Good morning, RVA: 3,699 • 26; snow day!; and State of the City

Good morning, RVA! It’s 25 °F, and it snowed! It’s cold, the roads look a mess, and you can expect more winter precipitation—probably in the form of freezing rain—tomorrow. It’s going to be an actual winter weekend! Please, if you’ve got to leave your house and get in a car, be careful and take it slow.

Because it’s Richmond, area schools are closed: Richmond Public Schools, Henrico County Public Schools, and Chesterfield County Public Schools.

Also of note: City and County offices are closed, and GRTC is (at this moment) operating on snow routes.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 3,699 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 26 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 565 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 338, Henrico: 136, and Richmond: 91). Since this pandemic began, 717 people have died in the Richmond region.

As you can see from the stacked graph, cases have dropped and leveled out a bit but hospitalizations are doing something entirely different. I don’t know what that means, but I’ve got my eye on that percentage of hospital beds occupied graph, though. With all of the vaccine news, I haven’t written about percent positive in a long time, and guess what? It’s still really bad (although rapidly improving). Across the Commonwealth just over 10% of tests are coming back positive, with similar numbers locally (Richmond: 7.4%, Henrico: 9.3%, and Chesterfield: 11.8%). This is boring to write about, but we know what works to contain this virus—masks, distance, working from home—but it’s such a hard message to communicate after folks have been doing the same dang thing for almost an entire year. Hope is on the horizon, but don’t lose focus with the finish line in sight (aka don’t get lazy and catch the 'rona right before your opportunity to get vaccinated).

Just a bit of vaccine news today, although I expect to have a bunch more for you on Tuesday. From RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras’s email it sounds like this weekend’s inclement weather has pushed an RPS vaccination event to next weekend. I mention it just to connect the dots between local vaccination efforts and the Governor’s recent request that all schools offer some sort of in-person learning by March 15th.

Yesterday, the Mayor gave his State of the City address in a pre-recorded format that you can watch at your leisure over on the City’s YouTube channel. The State of the City is a time for the Mayor to celebrate the past year’s accomplishments and outline priorities for the next year (usually priorities illustrated in the impending budget). Despite a pandemic, recession, and general uncertainty all around, the Mayor still managed to squeeze in some exciting things which we can look forward to. Most exciting to me: The City has secured a grant from DRPT to paint the Pulse’s bus-only lanes red! I felt real and deep sadness a bunch of years ago when I learned our brand new BRT would not have red lanes. It’s a best practice, and such a cheap and easy way to keep cars out of transit-only lanes and keep buses moving faster. I’m very happy to see that on the agenda, and it sounds like the administration will submit an ordinance to accept the money from DRPT later this month. Also up my alley is “a new bikeshare program,” which I will believe when and only when I see it. But I like the language the mayor’s using here: “We plan to pilot the program with bike share stations near the most populous public housing communities after robust community engagement.” The City’s Office of Sustainability has a good Instagram post up detailing some of the high-level prioritiesand Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a more in-depth recap.

Rezoning news! Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that the City wants to rezone “Greater Scott’s Addition,” which is what they call the area around the Diamond. As you might have guessed, Richmond 300 (our newly-adopted master plan) recommends this rezoning. As you might have also guessed, in order for VCU, the City, and the State to begin building the “VCU Athletic Village” out that way, they need to rezone the area. This will help speed up the process by allowing developers to build denser, mixeder-use projects without needing to get a trillion SUPs (Special Use Permits). Sounds like the City’s Planning Commission will take a look at this next week.

Episode three of Black Space Matters, the video series hosted by Duron Chavis and the ICA, is out and available for your enqueueing. This week Chavis talks with Daryl Fraser, a licensed clinical social worker, professor at the VCU School of Social Work, and the former president of the Richmond Association of Black Social Workers. Make some time and check it out.

I guess I will just link to impeachment.fyieach morning until this whole thing is over (which should be soon!). The trial is fascinatingly depressing, and this email coverage of it is just deep enough to make me feel informed yet not overwhelmed with despair remembering the events of January 6th. Yesterday, the House Managers wrapped up their arguments, and today at noon the remnants of Trump’s legal team begin their defense. Should be a spectacle.

Logistical note! Monday is a State holiday, and, as such, I’ll take the morning to get some much needed rest. I hope you have a wonderful and warm weekend. Until Tuesday!

This morning’s longread

The Curse of the Buried Treasure

Buried treasure and just deserts!

But some detectorists make discoveries that are immensely valuable, both to collectors of antiquities and to historians, for whom a single buried coin can help illuminate the past. Scanning the environs of King’s Hall Hill, the men suddenly picked up a signal on their devices. They dug into the red-brown soil, and three feet down they started to uncover a thrilling cache of objects: a gold arm bangle in the shape of a snake consuming its own tail; a pendant made from a crystal sphere banded by delicately wrought gold; a gold ring patterned with octagonal facets; a silver ingot measuring close to three inches in length; and, stuck together in a solid clod of earth, what appeared to be hundreds of fragile silver coins.

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Picture of the Day

An empty, idyllic lot at 53 Rodman Road.