Tag: Jon Baliles
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Ham Cemetery Stands Strong
by Jon Baliles Over in the woods behind Bandy Field Nature Park in the West End along (and overlapping with) the border of Henrico County near the Village Shopping Center, there is a small African-American cemetery with an enormous history that recently appeared in a feature by Bill Pike in the Henrico Citizen; it is…
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Slush Funding Housing
by Jon Baliles There has been a lot of talk about the affordable housing crisis in the region in recent years, but it has been constant in 2023. The entire region needs 39,000 units as fast as it can get them; but interest rates are high, the market is stalling — every week there is…
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RVA History: Quintessential Preservationist
by Jon Baliles Historic preservation is important for many reasons, like helping us better understand our past and how to improve it for future generations. One great advocate of preserving Richmond’s history to convey stories forward was Mary Winfield Scott, who passed away in 1983, but whose legacy lives on in neighborhoods across Richmond, and…
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RVA 5×5: Referendum Waiting In The Wings
by Jon Baliles Three weeks or so ago, the regurgitation of the casino referendum got a round of approval from almost everyone on City Council in a meeting that was filled with unearned righteousness about how it was going to save the city (kudos to Councilwoman Katherine Jordan for the lone no vote). Richmond BizSense…
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RVA 5×5: Behind in the Count
by Jon Baliles Baseball season is in full swing and I have already been to three games to celebrate spring, sport, and sun. And because this is Richmond, I sometimes wonder how much longer I will be able to repeat this ritual in Aprils in the future. This week, the city announced it had reached…
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RVA History: Merging Manchester
by Jon Baliles I often joke with people when I am asked about Manchester that it was an independent city until 1910 when they merged with Richmond — and they have probably regretted it ever since. Em Holter has a nice piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the merger of the city nicknamed “Dogtown” that…
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RVA 5×5: Valet Parking
by Jon Baliles There was a lot of talk and coverage this week about the City of Richmond’s Planning Commission unanimously approving the removal of parking minimums citywide with the full City Council expected to take the matter up at its meeting Monday night. The ordinance as written would allow developers to decide how much…
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RVA 5×5: Heard the Noise, Seen The Light
by Jon Baliles Well, it seems Mayor Levar Stoney has finally picked up on a problem on Richmond’s streets that many of us have known about for three-plus years. If you live downtown, or in the Fan, Oregon Hill, Jackson Ward, the Museum District, Randolph, Scott’s Addition, Byrd Park, Malvern Gardens, parts of Northside, Monroe…
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RVA 5×5: Monopoly on Richmond
by Jon Baliles There has been a lot of chatter this week about Monopoly doing a Richmond version featuring notable places and landmarks to replace the well-known properties like St. James’ Place, Reading Railroad, and Boardwalk. According to Em Holter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the creators of Monopoly want to hear from YOU about what…
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RVA 5×5: Incentivizing Derelicts
by Jon Baliles Housing has become a vital issue all across our region; it is a pressing need, but not simple to resolve. It will be with us for some time to come and we have to seek out a multi-prong strategy to address it. But there are some steps that can be taken to…
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RVA 5×5: Restoring A Richmond Treasure
by Jon Baliles One of Richmond’s favorite architectural wonders and spooky places is the Pump House along the Kanawha Canal and adjacent to the Boulevard Bridge. It has been the target and talk of renovations and adaptive reuses for almost a century since it closed in 1924 (the city wanted to tear it down in…
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Return to Chickahominy Swamp
by Jon Baliles Peter McElhinney at Style Weekly takes us on a retroactive visit through the Chickahominy Swamp and the voice and mind and sounds of the late Richmond music legend Page Wilson. The new online radio station, The Breeze, has begun airing old episodes of Wilson’s weekly visit to his porch in the swamp…
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RVA 5×5: RVA = DIY
by Jon Baliles Jack Jacobs at Richmond Biz Sense has an update about the ongoing fallout from the collapse of the Enrichmond Foundation last summer. All of the small organizations that used Enrichmond as a fiduciary lost access to their money (which may be gone for good; stay tuned) and other things like insurance coverage.…
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RVA 5×5: Calling Earl Weaver
by Jon Baliles There are not many other cities in the country that would debate plans for multiple baseball stadiums in multiple locations over multiple decades and then, after seemingly signing off on a new stadium, roll over after being told by Major League Baseball that public monies must be spent for a batting cage…
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The Amazing Shrinking Times-Dispatch
by Jon Baliles You might recall a story from last summer in Style Weekly entitled The Incredibly Shrinking Times-Dispatch about the decline of our local newspaper and the print news business in general. It has been a precipitous and rapid descent. Now, according to Axios, it seems that shrinking is not only ongoing but might…