Good Morning, RVA: Hot, wet, and Monday

Lots of heat and rain this week, but thankfully only one Monday.

June 1, 2015; 7:04 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Fred Moore 1947

Good morning, RVA! It’s already 71 °F this morning, and temperatures will top out above 90 °F today. There’s a good chance of thunderstorms this evening–in fact, there’s a good chance for some sort of storm every day for the foreseeable future. Hope you’ve got an umbrella handy.

Water cooler

Over the weekend, the RTD’s Graham Moomaw updated everyone on the progress (or lack of progress) with development on the Boulevard and how the recent evaporation of a new children’s hospital impacts the mayor’s plan for the area. Here’s Councilman Charles Samuels with my favorite quote: “Quite frankly, maybe there’s a solution besides a publicly funded stadium…If the market can bear it, somebody will build it.”

Mark Robinson over at Richmond Magazine is doing a wonderful job at keeping me informed lately. His latest piece on the future of the GRTC bus depot in the Fan (previous site of the RVA Street Art Fest, current site of a trillion awesome murals) is worth your time. Note: GRTC will request proposals for the site until July 8th.

John Ramsey, also writing for the RTD, confirms what you may have guessed: Boston is the most popular destination from the Richmond International Airport. With cheap flights around $100, it’s a tough to beat destination for folks who just want to get away, even if it is just for a weekend. Don’t get your hopes up though, Boston’s success does not mean cheap flights to New York are in our future.

Today, I will use up all of your RTD pageviews! But if you’re gonna use ’em, you might as well spend them on this profile of Blanchard’s Coffee Roasting Co. by Joan Tupponce.

A man shot on the South Side Friday morning died later that day and another man was shot and killed on Sunday evening–also on the City’s South Side. These two murders bring Richmond’s 2015 total to 11. Also, a domestic incident in the West End lead to a fatal stabbing around which the police are still conducting a death investigation.

Vox has the explanations I was looking for about the Patriot Act, its provisions that expired last night, the USA Freedom Act, and the Senate’s path forward.

Sports!

VCU baseball is making a push into the NCAA tournament with a win over Oregon State to advance to the regional championship game.

• Kickers dominated the Red Bulls II, 4-2.
• Squirrels lost two of three to Reading and look to even the series today at 11:35 AM.
• Nats were swept by the Reds, start a series with the Blue Jays today at 7:05 PM.

What to expect

Today, expect to read about:

• Robotic fareboxes from a distant GRTC future
• Live music in our not-so-distant future
• Reasons why you should grab a ticket for RVANews Live #003

This morning’s longread

The $295 Million Mall Taxpayers Bought Kansas City – Next City

But at what point should cities make this decision to stop subsidizing for-profit development? And how do they know when enough is enough? That’s the question being asked in Kansas City and in cities around the nation as downtowns bounce back from years of abandonment only to find that developers still expect the aid they were receiving when downtowns were far less profitable places to be.

“Urban leaders still tend to overpay for development because they internalized low civic self-esteem bred by decades of being told they were too polluted, too dangerous, or too school-deficient to attract investment,” says Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, an organization that advocates for economic development policies that lead to better job opportunities for working families. “When the back-to-the-cities trend started taking root, albeit very unevenly, cities were so glad to finally land deals that they routinely overpaid, not having a solid grasp of the demographic and market forces they should have been channeling instead of subsidizing. It’s especially true for retail and entertainment projects, which generate very poor-quality jobs. I have yet to find a city that has figured out how to ‘take the foot off the pedal’ and stop over-subsidizing, even when gentrification becomes a problem.”

Sound familiar?

This morning’s Instagram

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June 1, 2015 7:04 AM 0