🗳 Good morning, RVA: VOTE!, final casino thoughts, and a cool list of Richmond 300 projects

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect highs in the mid 60s and sunshine. Temperatures cool straight down to boots-and-flannel weather starting tomorrow, so get ready and/or get excited.
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has dueling casino columns, the no-vote perspective provided by Jim Ukrop and the yes-vote perspective by the folks who run Urban One. In what I think is a pretty telling sign, the yes-voters’ piece mentions gambling or gaming just a single time. It shows up in this sentence describing the project in glowing terms while completely glossing over the fact that this is a proposed casino: “The project — a premier gaming, dining and entertainment facility — will include 15 unique restaurants and bars, including some famed local eateries; 250 luxurious hotel rooms; a 3,000-capacity theater that will bring the best in music and entertainment to the city; an on-site radio and television studio and soundstage; and 20,000 square feet of event space.” All of those things sound rad because they describe a thriving neighborhood, and that’s what folks want to see across Richmond—not casinos or downtown arenas, but neighborhoods and communities. The benefits and amenities promised by the casino developers (and the Navy Hill developers before them) sound great—and they’re what a lot of folks are excited about—but all of those things could be built without a casino as the anchor. We could just invest into supporting and building thriving and sustainable neighborhoods in the Southside. Heck, we’re doing that right now in the Diamond District with nary a slot machine in sight!
 

Today, Kevin Vonck, the new Director of the Department of Planning and Development Review, will give a really interesting presentation on the Richmond 300 Priority Project List to City Council’s Organizational Development committee. This is a great PDF that you should definitely scroll through! Beginning on page six, you’ll find tables linking projects to legislation to the Richmond 300 Big Moves—plus start and finish dates! Incredible! So far the City has finished three projects (B-3 zoning, rezoning the area around the Alison Street Pulse Station, and the Greater Scott’s Addition rezoning). They’ve listed out about 20 in-progress projects, 16 of which are on track to finish up before the end of 2022 (fun things like: the City Center small area plan, rezoning Shockoe, redeveloping the Diamond District, finalizing ADUs, and getting rid of parking minimums). It’d be rad for someone to drop these in a public spreadsheet so we can all remember the timelines and track the progress made!
 

I have found another tree-planting volunteer opportunity for you! This Friday afternoon, the James River Association and Groundwork RVA will plant trees (American sycamores and river birches to be precise) along Minefee Street as part of the Bellemeade Green Street project. Just fill out this form to sign up. I mean, look at this beautiful stormwater infrastructure installed as part of this same project. Despite what some folks think, you really can infrastructure your way out of a lot of the built-environment problems facing our neighborhoods.
 

Speaking of, I just saw this update to the Brookland Park Boulevard Bump Outs over on NextDoor. Residents, businesses, and community organizations have adopted most of the remaining bump outs and worked hard ”clearing up, cleaning out, purchasing new plants/shrubs, pruning, weeding, planting, and even ordering four new trees to plant to offer yet more shade to a few fortunate store fronts and pedestrians that stroll down our business corridor.” Great work filling in where the City can’t or won’t!
 

RVAHub’s Richard Hayes has pictures from this past weekend’s Zombie Walk, which, as you know, is a Richmond cultural institution.
 

Logistical note—both for me and for you! Tomorrow is Election Day, and, since I’ve adopted the State’s holiday calendar as GMRVA’s own, it means I’ll spend the early morning in bed with coffee and YouTubes about bicycles. For you, though, it means that if for some reason you have not yet done so you need to do whatever it takes to work voting into your busy schedule. If you’re on the fence about voting for Terry, read the below longread, change your mind, and then go find your polling place on the Department of Elections website. You can vote from 6:00 AM until 7:00 PM. We’ll check back in on Wednesday to see how everything went.
 

This morning’s longread

What Conservatives Tell Themselves About “Critical Race Theory”

Maybe this is obvious to everyone else, but the Official Republican Definition of Critical Race Theory is shocking and terrifying. They literally do not believe in systemic racism or equity. It’s not just the typical Republican fear-mongering and dog-whistling, it’s very clear and straightforward white supremacy. Make sure you go vote tomorrow, if you haven’t already.
 

Nobody at Kodak or Google was out to get black people; they just had other priorities. If photographic systems didn’t work well for dark skin, that was a shame. But, well, so what? Now multiply that through the whole of society. System after system was designed for (and usually tested by) white people (and men and English speakers and cisgender people and neurotypical people and … and … and …). If it also happened to work for non-whites, great. But if not, who really cared? So, in spite of the Heritage pamphlet’s claim that CRT is “a philosophy founded by law professors who used Marxist analysis”, systemic racism isn’t some invention of a Marxist propagandist; it’s a simple reality. The Heritage Foundation wants us to hide that reality from school children.
 

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

Picture of the Day

I went on the best bike adventure Saturday and rode from Richmond to Jamestown and back, all on the Virginia Capital Trail. What an amazing resource—we are lucky to have it!