Good morning, RVA: City Center progress, Bike Month continues, and lampreys

The river is full of wonderful things.

Good morning, RVA! It's 64 °F, and today looks warm—with highs in the mid 80s—and a possible chance of storms this afternoon. Keep your eye on the weather app of your choice if you've gotta dash home on a bike or a sidewalk this afternoon!

Water cooler

Richmond's Planning Commission meets today at 1:30 PM, and you can find the full agenda here. Of note are two items being pushed to a later date: The plans for replacing the bridge on the 1500 block of E. Broad Street and the designs for renovating the Main Library. Both of those have been continued "to allow the applicant to return to the Urban Design Committee at its June 9th meeting." That makes me think the May 3rd UDC meeting did not go particularly well for these two papers, which makes me really want to listen in and hear what happened. Also floating around on the agenda: A resolution to add the City's public housing neighborhoods as priority growth nodes on Richmond 300's Future Land Use Map, an update on the City Center rezoning plan, and a paper that would transfer the Coliseum property to the City's Economic Development Authority (ORD. 2022-140).

Related, Richmond BizSense's Jonathan Spiers reports on that Colisseum paper: "Once sold, the property would become subject to city real estate taxes and its new owner would be required to demolish the arena within 12 months. Development of the property would then need to be completed within 42 months, or 3½ years, the agreement states. If the property is not sold within 24 months after it’s conveyed to the EDA, its title would revert back to the city, according to the document." First, I imagine any interested developers would want to see the final results of the related rezoning before signing on the dotted line—so I think that process has to finish up first. Second, two years is not a ton of time to sell a decrepit sports arena, even acknowledging its absolutely prime downtown location. I wonder if the City has had some soft, unofficial interest between Navy Hill's demise and now...

It's still bike month, and that means tons of bike-related events for you to fill your calendar with! This week, aside from the reminder below, make sure you check out the return of Breakaway RVA on Thursday and Bike To Work Day on Friday!

Quick Northside reminder: The long-running (long-riding?) bike races at Bryan Park return tomorrow through September 6th from 5:30–8:00 PM. If you've started spending your Tuesday evenings strolling through this particular—and excellent—public park, just remember to keep an eye out for any course closures. Maybe spend a couple minutes watch the bikes whizz by, though? Judging by a few folks I see on Strava, they really get it going out there!

Whoa, via /r/rva, look at this huge lamprey someone caught in the James down by 14th Street. It totally looks like one of the those things from Tremors! Nature is cool and awesome.

Finally, also via /r/rva, "we're receiving weird postcards." Bizarre and totally worth your time this morning!

This morning's longread
College-Educated Workers Help Unionize Places Like Starbucks

A pretty interesting look at how folks from all sorts of backgrounds end up with better (but still not great) opportunities when they start organizing together.

Liz Alanna, who holds a bachelor’s in music education and a master’s in opera performance, began working at Starbucks while auditioning for music productions in the early 2010s. She stayed with the company to preserve her health insurance after getting married and having children. “I don’t think I should have to have a certain job just so I can have health care,” Ms. Alanna said. “I could be doing other types of jobs that might fall better in my wheelhouse.” These experiences, which economic research shows became more common after the Great Recession, appear to have united many young college-educated workers around two core beliefs: They have a sense that the economic grand bargain available to their parents — go to college, work hard, enjoy a comfortable lifestyle — has broken down. And they see unionizing as a way to resurrect it.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.