💵 Good morning, RVA: Densifiying Willow Lawn, the Family Crisis Fund, and Outstanding Women

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and I’ve got both a beanie and a hoodie on as I wait for my house to warm up this morning. Later today, though, looks lovely with sunshine and highs in the 70s. Expect more of the same—maybe even some slightly warmer temperatures—for the rest of the week.
 

Water cooler

Joseph Maltby at the Henrico Citizen reports that The Densifiying of Willow Lawn, proposed by the site’s developer a while back, has cleared the County’s planning commission and will head to a public hearing on October 12th. The proposal stretches across multiple decades, but, over time, would fill in the surface-level parking lots, reconnect the street grid, and install some much needed pedestrian infrastructure. According to the Citizen, “eventually Willow Lawn would contain approximately 2,000 residential units and more than 500,000 square feet of commercial and office space.”—think Libbie Mill, but with more retail and a more urban feel. Seems cool, and gets me thinking about a thousand different ways to improve pedestrian, bike, and transit options in that area. How can we: Connect Willow Lawn to Libbie Mill? Add dedicated bus lanes to Broad Street, thereby narrowing and slowing that section? Widen sidewalks and improve street crossings? There’s all kinds of work to be done!
 

City Council gathers today for their regularly-scheduled-but-slightly-shifted-due-to-holiday meeting, and you can find their full agenda here. Of note to GMRVA readers: ORD. 2023–271, which upzones a section of N. Lombardy, sits on the consent agenda; the ordinance to establish a Public Utilities and Services Commission (ORD. 2023–188) has been continued until November 13th; and the process of the City acquiring Evergreen and East End Cemeteries has stalled out until at least December 11th (RES. 2023-R011). Pretty standard stuff this week! At least during their informal meeting, Council will get up to some interesting business and discuss contracts related to the Diamond District in a closed session.
 

Axios Richmond’s Ned Oliver reports on the City’s Family Crisis Fund, which has given out more than $700,000 in direct cash assistance to Richmonders. Councilmember Lynch says, “It is the most tangible and impactful program that we have had in the city.” Originally funded with ever-vanishing pandemic money, Mayor Stoney just dumped $800,000 of surplus funds into the program to keep it afloat until the end of the fiscal year in June. These sorts of no-strings-attached programs, like the City’s experiments with basic income, have such a real and important impact on folks’ lives! I wish/hope we find ways to fund them after all of the COVID money dries up.
 

Every year since 1980, basically a million years ago, the YWCA has celebrated our region’s women through the Outstanding Women Awards. These honorees—more than 300 at this point—“encourage, promote, and create lasting changes in our region. They impact the lives of people around them, empowering them to find their own path to lead.” Do you know an outstanding woman? I’m 100% certain you do, which is great because nominations for the 2024 awards are open until October 27th. The YWCA has even put together a helpful guide for submitting a successful and compelling nomination (just tap through the link at the top of this paragraph!)—no excuses!
 

RICToday has a nice history of ice hockey in Richmond, starting with the Richmond Robins in 1971 and ending with the Richmond RiverDogs in 2006. A couple years ago, a reader gave me a reprint of a Richmond Robins shirt, and I wear it all the time! Definitely the best logo out of the bunch—plus, hockey is rad!
 

This morning’s longread

How to Cool Down a City

I love the quote that leads off this excerpt!
 

Researchers say that planting more trees is the most effective way to reduce a city’s temperature. “If you wanted to invent the most effective kind of climate management technology from the ground up, you could spend a lot of time trying to do that. You would just engineer a tree,” said Brian Stone Jr., director of the Urban Climate Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The streets around the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital are lined with trees, and the central courtyard of the building is full of dense foliage. During the day, trees shield pedestrians from the beating sun and prevent the sun’s rays from warming the concrete sidewalk. At night, temperatures are lower, as there’s less heat released from the sidewalk. In order to rely on trees to regulate climate stress, cities will need to treat them as infrastructure to ensure they are healthy and effective, according to Dr. Stone. That will come at a cost, but just a fraction of what cities spend on other environmental protections.
 

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Picture of the Day

A repurposed warehouse on the Southside.