fifeville, a historically Black and low-income neighborhood that was previously targeted in the city’s 1957 master plan during the era of Urban Renewal. They’ve said that building the luxury student housing complex could lead to gentrification, with local businesses catering to UVA students instead of long-term residents, and upend community-led planning initiatives already in place.

Vice Mayor Natalie Oschrin, one of three city councilors who voted to issue the COA to Landmark Properties, said that she was elected on a platform to build more housing in the city.

“We cannot discount the benefits of development,” she said. “It’s not just a building. It is a building that provides homes. It provides tax revenue. It provides traffic mitigation.”

However, community members and association representatives who spoke during the meeting disagreed.

“Student housing is not the same as affordable housing,” said Latricia Giles, executive director of the Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents. “It does not answer the need of low-income residents, public housing residents, working families, or longtime community members who are trying to remain in this city.”

“This building is not housing — it’s an investment class,” another speaker said.

Michael Payne, one of the two dissenting votes on the Council along with Jen Fleisher, said that it’s time for a larger conversation about whether the zoning ordinance needs to be further amended to mitigate displacement, and to listen to the voices of residents from neighborhoods that have historically suffered the most harm.

“Is there an element of procedural justice where, in the areas where Urban Renewal happened, that we as a city government have to give up some of our control of assuming we know the right answer?”

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University employees who had hoped Virginia’s Democratic-controlled legislature would grant them the right to collectively bargain are now confronting a different reality: One of the bills passed at the recent legislative session would exclude most public university workers altogether.

Lawmakers passed HB 1263 in the legislative session that wrapped up on March 14, which would allow most public sector employees to collectively bargain but excludes most employees at public universities with the exception of “service workers” such as janitors, cafeteria, recycling staff and similar roles. After years of pushing for the right to negotiate for better wages and more stable working conditions, the exclusion came as an unexpected and bitter disappointment to many faculty, staff and student workers at UVA.

What’s more, as conservative groups have increasingly targeted university faculty over what they teach, employees say they need a way to protect themselves and preserve their right to teach freely. 

Supporters of collective bargaining, the negotiation process to determine working conditions between employers and a group of employees, usually represented by a union, say the exclusion could also have a broader impact on worker rights for everyone in Charlottesville, at a time when the cost of living is rising.

The legislation had become a central focus of advocacy for University of Virginia union organizers this legislative session, with many traveling to Richmond in January, alongside members of Virginia Tech, William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University unions, to support collective bargaining efforts and share their personal experiences with lawmakers. They returned to the Virginia Capitol on March 11to rally for full inclusion in the collective bargaining legislation, as reported by Virginia Mercury. 

Higher-education employees from across Virginia held a virtual press conference on April 8, calling on Gov. Spanberger to amend HB1263 to include all higher-education workers before signing the bill, and launched a petition with the same request. However, while Spanberger did propose some amendments to the bill, the inclusion of higher-education workers was not among them. 

Instead, her amendments, which were ultimately rejected by the General Assembly on April 22, excluded additional workers, including Virginia Port Authority workers, and specified that the exclusion of university employees extends to university healthcare workers, which would include all employees at UVA Health. 

“If we allow higher-ed and home care medical workers to be carved out as exceptions, I think you could plausibly say that this collective bargaining bill is dead on arrival,” UVA politics professor Kevin Duong told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “Because you’re carving such huge exceptions — massive industries — out, so that everyone’s ability to negotiate for a better life will actually be damaged. And that’s because UVA is such a large employer, universities are such large employers, that they can actually set wage floors for whole cities.” 

Duong is a member of UVA’s chapter of United Campus Workers of Virginia (UCWVA-UVA), a union for staff, medical workers, graduate students, faculty and undergraduate student workers at UVA. 

At the end of the day, cutting UVA workers out of the collective bargaining bill won’t just affect UVA workers, he said, but Charlottesville workers at large. 

“UVA is the largest employer in Charlottesville, and if the largest employer in your town is carved out as an exception for public-sector collective bargaining, I don’t know how much collective bargaining you have left,” Duong added. “If UVA employees don’t get collective bargaining, Charlottesville will suffer, even people who think they have no connection to UVA.”

Duong added that the exclusions were especially disappointing because they came from Democrats. 

“It makes a lot of us, it makes me, not trust legislators who a few months ago made us feel that this was really going to happen,” he added. “I don’t think they should be surprised if large sectors of higher-ed are cynical toward getting workplace reform through statewide politics in the future. That trust is going to be pretty much zero.”

And while state legislators and universities are largely silent on the issue, University employees say that university presidents and lobbyists have spoken to lawmakers behind closed doors to ask them to exclude most higher-education workers.

No public rationale for exclusions from legislators, universities 

Virginia legislators did not publicly express a rationale for the exclusions during or outside of the legislative session. Multiple House legislators did not respond to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s repeated requests for comment inquiring about the reasoning behind the exclusions. 

UVA’s spokesperson, too, declined to share the university’s stance on collective bargaining rights for higher-education employees with Charlottesville Tomorrow. But union organizers at the university said that UVA’s leadership has privately opposed collective bargaining for its workers, arguing that it would increase labor costs for public universities and force a tuition hike, although UVA’s tuition is already set to rise by 3.6% for the 2026–27 academic year.

Other universities have expressed similar concerns internally among their employees. 

During a VCU Health System panel discussion in late March, Vice President for External Affairs and Health Policy Karah Gunther said that VCU Health is “not actively supporting the bill” due to “very significant financial implications for the health system” and administrative difficulties with implementing the infrastructure that the bill requires in a “very short” period of time.  

William Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, told Charlottesville Tomorrow that collective bargaining would not necessarily lead to increased tuition. 

He cited a 2025 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which looked into the effects of unionization on the salaries of public Canadian university faculty between 1970 and 2022. The study found that, while unionization on average leads to a modest salary increase spread out over a period of years following unionization, largely stemming from the introduction of salary floors, the salary increases were financed by an increase in student enrollment and did not impact tuition.  

Collective bargaining provides an opportunity for representational democracy within universities, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that employees will be granted exactly what they’re seeking, Herbert added. Instead, it gives them a seat at the table to negotiate.

A fiscal impact review by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, which conducts program evaluation, policy analysis and oversight of state agencies on behalf of the General Assembly, estimates that administering collective bargaining in Virginia’s postsecondary institutions would require roughly $10 million to $14 million in additional staffing and administrative costs, depending on the structure of negotiations. 

“Overall the impact of unions on public sector earnings is small. It depends on the scope of bargaining,” Jeffrey Keefe, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and professor emeritus at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations, told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “The subjects of bargaining are often limited.” 

Keefe noted that many key benefits, including health insurance and pensions, are often set by legislation rather than negotiated through collective bargaining. While wages are the issue most often discussed, the process for resolving disputes can be limited, as public-sector unions often lack the ability to strike or access binding arbitration.

“In a right-to-work state I suspect unions will not be powerful, except maybe teachers and police,” he added. “Additionally, unions are not immediately able to raise earnings, it takes time.”

“Right-to-work” states bar employers and unions from requiring workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment, even if a union represents their workplace. Federal law already prohibits mandatory union membership, but in states without right-to-work laws, unions and employers can agree that workers covered by a union contract must pay fees to support bargaining and representation. In a right-to-work state like Virginia, workers can’t be required to pay those dues or fees. As a result, unions in right-to-work states often have fewer resources and lower membership, since some workers opt out of paying while still receiving the benefits of union contracts.

Universities allegedly lobbied lawmakers behind closed doors 

Despite the public silence of lawmakers and universities on the exclusions, university union members told Charlottesville Tomorrow and other news outlets like VPM that university presidents and lobbyists across Virginia allegedly lobbied lawmakers behind closed doors to remove higher-education workers from collective bargaining bills during the recent legislative session.

They noted that, in particular, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Luke Torian allegedly had extensive conversations with lobbyists, and was a main proponent of the exclusions. Torian did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment from Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

“We do have knowledge from some folks who have let us know that these university presidents are lobbying behind closed doors and asking for their workers to be excluded from this legislation,” Katie Baker, Spokeswoman for the Virginia Public Sector Labor Coalition, said during the April 8 press conference asking Spanberger to include all university workers in the collective bargaining bill. 

“We mostly know that the university presidents were lobbying against the bill because members of the public-sector labor coalition saw them in the General Assembly,” Graduate student worker and UCWVA-UVA member Kelsey Levine told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “But they’ve not been public about their opposition.” 

The University of Virginia Foundation hired five new lobbyists from McGuireWoods on Jan. 12, 2026, two days before the start of the 2026 legislative session, to lobby on behalf of “matters of interest” to the foundation. Some of the same lobbyists were hired by other Virginia university foundations, including Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, the Virginia Military Institute and Marymount University. However, UVA’s spokesperson would not confirm or deny whether lobbying on the collective bargaining issue occurred, and legislators did not respond to inquiries on the matter from Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

“I think we share a lot of common goals with our administrators and our university presidents — we all care really deeply about providing the best educational experience that we can — and it’s just really frustrating to see them working against their own people in that way,” UVA librarian and UCWVA-UVA member Cecelia Parks told Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

“It feels like a slap in the face to have your president going and saying, ‘Well, we actually don’t want to have you at the table where important decisions are made,'” she added. “’We actually don’t care what you think. We don’t care that you can’t afford to live in Charlottesville while we make, you know, six- and seven-figure salaries.’ It’s really disheartening.” 

UVA workers push for stability and a living wage

One of the main things that union organizers hoped to gain through collective bargaining was the right to negotiate for higher wages to keep up with the rising cost of living. 

“We have an abundance of staff who work at UVA who can’t afford to live in Charlottesville because it’s so expensive, and wages don’t keep up with the cost of living here,”  Parks told Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

The average cost of rent in Charlottesville has risen to $1,950 per month, as reported by CBS 19 in August 2025, around 20% higher than the average rent in Richmond and Norfolk. More than half of Charlottesville’s households are not earning enough to afford the cost of living in the city, including nearly a quarter of households that are below the poverty level, according to an August 2025 Charlottesville City Council report.

Andy Gneiting, a member of UVA’s recycling staff, is considered a “service worker” and would be included within the collective bargaining legislation. He told Charlottesville Tomorrow that being able to negotiate a contract with predictable raises tied to the rising cost of living and inflation would make a huge difference in reducing financial stress and uncertainty for himself and his colleagues. 

But Gneiting added that he’s disappointed that collective bargaining rights wouldn’t extend to many of his colleagues, many of whom experience similar financial insecurity living in Charlottesville. 

“The demands that people have, they’re not crazy, they’re not out-of-this-world expectations, they’re very base-level,” Gneiting said. “They’re not asking to be millionaires, they’re just asking to be able to live. And it’s an absolute shame that that’s not already the standard.”

Now that higher-education workers have been cut out of the bill, the ability of those working at UVA to negotiate for higher wages has been greatly diminished, Stephanie Gunst, a senior administrative coordinator at UVA and the chair of UCWVA-UVA’s living wage campaign, told Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

“There is this idea that because you’re in higher education that you automatically get paid a lot, especially for faculty,” Gunst said. But many UVA faculty are not tenured, she added. “They’re not protected. They’re often adjuncts, and their pay for the hours that they work is actually quite low.” 

UVA currently has a total of 3,383 faculty members, UVA spokesperson Bethanie Glover told Charlottesville Tomorrow. 1,858, around 55%, are either fully tenured or on track to be tenured. 1,525, around 45%, are considered general faculty, meaning that they are not tenured or tenure-track. 

Adjuncts, meanwhile, are instructors that are typically hired on a per-semester or per-course contract basis. They are often considered “temporary” workers and usually do not receive standard employee benefits or long-term job security.

“In a typical academic year, UVA engages several hundred individuals as wage faculty, primarily in a part-time capacity,” UVA spokesperson Bethanie Glover told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“Many employed by the professional schools (such as Education, Law, and Nursing) are professionals in their field and thus, employed elsewhere in a full-time capacity.”

While members of UVA’s general faculty are making an average of $106,387 for the FY2026 payroll, the average pay for the 672 individuals employed as full or part-time “temps,” or temporary faculty, is $35,887, according to The Cavalier Daily. 

“UVA has billions of dollars in an endowment, but higher administration is not necessarily willing to come to the table with us, even though they have expressed outwardly that they are interested in people earning a living wage and it is ostensibly part of UVA’s 2030 plan,” Gunst added. “But we have seen nothing that indicates a move to actually give everyone a living wage.” 

For the majority of the 11 years that she’s been at UVA, Gunst has lived paycheck-to-paycheck, she told Charlottesville Tomorrow. That only changed in the last couple of years, after she secured a better position with higher pay at the university.

“The reason I have what I have is because of specific managers who were willing to look out for me and advocate for me and see my value as an employee, and not everyone has that,” Gunst said.

Postdoctoral researchers like Megan Wiessner describe the challenges they face: long hours in temporary positions, limited savings and, for many international scholars, the added anxiety of visa restrictions and family far away. 

“Most of us have sacrificed a lot to do this work, and there are very few guarantees that it will lead to anything,” Wiessner, who is a member of UCWVA-UVA, said. 

For her and other early-career researchers, collective bargaining rights could mean the opportunity to negotiate for access to modest but meaningful supports like minimum notice for contract renewals, paid time off for family leave or reimbursements for visa fees, which cost the university relatively little but would have a tangible impact on their daily lives, she said.

“Even totally aside from things like cost-of-living issues and compensation, just the instability and the precarity and the lack of informal support resources that other people take for granted, all of it can be really brutal,” Wiessner told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “It can really feel like your life is on hold.” 

One key way to secure a greater sense of stability, UVA employees say, is through the use of collective bargaining to negotiate guaranteed annual raises in their contracts. 

“That would really change my life in terms of being able to plan for the future, being able to save for something like buying a house, even being able to be like, okay, I’m pretty sure my rent’s gonna go up this much this year, I will be able to afford that,” Parks said. “Instead of being like, well, I hope I get a raise that covers the amount of my rent going up every year.” 

Undergraduate and graduate student workers have also faced challenges at UVA, Parks told Charlottesville Tomorrow. Throughout the years, student workers have experienced recurring issues with late or missing payments, causing financial strain for many. At the end of 2022, for instance, around 60 to 120 graduate student workers did not receive on-time payments due to university staff turnover and administrative errors. It was not the first time, or the last, that incidents like this occurred. 

“Every year we’ve had issues with graduate student workers not getting paid,” Parks said. “We have graduate student workers who don’t have contracts. It’s sort of not clear anywhere how many hours they’re supposed to work or even how much they’re getting paid.” 

Ava, a UCWVA-UVA member and fourth-year student who has worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant and research assistant, told Charlottesville Tomorrow that UVA’s system for handling student employees is a “mess.” There have been cases where she and other student workers didn’t know how much they were going to be paid until after they had received their first paycheck, she said, and having the ability to negotiate contracts could help address these kinds of pervasive issues. She asked to be referred to by just her first name out of concerns of potential retaliation. 

Graduate student worker and UCWVA-UVA member Kelsey Levine agreed. “When university workers have the ability to advocate for themselves, then that makes things better for students and for the community,” she said, adding that it’s difficult to be “a good TA and be invested in your students” when you don’t have good working conditions.

Beyond wages and job stability, UVA employees told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they had hoped to use collective bargaining to negotiate contracts with meaningful protections after recent experiences of external scrutiny and harassment made clear the limits of relying on the university alone to defend them.

Faculty members like Duong and UVA sociology professor Ian Mullins described being targeted by conservative groups critical of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at UVA that disseminated their names, courses or other personally identifiable information online. They pointed to expansive public records requests for their syllabi or personal communications as a form of “course policing” and intimidation. The cumulative effect is a chilling one, they added, discouraging open inquiry and pushing instructors to self-censor in the classroom. 

But UVA has offered no recourse, Duong said, underscoring a scarcity of existing protections for UVA employees facing harassment and reinforcing a sense that they are largely on their own. A union contract, he said, would have helped safeguard academic freedom and establish clear and durable protections for UVA employees that don’t depend on shifting political climates or administrative priorities.

“It is really dangerous to live in a world where truth is whatever people in power want it to be, and I’m terrified of that world coming into existence for us,” Mullins said. “This collective bargaining fight is about more than fair wages and a better work environment, it’s about academic freedom and our ability to install protections that can outlast these assaults.”

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In a corner of an art gallery in Los Angeles sit dozens of bronze ingots stacked on pallets. Next to the ingots are two bright blue hazardous waste drums. A jar filled with slag, waste matter that separates from metal during the smelting process, sits atop one of the drums.

This is what remains of the 10,000-pound statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that once stood in Market Street Park (formerly Lee Park) in downtown Charlottesville.

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center (JSAAHC) acquired the Lee statue from the city in 2021; it was melted in a secret location and later shipped 2,500 miles west to become part of the “Monuments” exhibition, currently on display in the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

“Monuments” is presented in partnership with another Los Angeles visual arts space, The Brick. Both spaces tell the stories of Charlottesville’s Confederate statues by reimagining or repositioning them into something else. The City of Charlottesville transferred the Thomas Jackson statue that stood in what is now Court Square Park to The Brick, where artist Kara Walker’s reconstruction of the Confederate general and his horse is on view.

When the exhibition opened, Hamza Walker, director of The Brick, said that its themes encompass United States history from 1619 to yesterday.

“This gave us wide latitude in the selection of both pre-existing and commissioned contemporary artwork,” Walker said in a news release. “In both cases, the works in this exhibition address the questions of who we want to be as a nation, and who and what is worth remembering, let alone celebrating.”

When the MOCA exhibition closes on May 3, the ingots will return to Charlottesville to be integrated into new public artwork, said Andrea Douglas, JSAAHC’s executive director. The “Recast and Reclaim” transformation is part of the community art project Swords into Plowshares, stewarded by JSAAHC.

Swords into Plowshares draws inspiration from the prophetic vision described in the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Isaiah, which celebrates turning tools of violence into ones of peace and community-building, according to its website.

The JSAAHC’s “Recast/Reclaim” exhibit, on display through May 30, includes original never-before-seen photographs that document the dismantling and melting of the Lee statue. The exhibit also includes renderings presented by three design teams that are competing to create new public artwork from the bronze ingots.

Douglas visited MOCA in 2024 to see how the objects would be displayed. In October 2025, she joined several artists, educators and scholars from Charlottesville and other parts of Virginia to preview the works at MOCA and The Brick.

She told Charlottesville Tomorrow then that the exhibit was striking.

“Seeing them (the ingots) was just as much an experience for me because I had not seen them in their final stage. I knew it had been polished because we paid for it. But, you know, it’s an interesting impression,” said Douglas, “knowing that it’s actual bronze, but they really do reflect like gold.”

The exhibition upends traditional notions of historic value by placing “seemingly precious metal” alongside barrels of slag, which resembles dirt, Douglas said.

“Once you’ve melted it down, what comes up on top are the impurities. So, it’s a really interesting metaphorical contrast.”

But Douglas says that the challenge of historical narratives has limits.

“I think that we can’t say that there’s a demise of white supremacy. We have been living in this conversation for years,” she said.

The ‘Monuments” exhibit is a step toward permanent artwork in Charlottesville, said Jalane Schmidt.

Schmidt is a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia who helped organize the Lee statue’s removal and is working with the JSAAHC’s Swords Into Plowshares project to create the new public artwork. She joined Douglas and others from Virginia who attended the “Monuments” preview last October.

“It felt like it was a moment,” Schmidt told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “We’re not done yet. Until that art is in public, we’re not done, and that’s going to be several more years, probably. But it was gratifying to have made it this far and to have public recognition.”

Besides the torched remnants of the Charlottesville Lee statue, “Monuments” includes other decommissioned Confederate statues and artifacts recreated by 19 contemporary artists. “Monuments” offers a space for reflection, dialogue with contemporary art, and critical engagement with some of the most urgent issues of our time, according to the exhibition’s organizers.

At The Brick in East Hollywood, visitors can see a retrospective detailing Zyahna Bryant’s role in the removal of Charlottesville’s Confederate statues. Bryant, who is now an elected official on the Charlottesville City School Board, wrote a petition in 2016 to the City Council requesting the removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee statue and renaming of the park where it stood for nearly a century. She was a student at Charlottesville High School at the time.

Although Bryant hasn’t seen the exhibition, she is pleased to be included and hopes to see it before it ends.

“What excites me most is that we’re continuing to have this discussion,” Bryant said, “and ensuring the main points are conveyed thoughtfully and effectively.”

The Brick, formerly known as LAXART, is much smaller than the 40,000-square-foot MOCA, but its centerpiece, the decommissioned equestrian monument of Confederate Gen. Jackson from Charlottesville­, looms large.

The original bronze statue showed Jackson leading his horse, Little Sorrel, into battle. In “Monuments,” Kara Walker dissected and reassembled the statue of the general into what the news release about the exhibition describes as a “Hieronymous Bosch-like horseman,” — alluding to the Dutch painter known for his detailed and dream-like style — wandering into Civil War hell on a ruined battlefield. It is titled “Unmanned Drone.” “It seemed fitting somehow as a weapon of war,” Kara Walker told the New York Times.

Walker also compares her sculpture to a “haint,” a Southern concept with roots in Gullah Geechee culture that designates a spirit that has slipped its human form and roams about making mischief and exacting vengeance. Her sculpture, she told The Times, “exists as a sort of haint of itself — the imagination of the Lost Cause having to recognize itself for what it is.”

Debbie Walker (no relation to Hamza Walker or Kara Walker) moved to the Los Angeles area from Maryland about 20 years ago. She grew up in South Carolina where Confederate statues prevailed. Visiting The Brick last December, she encountered memories long buried.

“You just have so much of it growing up in the South and, you know, just that whole pride in the Confederate flag,” said Debbie Walker. “And then, you just want it gone. Like, I don’t want to see any symbols.”

While Debbie Walker doesn’t deny the Confederate objects’ role in history, she sees no need for them to be glorified.

“So, I think being able to repurpose the statue and reimagine it kind of keeps the history, but it also demystifies it,” Debbie Walker said. “Some people would have us believe that the entire country at the time revered those Confederate generals when in fact people — especially the Union and some moderate Southerners — recognized them for the immoral criminals that they were.”

Taking in “Monuments” at The Brick, Neha Choski carefully studied each of the exhibit’s objects, including remnants of the Jackson statue’s steel base splattered with Lithichrome, a paint that’s often used on headstones and monuments.

Choski, whose artistry includes performance, sculpture, painting, video and installation, lives between Los Angeles and Mumbai, India. Her initial reaction after seeing the exhibition at Geffen-MOCA and The Brick was the representation of “so much violence.”

Choski views violence in the United States — then and now — as “a wound that’s gaping over.”

“It is still in our country. The division, oppression, everything.”

But she is inspired to see the objects — or symbols of violence — detached and displayed in a cultural institution. To her, the museum’s approach of containing and examining monuments within an institutional framework offers a powerful way to move forward.

“There was something very empowering where it made me feel like there’s a problem in our deepest, you know, cultural anatomy that is so impossible to solve,” Choski surmised. “But if we can hold it and we can examine it and actually sit with it, then maybe we can get somewhere.”

A simple song reflects key moments during the height of Black America’s struggle for equal rights

Back at MOCA, Davóne Tines’ commanding bass-baritone delivers an a cappella rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.” Its simple, steady rhythm and repeated refrain —”let it shine, let it shine, let it shine”— is a deliberate anthem and backdrop for Black Southerners who, in the face of segregation, violence, and systemic exclusion, packed churches, gathered in mass meetings, and marched for justice during key moments in America’s civil rights movement.

Tines performs the operatic spiritual in “Homegoing,” Julie Dash’s short film created to honor the 10th anniversary of the 2015 massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The song and film are powerful preludes to both of the exhibition’s monuments, the reimagined statues of Lee and Jackson, that are intricately tied to trauma and tragedy in Charlottesville.

Hamza Walker, director of The Brick, recalls 1963 and 2015 as pivotal years for civil rights — and violence against Black people. The violence that ended in the deaths of nine church members at Mother Emanuel on June 17, 2015, was the catalyst for “Monuments.”

Among the worshippers killed was Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, Emanuel’s pastor and a South Carolina state senator who was shot while leading Bible study. Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, was convicted for the racially motivated massacre.

Hamza Walker grew up in Baltimore and describes himself as a “post-civil rights child.” Yet, he was shocked by the Mother Emanuel Church shooting. It rekindled memories of the 1963 bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that resulted in the deaths of four Black girls.

“It’s still a living memory,” he said. “But it’s not something that should be happening again.”

As the violence and police brutality against Black men and women in cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Louisville, Kentucky and Brunswick, Georgia continued, so did plans for the exhibition. After the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2000, efforts to remove Confederate monuments and symbols in public spaces became a national movement. On April 24, 2025, CBS News reported that more than 2,000 Confederate symbols still stand across the U.S. A map included in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2025 “Whose Heritage” report shows that 478 confederate monuments have been removed in the U.S. since 2015.

“Monuments'” curators contacted 68 municipalities and institutions, and received about 25 responses. Ultimately, 10 monuments, objects and artifacts were selected for the “Monuments” exhibition for MOCA and The Brick, according to the curators.

The objects come from Charlottesville and Richmond, but also Baltimore, Montgomery, Alabama and Raleigh, North Carolina.

When Confederate monuments fell, one curator and UVA graduate felt a ‘now moment’

Richmond’s 21-foot statue of Robert E. Lee stood for 131 years on the city’s acclaimed Monument Avenue. After its removal, the statue was acquired by Richmond’s Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. Today, its granite base is marked with the graffiti and spray paint when activists repurposed it for protest and play during the COVID-plagued summer of 2020. Pieces of the base now greet visitors who enter MOCA’s “Monuments” exhibit.

Around noon on a Friday in early December, Bennett Simpson, senior curator at MOCA, spoke with several of the anticipated 1,000 visitors who were reserved spots to visit the museum that day. He listened to their observations and questions, and explained some of the features of the exhibition, such as Hugh Mangrum’s black-and-white photographs of people in post-Reconstruction North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Simpson, who graduated from UVA in 1994 with a degree in English, has worked at MOCA in Los Angeles since 2007. From the exhibition’s conception to now, he worked closely with Hamza Walker, Kara Walker and other curators to shape the project.

In the museum’s courtyard, he explained why “Monuments” is being staged in Los Angeles.

Part of the answer came down to logistics. Besides the fact that he and Hamza Walker live and work in Los Angeles, MOCA could accommodate the large-scale artifacts and objects.

“We could drive the cranes and the trucks directly out onto the museum floor through our loading dock. In most places, you can’t do that,” said Simpson.

Part of the answer also came down to perspective. Both men are from the mid-Atlantic, which gave them insight on how to stage the exhibit’s objects and artifacts as contemporary rather than historical curators. Simpson said that aligns with the MOCA’s mission to interpret current art while questioning and adapting to the changing definitions of art.

“We work with living artists and think about the current moment,” he said. The monuments seemed to be a permanent part of the Southern landscape, but once they started to come down, they had a chance to challenge that view. “We thought, ‘Oh my God. This is all new. This is really something happening today.'”

The next question the curators confronted was how to incorporate the voices of contemporary artists in an exhibition that represents deep history. The fact that so much was happening in June 2020 — or “now” as Simpson recalled saying back then — made the project even more appealing. “What could contemporary artists say about it? How could we work with contemporary artists to kind of frame it and talk about it?”

The “Monuments” exhibition is now in its sixth month, and many of Bennett’s questions appear to be answered. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times described the exhibit as “thrilling.”

Yet, for Chiquita Flowers, one of the visitors that Friday in early December, the issue of slavery, the Confederacy and the monuments debate remains “a complex, unresolved American dilemma” with many layers.

“I feel like the monument [controversy] was some outcry in the context of George Floyd, and obviously the killings in Charleston, South Carolina,” said Flowers, a retired physician who was raised in Georgia and now lives in Santa Monica, California. “But I also feel like it’s only just a tip of the iceberg — an unexplored, unidentified feeling.”

The post Charlottesville’s Confederate statues are centerstage in West Coast art exhibition rooted in tragedy and trauma appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

The Black community’s relationship with land in Charlottesville has long been complex. While viewed as a symbol of sustenance and refuge, the relationship also has been fraught with displacement, discrimination and structural racism. One example is Vinegar Hill, once a thriving Black community of homes and businesses in downtown Charlottesville, which was destroyed during a citywide redevelopment program in 1964.

In response to a call to create new public art in Charlottesville that seeks to memorialize the city’s broken past, PUSH Studio LLC has proposed a series of towers and pillars at six public parks across Charlottesville, called “Land Forge.” The towers and pillars would be made of rammed earth, which is a building technique that compresses layers of sand and soil into different shapes. They would also incorporate community-selected narratives and images.

Meanwhile, Charlottesville’s abundance of “notable trees” is the blueprint for Hood Design Studio, which envisions “Witness Tree Rings” — stainless-steel bands encircling trees that have lived through the city’s contested past — as gathering places where memories and stories are shared, woven into a temporary public artwork, and ultimately returned to the neighborhoods from which they came.

Another tree, the baobab, which is celebrated for providing shelter and communal gatherings in countries and continents far from central Virginia, stands at the center of Dana King and MASS Design Group’s proposal to remake Charlottesville’s Market Street Park — formerly known as Lee Park — into a site of joy and collective memory.

Those proposals are just some of the ideas that the three design firms hoping to remake Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue into new public art shared on March 14 during a news conference at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

Later that evening, the design groups — three finalists among 32 applicants — presented their proposals to members of the Charlottesville community at the JSAAHC where images of the exhibit, “Recast/Reclaim,” are on display through May 30.

The exhibition and public artwork project are led by Swords Into Plowshares, which is stewarded by JSAAHC. The exhibition includes original, never-before-seen photographs that document the dismantling and melting of the Lee statue into bronze ingots. Those ingots travelled across the country and are currently on display in a Los Angeles museum through May 3, after which they will return to Charlottesville and be remade into public art to advance inclusiveness in public spaces. 

Swords Into Plowshares, which was launched after the 2021 removal of Charlottesville’s Confederate statues, continues to host several community meetings to determine which firm will create the new work.

Community voting is now open to select the final design. Scale models of the proposals are on view at JSAAHC, where visitors can cast their ballots in person or vote online through May 30. The winning design will be announced on July 10, marking the fifth anniversary of the Lee statue’s removal in Charlottesville.

Charlottesville’s role in the local exhibit and the “Monuments” exhibit on the West Coast got its legs in 2016 when then-high school student and current City School Board member Zyanhna Bryant petitioned the City Council to remove the Lee statue from Lee Park (now Market Street Park), where it had stood since 1924. Attempts to keep the statue intensified after several “Unite the Right” rallies occurred in 2017.
That year, on Aug. 12, a “Unite the Right” rally involving white supremacist and white nationalist groups drew counter protesters.

Heather Heyer was killed after James Alex Fields Jr. drove a vehicle into a group of counter-protesters. Fields, 22, was convicted of first-degree murder and other charges in 2018. Two Virginia State Police troopers also were killed when their helicopter crashed while responding to the protests, and 19 others were hospitalized, according to the Final Report of an Independent Review of the 2017 Protests prepared by Hunton and Williams law firm.

Despite the Charlottesville City Council’s vote to remove the statue, protests and a failed lawsuit delayed its removal until 2021. The statue was eventually melted into bronze ingots, which currently sit stacked on pallets as part of the massive “Monuments” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

When the West Coast exhibition opened, Andrea Douglas, JSAAHC’s executive director, said it also marked the start of “Recast/Reclaim,” the second phase of the Swords into Plowshares project.

“The journey to this (Los Angeles) exhibition has included a court case and moving the object more than once,” said Douglas. “Yet these challenges gave us much-needed time to plan our next steps.”

Those steps included identifying leading design firms to reimagine public spaces as places of inclusion, remembrance, and joy for communities in the city and beyond. 

“These design groups are leaders in national and international conversations about race, memorialization and public space, aligned with our global aspirations for this project,” said Douglas. “Swords Into Plowshares is transformative for us here in Charlottesville and will ignite imaginative possibilities for decisive intervening in racial justice narratives in all public spaces.”

PUSH Studio’s proposal, “Land Forge: A Collective Future,” sees the story of land in Charlottesville as inseparable from the story of freedom, belonging and survival. From Vinegar Hill and its destruction to the city’s current struggles with gentrification and rising housing costs, Black Land has always meant more than property, the proposal states, adding that stability, independence, wealth and legacy is synonymous with owning land.

“Yet progress was repeatedly undermined. Racist laws, unfair taxation, and segregation eroded what Black families built,” PUSH’s proposal continues. “In 1963, ‘urban renewal’ bulldozed Vinegar Hill, destroying hundreds of Black-owned homes and businesses. Today, inequitable zoning, rising property taxes, and escalating housing costs continue to threaten homeownership and belonging for Black and Brown families.”

In response, “Land Forge” seeks to “reimagine Charlottesville’s public parks as living networks of solidarity, creativity, and healing — a new kind of Underground Railroad built not from tracks, but from relationships,” according to the proposal. “Through art, memory, and community connection, ‘Land Forge’ envisions spaces once overshadowed by monuments to white supremacy into counter-narratives of justice, dignity, and belonging.”

Hood Design Studio proposed a renewed civic ethic that asks Charlottesville to “reckon with its legacies” by creating a public landscape “rooted in truth-telling, belonging, and mutual respect.”

As such, the Oakland, California-based firm envisions the bronze remnants of a once-divisive Lee monument reshaped into a new, communal form of sculptural “Witness Tree Rings,” encircling trees that have lived through Charlottesville’s contested past.

“This transformation is both material and spiritual labor,” according to Hood’s proposal. “These works do not overwrite trauma — they create a constellation of social sculptures that invite everyday democratic engagement.”

Dana King + MASS Design Group’s proposal for Market Street Park seeks to transform the former Lee statue site into a shared civic space of justice, dignity, and belonging. Madagascar’s baobab tree, which represents wisdom, longevity and interconnection, would stand as a central symbol in a design inclusive of pavilions, paths, plazas, plantings and sculpture.

“The baobab, reimagined as an inhabitable ‘Tree of Life’ pavilion, anchors three spatial values: spatial justice, dignity, and belonging,” according to the proposal presented by the Boston-based design team. “Spatial justice redeems site and soil by turning a place of exclusion into one of acknowledgment, safety, and possibility. Dignity is seeded through accessible, parallel activations aligned with natural cycles and cultural exchange, moving beyond a merely ornamental park.”

A sense of belonging is further affirmed through the Tree of Life, West African Adinkra geometries, community handprints, and distributed baobab “fruit” sculptures, all signaling inclusion to African descendants while connecting to universal symbols of wisdom, interconnection, and shared human roots,” states the Dana King + MASS Design Group.

When the winning design team is announced on July 10, “the final phase of community engagement will begin that allows the design team to refine their concepts and come to consensus in the community that will allow us to build,” said Douglas, adding that building is planned to start in 2027. 

“But what we’re trying to mark is the 10th anniversary of the Unite the Right Rally,” Douglas continued. “So our goal is to have something, whether it be a completed design that we can then move forward to building. And, coincidentally with that, we will have engaged the community in a conversation about its social values and how those social values can be iterated in a physical form. These are two things that are happening all at the same time, but I think Charlottesville has to ultimately come to terms with what happened in 2017 and this is our way of trying to help that process along.”

The post From Lee to ‘Land Forge’: Charlottesville envisions new public art rooted in Black history and resilience appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

For the past three years, Joy Johnson and her Westhaven neighbors have met every other week to plan their community’s redevelopment. They’ve decided on the pitch of their porch roofs and where plants and playgrounds will go. They’ve added more units, and a building specifically for seniors, so that more people can live in their neighborhood.

Johnson and her neighbors have dreamed of this for years. Westhaven is the city’s oldest public housing community, built in the 1960s, and it hasn’t had any major renovations or upgrades since, despite residents’ pleadings. 

In 1998, Johnson founded the Public Housing Association of Residents with the goal of amplifying the voices of the people living in publicly subsidized housing. 

More than two decades later, in 2019, the local housing authority started planning to redevelop its communities, including Westhaven. Residents asked for a say in that process. And they got it.

Filled with a sense of accomplishment, residents submitted their site plan to the City of Charlottesville for approval in spring 2025.

Their excitement was overshadowed — literally — a few weeks later by some unexpected news. Employees from LV Collective, a Texas-based developer, attended a Westhaven resident planning meeting and told residents about the company’s plan to build an 11-story building of luxury student housing on West Main Street. Right behind Westhaven.

The developer has since lowered the height to 8 stories, stepped down to 6 in the back, next to Westhaven. Still, it would loom over the community and block sunlight from reaching parts of the development, completely altering what residents envisioned for their community’s future. It all but dashed residents’ plans for a walkway up to West Main, one of the city’s main roads.

“I was angry. I felt disrespected and hurt,” said Johnson.

She wasn’t the only one.

“They came and talked to us, and it wasn’t a talk,” said longtime Westhaven resident Earl Hicks who, like Johnson, has been closely involved in the redevelopment planning process. “It was, ‘this is where we’ll build at.’ No thinking about the people, about us, the Westhaven community. When you do something like that, you really tell us that we don’t exist.”

This has happened before, say Westhaven residents, who are part of the 10th and Page neighborhood, citing a similar situation with The Dairy Market developer in summer 2023. 

Still, they say they were blindsided by LV Collective’s proposal. They didn’t expect such a massive building to go up in their neighborhood. 

That’s because city officials and the consultants they hired said they would try to shield historically Black neighborhoods throughout the city, including theirs, from ongoing displacement due to development and rising real estate prices. When the city overhauled its zoning ordinance, it claimed it was prioritizing equity. With a new Affordable Housing Plan to guide that work, the city stated two of its primary goals were to create more affordable housing and slow displacement of longtime residents throughout the city.

The new ordinance, adopted in December 2023, even includes a special zoning district meant to protect historically Black and low-income neighborhoods from development pressures that might come from the new rules, which broadly allow for more density and height throughout the city.

Now, residents say that feels like an empty promise.

Two tall luxury student housing buildings — the 8-story one on West Main Street in the 10th and Page community, and a 7-story one in the nearby Fifeville neighborhood — have been proposed for properties right on the edges of that special zoning district. While they may be on the edges according to the zoning map, residents say that in reality, they’re very much in the neighborhoods.

This has residents questioning the city’s priorities. They’ve shown up to public meetings for months, warning the city that it is on the path toward fast-tracking gentrification and displacement, further harming these neighborhoods’ Black and low-income residents.

“These neighborhoods are more than locations on a map,” Terry Tyree said during a March 30 anti-displacement rally outside of City Hall. “They hold our history, our families, our relationships and our sense of belonging. We need our leaders to take this seriously. Development should not come at the cost of pushing people out who helped shape and sustain this city for generations.”

Developer ignored Westhaven community’s plans for a path to West Main Street, residents say

In the 10th and Page neighborhood, residents say that LV Collective’s proposal disregards not only the plans that Johnson and her Westhaven neighbors have worked on for years, but the history that those plans were meant to honor. 

LV Collective has proposed its 8-story luxury student housing building for 835, 843 and 847 West Main St., three adjacent parcels of land next to Drewary Brown Bridge that currently hold a parking lot and a small building. The Texas-based company specializes in student housing and has $6 billion in assets across 11 states, according to a presentation by the company at an August 2025 Board of Architectural Review meeting.

During the meeting, residents told the Board and the developer that the building will block sunlight from the Westhaven community. They’re also concerned about their long-awaited access to West Main Street.

Currently, Westhaven residents do not have direct access to West Main, despite being relatively close to it. They have two options: turn from Hardy Drive onto Page Street, then from Page onto 10th Street, which leads to West Main; or follow Hardy Drive to the railroad trestle at 8th Street, which leads to West Main.

This map shows the two routes Westhaven residents currently have up to West Main St., shown in yellow and red. The route highlighted in black is where residents hoped to have a safe and wide walkway up to West Main Street, lined with images and information about the history of their community. Map data: Google Maps/Leela Prasad Gullapalli/Charlottesville Tomorrow 

In their redevelopment plans, residents planned for a “memory walk,” a walkway leading from Westhaven straight up to West Main. It would include an exhibit telling the story of Westhaven and Cox’s Row, a Black community at the site of present-day Westhaven that was razed by city officials in the 1960s as part of the city’s urban renewal efforts. 

Despite seeing Westhaven’s site plan before presenting their own, LV Collective did not include such a walk in its plan, and Eugene Ryang, a landscape architect working on both projects, has said that LV Collective didn’t give them space to work on one.

Residents aren’t just insulted. They’re concerned that they will be policed on the walkway, or that the walkway will be closed off if an incident occurs on or near it.

Young people from Westhaven and 10th and Page feel unwelcome in the corridor that is increasingly dedicated to student housing, Zyahna Bryant, whose family has deep roots in 10th and Page, told the Board of Architectural Review in August 2025. 

“It’s important to think about how that space will be navigated,” Bryant said. “What it means, what it looks like, when students who have wealth, access, privilege are put into a neighborhood where folks do not have as much wealth, access, and privilege.” 

Ryang, who spoke right after Bryant at that meeting, echoed those concerns.

“Security for white students, for white people, usually means violence for Black, brown, and low-income people,” he said. “That’s something to consider as well.”

Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out to LV Collective to ask about any progress toward working with residents on a memory walk, but did not hear back by publication time.

Fifeville residents say more student housing contradicts Cherry Avenue plan

In Fifeville, residents share similar concerns about the developer disregarding community-led planning efforts in their neighborhood. They also worry that as more University of Virginia students move into the community, subsequent changes might drive out longtime Black and low-income residents altogether.

LCD Acquisitions LLC, a Georgia-based student housing developer, has proposed its luxury student housing building, called The Mark, on 7th Street in Fifeville. If built, it would be behind First Baptist Church, along the railroad tracks, and stretch almost to 5th Street. 

The company is part of Landmark Properties, which currently has more than $15 billion in assets, according to its website. 

Residents are already familiar with Landmark’s work. The company also built The Standard, a 7-story student housing building on West Main Street. However, the company recently sold the building as part of a $1 billion deal, according to a Dec. 2025 report from C-VILLE Weekly.

The Standard — recently rebranded “Yugo Crestline” by the new owner — casts a shadow on some of the homes in Westhaven, Johnson said, rattling off the building numbers it towers over. 

“No one wanted The Standard,” she said, calling it “disrespectful” to the 10th and Page neighborhood. 

The Mark, residents say, would be similarly disrespectful to Fifeville.

The company plans on marketing The Mark to UVA students, but data shows that not many students currently live in Fifeville. 

At least 319 students currently live in Fifeville, according to self-reported student housing data collected by UVA and shared by Bethanie Glover, a spokesperson for UVA. The Mark would have space for more than 700, meaning it could actually draw more students into the neighborhood.

This is exactly what residents said they did not want — tall buildings and more UVA students — in the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan, an official city planning document adopted by Charlottesville City Council in 2021.

Led by the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, the neighborhood collaborated with city planners on the document starting in 2016.

The plan was needed because “this part of Charlottesville is poised for rapid change because of its location between the University of Virginia and downtown,” Fifeville Neighborhood Association president Carmelita Wood said at the time.

For the past few years, Fifeville residents have worked with local developers on the 501 Cherry Ave. Project, which would bring 70 units of low-cost housing, space for the teen-focused Music Resource Center and a grocery store to the neighborhood. That project embodies what residents said in the Small Area Plan that they wanted: neighborhood involvement in a development that serves the neighborhood with relevant amenities and affordable housing.

But there was nothing to stop Landmark Properties from proposing The Mark, which would be built across five consecutive parcels of land, without regard for Fifeville residents’ priorities listed in the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan. 

Those properties are within the area covered by the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan, very close to the “primary focus area,” but they are open to proposed development due to the city’s new zoning map and development code.

The zoning map designates sections of the Fifeville neighborhood as “Core Neighborhoods Corridor Overlay District.” That means developers and city officials are required to get input from neighbors about the project. Many of those properties are zoned “Residential Core Neighborhood A,” a zoning district that generally maintains a lower density than other residential zoning districts throughout the city.

However, the parcels Landmark Properties wants to build The Mark on are not part of those areas, despite being within the Fifeville neighborhood and the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan. Those properties are zoned for high-density residential buildings that, if they meet all of the development code’s requirements, can be built “by-right,” without input from residents.

Residents have said, over and over again, that that’s not what they want.

“Fifeville is not anti-development,” Sarah Malpass, vice president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association, told the Board of Architectural Review in March. “Fifeville is anti-displacement. We welcome working with developers who want to work with us on our anti-displacement and affordable housing goals.” 

Residents worry that The Mark could re-make Cherry Avenue, in the heart of Fifeville, in the image of the Corner, the student-centered business district across from UVA grounds. Already, chain restaurants are popping up further down West Main St. as housing for UVA students moves closer to Downtown Charlottesville — Potbelly Kitchen sandwich shop, Kung Fu Tea boba tea, Domoishi ramen, Iso Iso Ramen & Boba, Starbucks. These chains are popular in other college towns, and residents feel that they exist to serve UVA students, not the surrounding community. 

“A large influx of students into a specific geographic area will, well, make it a place students want to be,” City Councilor Michael Payne said. That’s an economic phenomenon called “agglomeration.”

“Flowing from that, businesses that cater to student preferences will also want to be near there. Student-related businesses quickly become the highest and best commercial uses” for a property, Payne said. That’s called the “amenity effect.”

Payne has stood behind residents of both Fifeville and 10th and Page/Westhaven, sharing their concerns about further displacement and gentrification. For the past few months, he has joined residents in speaking up at public meetings. In his capacity as a city councilor, he has advocated for changing the zoning ordinance in a way that would extend real protections to these neighborhoods and give residents a say on neighborhood-altering construction. 

He wants to make those changes quickly, but during an April 20, 2026 work session, the four other councilors said they want more information before making any changes.

“In the context of LV Collective and 7th Street projects, we should expect, if built, that within a few years, both Cherry Ave. and the entirety of West Main Street will look a lot more like the Corner in terms of businesses operating there,” Payne told Charlottesville Tomorrow. That would probably lead to more hotels and properties used as short-term vacation rentals “as investors take advantage of agglomeration and amenity effects to target hotels and rentals for alumni returning for graduation, sports games, etc.”

Some city officials have said during public meetings that The Mark bringing more people into the neighborhood would translate into more customers for local businesses, including the grocery store planned for Cherry Avenue.

Residents argue that at some point, the grocery store would be for students and not the neighborhood.

Study shows what residents already know — Fifeville and Westhaven are vulnerable to gentrification

Additionally, one of the city’s own studies echoes residents’ concerns that these neighborhoods continue to be vulnerable to gentrification pressures. 

Parcels in historically Black neighborhoods — including 10th and Page and Fifeville — have some of the lowest average home values throughout the city, according to the Charlottesville Inclusionary Zoning Feasibility Analysis and Zoning Rate of Change Analysis, conducted for the city during the zoning re-write process by RKG Associates Inc. 

“This means these parcels are more likely to be purchased for infill/redevelopment into market-rate rental/ownership housing” than other areas of the city, the report concluded. Meaning, it is not likely to be developed into low-cost housing. And yet, that is what many of these neighborhoods’ residents need.

But residents don’t need data and reports to tell them what they already know.

Angela Carr is a member of the Public Housing Association of Residents. She grew up in the Garrett Street area and has family who live across the street from the proposed Fifeville development.

“I feel like every place in Charlottesville that is predominantly Black, literally is being snatched up,” Carr said during a December 2025 Board of Architectural Review meeting.

“Out of all spaces in Charlottesville, Virginia, out of all areas that do need that building, or that could utilize that size of a building, why choose that spot?” Carr asked The Mark architects and developers that night. She didn’t get a response.

Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out to Landmark with that same question.

“We selected this location because it aligns directly with where the City of Charlottesville has planned for this type of development,” Landmark wrote in a statement that a public relations firm sent to Charlottesville Tomorrow via email Wednesday. 

“We’ve been intentional about how the building meets the surrounding neighborhood. Along Delevan Street, the building steps down to just three stories and incorporates setbacks and stepbacks that go well beyond what the City’s new Development Code requires, with similar height and massing reductions designed to fit in with the existing character of the neighborhood and minimize visual impact.”

The company also said that it is contributing more than $4 million into the city’s Affordable Housing Fund, as is required by the city’s inclusionary zoning policy, and will “thoughtfully incorporate into the project two individually protected cottage home structures on the site. We’re committed to Charlottesville and to being a responsible partner in the community.”

Residents, meanwhile, are worried that their voices won’t be heard.

Carr, a Black woman, told the BAR that she thinks these developments are happening in these neighborhoods because people like her aren’t showing up to city meetings to speak up. It’s not because they don’t care, she said. They do care, deeply.

“They don’t believe that if they show up, the BAR is going to listen,” she said. 

And why should they believe that, Johnson, Carr and others have said, when it seems like the city hasn’t been listening to them?

Still, residents have shown up to speak at nearly every opportunity since the student housing projects were proposed, from City Council to Board of Zoning Appeals meetings.

They hold up signs that say “No LV Collective No Mark,” “Change the Zoning Code Now!,” “Protect Core Black Neighborhoods,” “Don’t Erase Westhaven” and “Stop Gentrifying Fifeville.”

All five city councilors have told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they’ve heard residents’ concerns about the projects proposed for Fifeville and 10th and Page. A few said they’ve heard some support for the buildings as well, mostly via email.

In December, the Board of Architectural Review determined that The Mark was not consistent with the character of the neighborhood and did not issue a certificate of appropriateness for the project, meaning it could not move forward to the next phase. 

The developer appealed that decision to City Council, who will hear the appeal at its Monday, May 4 meeting at 6:30 p.m. There will not be a public hearing on the appeal. However, community members can request to speak during one of 16 “community matters” spots at the beginning of the meeting. . 

Residents hope that their voices — and their years of advocacy — will be taken into consideration just as much as the revenue the city stands to make from these developments and others. 

“For the life of me, I don’t want to believe what people have been saying,” Johnson said with a sigh. “I don’t really want to believe that this city doesn’t care or give a damn about indigent people, that they just care about the money. I don’t want to believe it, but that’s what it looks like.”

Editor’s note: This article was updated Thursday, May 7, 2026 to correct the proposed height of the LV Collective building.

The post ‘We don’t exist’: Fifeville and West Main student housing plans cast a shadow on community-led efforts appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Join us this Saturday, May 2 at the Central Library in Charlottesville for the 8th Annual How-To Festival!

Stop by to learn about how we get news tips from community members and how to submit your own story ideas, plus get to know how to use our resource guides. (And sign up for our free newsletter to get a forthcoming guide on how to talk to  Charlottesville Tomorrow’s local journalists.)

We’ll be answering your questions about how to find housing support using our Housing Resource Guide, which helps advocates and community members navigate local housing needs and services. The Charlottesville Tomorrow team will also do a demo on how to use our 2026 Voter Guide, including how to submit questions to your local candidates. 

Other activities will include crafting, cooking — and befriending the llamas from Lower Sherwood Farm!

Whether you’re looking for resources, want to get involved or just have questions, we’re here to connect.

The post Come say “hello” to the Charlottesville Tomorrow team — and some llamas — on Saturday, May 2 appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

When labor and delivery units serving rural areas close, emergency medical technicians often have to fill the gap in care, including delivering babies in the back of ambulances, pulled to the side of the road.

This has already happened since the closure of Centra Southside Community Hospital’s obstetric and gynecologic services in Farmville, said a source familiar with the work of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) who are working to transport pregnant women from Centra to a hospital qualified to handle obstetric emergencies, typically in Lynchburg or Richmond.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of losing their job, said there were at least two cases since the closure in December in which emergency department staff rushed patients in labor out of Centra, and EMTs had to deliver babies in an ambulance. Both deliveries went well, the source said.

They said EMTs had one or two hours of additional training for transferring obstetric patients when Centra closed its services on top of traditional state-required certification. Since the training was very short, the source said some didn’t feel adequately prepared.

“While Centra had to make the difficult decision to stop delivering babies at Southside Community Hospital, we have taken multiple steps to ensure women in Farmville and surrounding communities are supported during labor and delivery,” said Centra’s spokesperson in a statement. 

“When the Southside Labor and Delivery unit closed, we held multiple free sessions for local EMS providers to offer training on care and transport of women in labor. We will continue to offer this training at the request of any interested local EMS providers. We also continue to provide training to our Emergency Department staff and our Patient Transport teams on the assessment, support, and transport of women in labor.”

During an earlier call, Stephanie McBree, Centra’s director of communications and PR, said she couldn’t comment on specific cases the source mentioned. She also questioned the need for news coverage of the issue and emphasized that Centra had already directly addressed the community extensively. 

When labor and delivery services close, the risks associated with pregnancy and postpartum care in rural areas don’t disappear — they increase for both mothers and infants, studies show. These risks shift to emergency department staff who aren’t necessarily trained for all obstetric emergencies and to EMTs.

EMTs have to prepare to deal with complications like hemorrhages, hypertensive emergencies, and preterm labor for a longer stretch of time while they take patients to qualified care providers.

In rural areas already stretched thin by workforce shortages and long response times, that shift is landing on systems with little capacity to absorb it, said Dr. Elizabeth Kielb, director of maternal and infant health for the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization, in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia area.

“The loss of labor and delivery services places significant pressure on local EMS (emergency medical service) providers. EMTs are being asked to fill gaps that the healthcare system was not designed for them to absorb. When transport times increase, EMTs may need to initiate or even complete deliveries in the field or manage complications like postpartum hemorrhage without immediate backup,” said Kielb.

“What we are effectively seeing is a transfer of clinical risk from specialized hospital settings to pre-hospital and emergency department providers, without a commensurate increase in infrastructure or support,” she added.

And when a nearby labor and delivery unit is no longer available, patients in the area might delay care due to distance. Which, Kielb said, can increase the likelihood that when EMS or emergency department workers get to them, the patients are “sicker.”

EMTs in the area around Farmville have seen that kind of behavior from patients even before the closure of obstetric services at Centra.

Coordinator of Cumberland County Emergency Services Darren Hurley, who is an experienced paramedic, said people in rural areas often wait longer before calling 911 for help, so the cases EMTs respond to are more urgent. Because a lot of people in the area have lower incomes, they might not have the means to see medical professionals in their day-to-day life, and it’s not uncommon for EMTs to take a woman in labor to a hospital and realize through conversation that she hadn’t attended a single prenatal appointment.

“That’s definitely a difference in those urbanized versus rural communities like out here. All the cases we run are usually worse than what you would see in an urbanized area. It’s bad. Sometimes you go, and it’s a lot worse than what you thought it would be, because they waited so long,” Hurley said.

In rural places like Cumberland, 911 and EMTs working on ambulances are the primary healthcare providers for miles and miles around. So, the loss of the closest qualified labor and delivery room is bad news for the community and for EMTs handling obstetric emergencies.

Hurley learned about Centra’s plans sometime in November — he doesn’t quite recall how, but it’s possible it was through a news release or Facebook, as many other people heard the news. The services stopped the following month, leaving expecting mothers to arrange for new care with a delivery date nearing and others questioning whether they feel safe to have any more kids.

“It greatly affected our county,” said Hurley.

Now ambulances from Cumberland and other counties in Centra’s service area have to take women to Richmond, Charlottesville or Lynchburg, which are more than an hour away. On top of being riskier for patients, it also takes an ambulance out of circulation for hours, meaning other patients may have to wait, and in case of some large-scale emergency there would be one less crew to respond.

And when they encounter extremely urgent obstetric cases, their only backup option is to call a helicopter. Otherwise, they have to make a choice between delivering the baby themselves, even if it’s on the side of the road, or rushing the patient to Centra to be stabilized and transported to a qualified hospital from there.

According to Hurley they don’t get many obstetric calls — maybe about five a month, but those are what are called “low-frequency but high-acuity.”  That means that while they are rare, they demand immediate and high-stakes decisions.

Hurley’s experience rings true to what is happening nationally as labor and delivery units close due to lower birth rates, staffing challenges, and financial challenges — the recent federal changes to Medicaid put the availability of obstetric services further at risk, experts warn.

Those are the reasons Centra listed when they explained the decision to stop the services, too. 

Since the end of 2020, an estimate of 130 rural hospitals either stopped delivering babies or planned to end the services, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, a national health policy center, found.

To adapt, Kielb said, emergency departments tasked with handling obstetric emergencies are acquiring skills to handle them. That’s what Centra said in the past their ER staff had been trained to do, prioritizing stabilizing mother and child before transferring them to a different, better-equipped hospital.

EMS teams in rural areas are seeking additional obstetric training as well, said Kielb.

That’s what the EMS team in Buckingham County, another rural county that relied on Centra in Farmville for a place to take their obstetric patients in case of emergency, did after the news of the closure.

According to Cody Davis, Buckingham County Department of Emergency Services Director and Chief, they had an intense training session in early March for EMTs to refresh their existing knowledge on how to handle obstetric care emergencies and to expand it further.

EMTs in Virginia are required to have certain obstetric certifications and can deliver newborns, said Davis. In their March training, Buckingham County took the basic skills further and brought in experts from Centra and the University of Virginia Health. They went deeper into how to handle complications and stabilize patients for longer. The basic training had just scratched the surface of what they covered that day, said Davis.

“It’s been a while since anybody had anything like this,” he said.

It wasn’t just Centra’s service closure alone that prompted the training, Davis said. Coincidentally, there has been an increased number of obstetric calls from the local Amish community, who usually only call for outside help when the situation gets to a life-or-death stage. So, Buckingham EMTs wanted to be more prepared.

“I hate that so many people are concerned and I understand why they are concerned. I hope something happens to mitigate these mothers’ concerns,” Davis said.

“In rural EMS we’re used to handling situations for an extended amount of time with fewer people. We have a bit of confidence going into this.”

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Charlottesville residents with an interest in helping guide city-level decisions can apply to serve on one of the city’s many boards and commissions.

Each board has its own unique role, from advising City Council on best housing practices to setting policies for the public library, and all have the opportunity to shape the community’s future. 

At least two dozen different boards and commissions currently have open seats, or seats that will be opening soon, according to a city news release from April 20. Board and commission appointments are volunteer positions, and most are made at City Council’s discretion. Some, like the Board of Zoning Appeals, are appointed by the Circuit Court.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

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Come meet our Voter Guide team at the Lovingston Spring Street Festival this Saturday, April 25!  

Charlottesville Tomorrow is continuing our spring tour across the region to hear directly from community members. Visit our table and let us know what questions you’d like political candidates to answer for our 2026 Central Virginia Voter Guide. We know that meaningful journalism begins with community connection — so let’s chat!

The Heart of Nelson Artisan Collective is hosting the festival, which will feature live music and street performers, plus local art and handmade crafts. 

Charlottesville Tomorrow will also be teaching our youngest voters about the democratic process through a fun mock election for “Mayor of the Festival.”

Little ones can carefully consider the witty, kid-friendly platforms of Frank the Flower, Linda the Ladybug, Betty the Butterfly and Sunny the Sunshine before voting.

Stop by, say hello and cast your ballot!

The post Visit our Voter Guide team this Saturday at the Lovingston Spring Street Festival appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Over the past several months, parents, teachers and some local advocacy organizations have been asking the Charlottesville City School Board to reverse its 2025 decision to bring police officers back to school campuses. 

And while Board member Zyahna Bryant made a motion to rescind the Board’s previous vote during a work session April 16, the motion failed.

Charlottesville has had school resource officers, or SROs, before, but the school district removed them several years ago, in part due to questions about their effectiveness. In June 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the school district voted to remove SROs after over 40 years, saying that “data did not indicate having an SRO leads to better outcomes on day-to-day events or emergencies.” However, a string of fights and violent incidents in 2023 led to calls to bring SROs back.

The School Board then voted in March 2025 to bring back SROs starting in the 2026-2027 school year, leading to pushback from some parents and teachers who said the decision was made without enough time for community input and raised concerns about potential negative impacts on students.

Advocacy groups, including the Commonwealth Justice Coalition, the Legal Aid Justice Center and Indivisible Charlottesville, have also joined the debate and organized a petition last month asking the Board to reverse its March 2025 decision. 

Since the removal of SROs in 2020, the school administration has said it has learned new information. For example, the schools “have found that having mutually selected, specially trained police who understand school routines and build relationships with the school community is better than having whichever officer is available in the moment when needed,” CCS Community Relations Coordinator Amanda Korman-Simalchik told Charlottesville Tomorrow in November 2025.

And officers have been dispatched to city schools several times in recent years. During the work session, CCS staffers showed the Board a 58-page presentation on behalf of the school division’s administration that said police officers were dispatched to city schools 295 times in 2024 and 431 times in 2023.  

Some Board members pointed out that this data did not specify how many of those dispatches were “threat assessment” calls, which involve investigating and potentially intervening “with individuals whose behavior may pose a threat to the safety of the school, staff, or students,” according to statewide guidelines for public schools compiled by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.

“I’m really adamant about data because this is really important for our students,” said Bryant, adding that the data did not reflect why SROs were needed. 

Bryant then made a motion to rescind the March 2025 vote to bring SROs back into City Schools. 

Board member Shymora Cooper, who was not present at the March 2025 School Board meeting that reinstated the SRO program, wanted to know how interactions between SROs and students were recorded and if those records could potentially be used against those students in the future. Cooper was worried that data collected in those interactions would be used against the student in the future, she said.  

Cooper also voted to rescind the 2025 vote that reinstated the SRO program. 

Board member Nicole Richardson also voted to rescind the 2025 vote, saying that she did not know of anyone who was positively impacted by their interactions with police officers.

Board members Emily Dooley and Chris Meyer voted against Bryant’s motion to rescind, and before casting her vote, Board Chair Lisa Larson-Torres remained silent for a few moments before ultimately abstaining. Board member and Vice Chair Amanda Burns did not get to vote, as Larson-Torres’ abstention meant the motion failed. 

According to School Board procedure, if a motion is already on the agenda, it needs a simple majority, or four votes, to pass. But because the motion was introduced during the meeting and was not on the agenda, it needed a two-thirds majority, or five votes, to pass, according to Korman-Simalchik.

“I was not in support of the vote to implement an SRO program on March 27, 2025. However, implementing the SRO program was the will of the Board, and I respected that decision even though I did not agree with it,” Larson-Torres told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Larson-Torres and Burns joined the working group that was formed in 2025 to create a memorandum of understanding and standard operating procedures with the Charlottesville Police Department, said Larson-Torres. 

“I brought all the same questions and concerns about SROs that informed my ‘no’ vote, and I brought all of the community concerns as well,” said Larson-Torres. “The committee researched, explored and ultimately finalized a MOU that included many of the perspectives/concerns that were shared in those meetings — perspectives of people like me who do not think that we should have SROs in schools.”

“I understand this particular issue is complex, difficult and hard,” said Larson-Torres. “But, as a member of the Board, and particularly as Board chair, it is important to me to show respect for the decision-making of the Board as a whole and the work of the staff that stems from it.”

The motion’s failure did not sit well with community members attending the work session. During the second public comment section of the evening, former Charlottesville City Mayor Nikuyah Walker admonished the Board for choosing the SRO program which she described as “consistently abusive towards the Black community.”

Sophia Morrero, who graduated from high school a few years ago before moving to Charlottesville, told the Board they were moving in the wrong direction with the SRO program. Speaking as a member of the community, she reflected on her experience as a student. 

“Let me tell you what I was scared of when I was a kid,” said Morrero. “That someone would come into our school and kill us. And you want to add another gun to that? SROs are not the solution.” 

“Ya’ll don’t care about kids,” said Tanesha Hudson, a CCS parent who joined the working session via Zoom. “Ya’ll take those numbers and make it what ya’ll want to make it.” Hudson was referring to the number of times emergency personnel were dispatched to City Schools, presented earlier in the evening.

Shannon Gillikin, the president of the Charlottesville Education Association (CEA), the union that represents teachers and support staff at City Schools, thanked Bryant, Cooper and Richardson for their questions during the working session, but took issue with board members abstaining from votes on SROs in recent months.

“If you keep abstaining your vote, you don’t belong on the Board,” said Gillikin. 

Hank Bostwick, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center Youth Justice Program, attended the work session and was also disappointed with the outcome. “The Board’s actions last week were disappointing to be sure,” he said. “But we aren’t finished yet. It is clear from the Board’s discussions that the proximate placement of SROs outside of our campuses except when necessary for appropriate engagement with students and restrictions on the display of firearms are not off the table and could be added to the current MOU.”

Bostwick added that organizers are pivoting to advocate for changes to the current MOU that are responsive to community concerns.  “We encourage everyone in the city with school-aged children to help us convince the Board about the wisdom of these reforms,” said Bostwick.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on April 22, 2025, to correct statements made by Hank Bostwick, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center Youth Justice Program.

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