🎄 Good morning, RVA: Omicron, a great PDF, and a Christmas tree shortage

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today looks amazing. Expect highs near 70 °F and every reason in the world to spend some time outside. The unseasonably warm weather continues through Saturday. Enjoy!
 

Water cooler

It was only a matter of time, but the United States reported its first case of Omicron yesterday (in California). We still don’t know much about the transmissibility, severity of illness, or a million other things about this new variant—and you should be skeptical of anyone who says otherwise (at least as of this morning). The New York Times reports that President Biden will announce some new measures today to help the Country prepare for Omicron, including having (making?) insurance companies reimburse folks for the cost of at-home tests and extending the mask mandate on planes, trains, and buses. I love, love, love the idea of getting as many free at-home tests into the hands of as many people as possible, so I’m excited to see if/how this federal program rolls out. Until then, though, if you’re feeling sick you should go get tested and avoid slathering your germs all over friends, family, and coworkers! The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts have a couple free testing events each week, and you can always hit up your local pharmacy for PCR or at-home tests as they’re available. Do the rest of us a favor and get tested!
 

Exciting PDF news: Richmond’s Department of Planning and Development Review will present the final City Center Innovation District Small Area Plan to the Planning Commission this coming Monday. So much planning and plans in that previous sentence! You can download the PDF yourself and flip through it here. It’s filled with a ton of lovely and interesting maps, like Year of Construction for Existing Buildings (p. 15), Current Land Use & Zoning (p. 24), Ownership and Taxable Status (p. 25), Site Plan with Potential Development Clusters (p. 35), and, of course, Proposed Connections & Enhancements (p. 51). One thing you’ll note missing in all of the future-looking maps: The Richmond Coliseum! In fact, one of the plan’s goals is to “Demolish the Coliseum, re-establishing the street network and city blocks that existed prior to the 1970s. Private developments on the Coliseum site expand the Innovation District offerings and include significant open space.” Also, check out this transit-related goal that would embed transit in the area while not taking up an entire city block to store idling buses: “Explore developing a transit mall along N . 8th Street, N . 9th Street, and/or E . Marshall Street to include dedicated bus bays and improved transit stop amenities such as shelters, benches, trash cans, and bike parking.” And, whoa, this is a clever idea: “Demolish the Coliseum and use the Coliseum pit as subterranean parking that is accessed from E . Leigh Street.” Overall, this seems like a good and fun plan, and I think it should pass through both the Planning Commission and City Council to end up as an official part of our Master Plan. After that, they key will be moving implementation forward without a big, heavy driver like Navy Hill. It’s certainly possible (see: the City’s work in the Diamond District), but it’ll take some effort, for sure.
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has some nice pictures of the now-opened street mural, plaza, and parklet at the intersection of Brook and Marshall. If you haven’t ridden through there in the past little while, I really recommend that you do. It looks so rad and truly feels like a place. Let’s do more of this in every neighborhood.
 

Mike Platania, also at Richmond BizSense, reports on a new development along Broad Street and opens with a line that makes my heart sing: “Another of Richmond’s surface parking lots could be in line to be transformed into residential.” The current, and early, plans for this potential development include 42 parking spaces around the back of the building—for 39 units. This is too much parking for such a centrally located building on the same block as the Pulse. It’s still better than a surface lot, for sure, but it wouldn’t be a morning email without a morning parking complaint!
 

Oh no! Christmas tree shortage! Colleen Curran at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on our decidedly unfestive lack of local Christmas tree options. Our family celebrates Christmas, but we do so with a cheap artificial tree that’s packed with colored lights and ornaments collected over decades. While I like the idea of a real tree, it seems like…a lot of work. I do fantasize about tromping off into the forest and chopping one down, like in a Christmas movie, though.
 

This morning’s longread

The Biggest ‘Oh No’ Moment in the Solar System

I’ve been excited about the James Webb Space Telescope since I was a child, and now I’m extremely nervous about its December 22nd launch.
 

I recently asked NASA, as politely as I could, Why would you do this? Why build something so complicated, with so many opportunities for potential disaster? Menzel, the lead mission systems engineer, said that engineers simply couldn’t avoid single-point failures on a mission that essentially unpacks itself in space. “When you have a release mechanism, it’s hard to put full redundancy into that,” he told me. The final count of 344 single-point failures, Menzel said, was the lowest they could manage.
 

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Picture of the Day