Category Archives: calendar

OHNA Meeting Tomorrow Night

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From meeting announcement:

Good evening OHNA (Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association) members,

I look forward to seeing everyone Tuesday at 7pm for our monthly OHNA meeting.

We will be meeting by Zoom only this month. With the spread of the Omicron variant, and the number of friends and neighbors who have contracted the virus, it seems best to meet remotely this month. We will reevaluate in February, and if it is safe to return to a hybrid (in-person AND Zoom) meeting, we will.

The Zoom link is provided below. This should allow for full remote participation.

I have attached to this email
1. the agenda for the 25 January 2022 meeting (also pasted in below),
2. the minutes for the December 2021 meeting,
3. the 2022 meeting schedule

We look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow evening.

Thanks,
Bryan

Monthly Meeting Agenda
Tuesday 25 January 2022
7:00PM

Location: Remote only

Join Zoom Meeting

(Editor’s note: Zoom and phone logins redacted, please contact OHNA through their email OHNARva@gmail.com, prior to the meeting)

We ask that invited guests limit their presentations to no more than 5 minutes.

We ask that questions, comments, and suggestions be kept to no more than 3 minutes.

This meeting will be recorded.

Welcome

· Treasurer’s Report

Community Updates:

1. Lt. Brian Robinson, City of Richmond Police Section Lt, 4th Precinct
2. Officer Luke Schrader, Police Liaison, VCU
3. Mr. Tito Luna, VCU Liaison
4. Ms. Stephanie Lynch, 5th District Councilperson
5. Ms. Colette McEachin, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney

Updates

1. Proposed all-way stops on South Pine Street at its intersection with China Street (at Open High School) and South Pine Street at its intersection with Albemarle Street

· The paper has been submitted and approved. The stop sign at China Street has been installed; the stop sign at Albemarle Street has not.

2. Proposed Amendments to the Richmond 300 Land Use Plan / Neighborhood Coalition Update

· Move Oregon Hill from Neighborhood Mixed Use to Residential land use category (Randolph is in this category).

· If Planning will not move Oregon Hill to Residential, then change the maximum height in the Neighborhood Mixed Use category from four stories to two stories.

· Remove the clause that allows taller buildings along major streets.

o Idlewood and South Laurel between VCU and Idlewood are designated major streets

o The amendments were continued by Land Use Committee. City Planning staff have recommended that no amendments be adopted.

o It was continued, yet again, to Tuesday 16 November 2021.

3. New SUP, 617-719 China Street

· We should see this at our February 2022 meeting.

4. Holly Street Playground cleanup took place on Saturday 15 January 2022, from 10am to 4pm.

5. Resolution of support for the creation of a new mural on the brick wall along Belvidere was submitted.

· If accepted, the Public Art Commission will sponsor the process to select an artist (with neighborhood input) and pay the artist for the work.

Continued Business

1. VCU student party issues

· There have been several large, loud parties in the last few weeks. There are problematic, repeat issues in the 200 block of South Laurel, and the intersection of South Laurel and China streets.

· Report issues to both RPD and VCU. Keep track of: date, time, location, fraternity / sorority affiliation, names of individuals involved, names of landlords, etc.

· OHNA is setting up an online form to track problem party locations, so that we may follow up with RPD and VCU. We will keep a spreadsheet of problematic locations and fraternity / sorority locations, and regularly report this information to VCU.

2. Bulletin board for Pleasant’s Park

· Any volunteers to make the needed repairs?

3. Pleasants Park – unleashed dog-related issues

· When the City was petitioned to add gates, the intent was to make it safer for both dogs and kits, with the idea that the park would be shared.

· Complaints about unleashed dogs have gone to Parks and Recreation.

· City requires that all dogs in city parks be leashed at all times – this is not something that we as a neighborhood can change

· The only way that a dog park – an area for unleashed dogs – can be created is to go through the City process for creating them. It involves requesting use of city land, creating a non-profit organization that covers the cost of the fencing, regular maintenance, and maintains liability insurance for the area. A portion of Linear Park might be a potential location. This is now Barker Field, near the Carillon, was created and is maintained. Any volunteers to head this up?

New Business

1 Traffic issues along Idlewood at Cherry and Pine Streets

· There have been a number of recent accidents at these two locations.

· These two intersections suffer from poor visibility and the high speed of cars exiting 195 east onto Idlewood.

Bryan Clark Green, President

David Cary, Co-Vice-President

Jennifer Hancock, Co-Vice-President

Chris Hughes, Co-Vice-President

Harrison Moenich, Secretary

John Bolecek, Treasurer

“In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower”

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Virginia Festival of the Book is presenting a book discussion on Facebook Live or Zoom this Thursday that may be of interest to Oregon Hill residents.

Davarian L. Baldwin (In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities) discusses how universities have become big business and the costs for those living in their shadows, with Jalane Schmidt, director of the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project and associate professor of Religious Studies.
In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes readers from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities. Through eye-opening conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students’ needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, scholar Davarian L. Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power—and who is made vulnerable.
A wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be, Baldwin shows there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.
“Insightful, compelling, and timely. This book lays the groundwork for the role of universities in creating equitable and just cities.”―Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Davarian L. Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, is a leading urbanist, historian, and cultural critic. He serves as the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Jalane Schmidt is associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where she is the director of the Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project. She is a scholar-activist in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she teaches public history in different community forums.
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Thanks to New Humanities, our partner for this event. A project of Virginia Humanities, New Humanities is a community-driven media project designed to document and preserve the history of families in one of Charlottesville, Virginia’s historically Black neighborhoods. The project works closely with 10th and Page residents to digitize their physical materials and to record oral histories.
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This program, FREE to attend and open to the public, is part of SHELF LIFE, a series of virtual events presented by the Virginia Festival of the Book, a program of Virginia Humanities. To attend, please register here or simply make plans to watch on Facebook.com/VaBookFest.
This event will offer closed captions and an accompanying live transcript using Zoom’s built-in automatic speech recognition software (ASR). To request live-captioning accommodations, please write vabook@virginia.edu no later than seven days before the event. A video recording from this event will be provided soon after completion and an accurate transcript will be available at a later date, at VaBook.org/watch.

Toys For Tots On Saturday

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Pine Street neighbor Stephenie Harrington is hosting the 16th Annual Toys for Tots Party,
Saturday, Dec 4th, at Basic City Beer Co.
It’s from 1:00pm-4:30pm (stop by anytime) and it is kid and dog-friendly.
Toys for Tots collects new, unwrapped toys, sporting goods, books, games, art supplies for Richmond Fire Department distribution.
She is also collecting items for Richmond Animal Care & Control like leashes, new cat toys, gently used blankets and sheets.
“Blue Santa” and “Motorcycle Santa” will be making appearances.