Below is a copy of a letter Selden just sent the Richmond mayor. It is a shame that residents of Westwood, a tiny but important community at Willow Lawn Drive and Patterson Avenue, have to once again band together and resist yet another legalistic assault by an indifferent and uncaring City administration. The importance of this neighborhood can’t be underestimated, and the threat to it is very real. The Shockoe Examiner explored the significance of Westwood years ago – please read this entry that illuminates the history of the neighborhood, its role in the struggle for Civil Rights, and why an appeal to the Mayor is so important.
Dear Mayor Avula:
The historic neighborhood of Westwood is again under attack, and it is remarkable how often this tiny African-American Richmond community has faced destruction and persevered. Richmond has a terrible record of destroying its Black neighborhoods: Jackson Ward was gutted by I-95, Fulton was turned into an urban prairie, and Navy Hill was bulldozed into Shockoe Valley.
As horrific as all that sounds, none of these disasters of civic planning was fueled by the overt racial prejudice that once drove an effort to erase the entire Westwood neighborhood down to the ground and disperse the families who had been there for generations. And yet, Westwood prevailed and survived.
In recognition of its astonishing past and fragile present, the community has been recently named to the list of Preservation Virginia’s “Most Endangered” list. Nevertheless, Westwood is again under siege by an insensitive bureaucratic assault called “Code Refresh.” This ham-handed revision of the city zoning code would allow more density on the existing street grid. The affordable homes and lots in Westwood have already felt the attention of developers in their neighborhood, builders who are snatching up houses and properties.
Mashing more density into Westwood’s existing housing stock will forever alter the character of the neighborhood and rising taxes will disperse the current residents. This triumph of the developer is the result of insensitive and poor planning on the part of the “Code Refresh” proponents. Places like Westwood desperately need to be exempted from “one size fits all” planning, and Richmonders look to your office to provide the kind of leadership and vision to understand this.
Mayor Avula, a myth in our country exalts real estate developers as kings. Let’s not allow Richmond’s future to become yet another victim of that horrid idea. Revise “Code Refresh” to accommodate our past – it is ours to have or lose, and as they well know in Westwood, it is up to us to defend our history. We need your help and support.
Sincerely,
Selden Richardson
To contact Richmond Mayor Danny Avula, call the Mayor's Office at (804) 646-7970 or email RVAMayor@rva.gov.
You can also visit or send mail to the office at 900 E. Broad St., Suite 201, Richmond, VA 23219
10 comments:
Thank you so much for publishing this and Selden thank you so much for standing up for Westwood!!! It means so much!!!
Selden, ever since I became aware of your writing and advocacy I have admired your commitment to honoring Richmond's history. However, I believe the way you here characterize the effort to amend our current zoning code falls short of your usual curiosity and depth. Westwood may well deserve special treatment as code is revised - but the larger goal of revising our code is far less cartoonishly conspiratorial than your article suggests. Many of the most committed Richmonders I know are deeply engaged in this work, and driven by values that you share, including a passion for history. The central goal of code refresh is to bring existing parcels into conformity with code. At present, neighborhoods filled with the attached rowhomes, and small apartment buildings that define the character of Richmond's historic neighborhoods illegalize these very same building styles. Westwood was built before Ex parte Quong Wo, created the first zoning-like regulations as a means of restricting the mobility of asian Americans in California, and before Euclid v. Ambler founded the legal basis of exclusionary zoning. Our 1970s code sought to restrict the construction of multifamily housing to all but a few politically disenfranchised corridors just as the "Neighborhood Schools Movement" worked to negate the efficacy of even hyper-local bussing. Overall, Richmond's historic neighborhoods have lost 40% of their populations since 1950, according to a powerful recent story map published by the Partnership for Smarter Growth. Much handwringing about density reflects a failure to account for a half century of population loss and disinvestment driven by white flight and urban renewal. There is much in our past that zoning reform could recover. And there is character in our neighborhoods that a commitment to changeless form jeapordizes. But we must look also to the present to dispel some of the aspersions you cast here. Similar zoning reforms in recent years in Portland (and statewide in Oregon), Minneapolis, Colorado and, recently, Charlottesville, have been careful and, nuanced and data on these efforts dispels fears of abrupt or overwhelming change. Our neighborhoods were once places of opportunity and possibility and incremental change. That is an important part of the character that Code Refresh can recover, I believe, if it is not derailed and undermined by suspicion, misinformation and fear of change. I am part of a coalition of 22 affordable housing, urban planning and climate advocacy groups with deep and credible commitments to racial justice and sustainable growth working to advocate for a healthy revision of Richmond's outdated zoning code. It is called Homes for All Our Neighbors, and I encourage you to check it out. Let's meet up soon, and discuss! I'll bring books, maps and stats. You do the same. With gratitude for your work. Respectfully, B.O'K
Hi Barry -- I would be happy to meet with you as a resident of Westwood who has also spent countless hours working with the historic residents and the broader community who are living in fear and dread of what next move will be made by developers. This video of Warren Atkins https://tinyurl.com/westwoodadus shows what insensitive development can do overnight to a property owner and a veteran who has lived in Westwood for over 60 years. I am not against rezoning -- I do think the City needs to make some updates. However, rezoning established neighborhoods must be done with care and intention. All neighborhoods in Richmond are not the same. They have been created in different centuries, with different street grids, different lot layouts, and different pain points. Different levels of city investment have gone into infrastructure upgrades and insufficient time has been spent understanding them. Westwood has narrow village lanes from the 1800s that were never properly maintained and cannot be expanded without taking away the small front yards of the residents, whose homes are often sited close to the road. Because the neighborhood was largely developed before many had cars, there is no street parking. The parking that exists is what residents have carved out of their yards already -- many still only have room for one car. The infrastructure is already problematic and when we had an issue just last week, the City used antiquated pieces of old equipment to do patchwork. The developers who have been working in our neighborhood have left a reeking portable toilet (that they had trouble delivering to where it was actually supposed to go do to the density of the new lot) and piles of debris in front yards for weeks. The ADUs that have been erected are too close to neighboring lots because the City has not put in sufficient requirements for spacing. Many other cities require 5 foot rear and side setbacks and 5 feet for each building (10 feet between). Westwood has been identified through market analysis as more prone to upzoning than other neighborhoods because it is more affordable. If we are not going to require parking in neighborhoods that have zero capacity for additional cars, we must require covenants/deeds that legally bind new residents to live carless lifestyles as they have done in some neighborhoods in Arizona and North Carolina. We must then do more than offer access to the pulse - including ride share credits. ADUs must be subordinate to existing structures and cannot be created by right in ways that physically damage their neighbors properties by restricting light, airflow, and creating dangers to egress and fire hazards. We need more density on corridors. We need more incentives for homeowners to build ADUs in their yards through partnerships with Virginia Housing -- ADUs that make sense, that fit the landscape, and that they will commit to keeping at a more affordable rent level. We need to preserve homeownership and create NEW opportunities for homeownership. Again -- I'd be happy to meet and chat with you -- maybe we can also meet with Selden and we can all have breakfast. You can reach me and our Civic League President, Reverend Jeanette at historicwestwood@gmail.com
Regarding unwelcome Charlottesville development -- please see Fifeville: https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/for-fifeville-residents-the-fight-over-a-seven-story-luxury-student-housing-complex-isnt-over-yet/
Barry - come drive thru westwood, try to find parking, see these new ADUs and then talk me through your ideas. I’ll tag along w Amy.
Amy, Thank you for your thoughtful response. I'll reach out to you via email. To be clear (contrary to some of the anonymous comments above) I am a just a visual artist and Richmond history enthusiast, not a developer, property owner, landlord etc. I do care a lot about this city, but I don't have any stake in this process beyond desiring to seeing Richmond thrive. I would love to see Westwood get everything the neighborhood needs, and would love to learn how I can help with that effort. In the Story Map "Westwood: Church and Community" Exclusionary Zoning is explicitly implicated for the ways it has been, and is still used to enforce de-facto segregation and restrict mobility. (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2d6c07785ee041318032f6a8d3caa781) This story map links to a broader article on the impact of "Single Family Zoning" on housing discrimination nationally. (https://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/rick-mohler-a-reckoning-with-single-family-zonings-impact-on-racial-equityand-on-architects-livelihood_o)I am certain that there are real changes that must be made to accomodate Westwood's needs, and I look forward to meeting to learn more about how I can help advocate for those changes. With Gratitude, B.O'K
Barry, thanks for your response – Ray and I are always gratified when actual readers comment. You mentioned my previous efforts in preservation and Richmond history, and I appreciate that. However, the fact that “Code Refresh” is so flawed as to allow the conflict you see in Westwood makes it, by definition, “ham-handed” and is proof of a lack of skillful planning on the part of whoever wrote this zoning “refreshment.” It is telling that developers (not an aspersion – it is just what they are) immediately appeared in the streets of Westwood to exploit cheap property in a convenient location. They have cynically focused on this community, neither knowing or caring about the people who live there or the amazing history of this tiny part of Richmond. This is about money, pure and simple, and all the pie charts and stats and studies in the world won’t convince me otherwise.
Listen, Barry, I know you found my description of the threat to Westwood and other vulnerable places in this city “cartoonishly conspiratorial,” but the stakes are high and I have good reason to be cynical. Richmond has a wretched history of obliterating the most fragile neighborhoods and they have already attacked Westwood on several occasions. Look at Fulton: the neighborhood is gone, completely and utterly. It is now being replaced by that failed icon of the suburban age, the tri-level. More opportunity for new housing, sure, but at what cost? What cost is Westwood expected to pay? And other than they are vulnerable, why?
I appreciate your offer of meeting and that you’ll bring all the “books, maps, and stats.” Thanks, but leave all that stuff at home. Instead, let’s get coffee to go and just walk around Westwood. You might find it educational and I’d like to see the neighborhood again before it is refreshed into something unrecognizable.
Terrific Barry -- thank you, I will follow up this weekend and see if I can get Rev. J, or others to join us! One thing we could try is meeting up at Food Truck Mondays (?) - I'm on the Food Truck Committee -- they are every Monday 6-8pm all summer. In the meantime, if you haven't -- it might help to take a look at westwoodrva.org to get a sense of the perspective on this end of things. I know Ashley and had written her to see if maybe we could make flags with the Studio 2/3 truck saying "Save Westwood" as an extension of Food Truck Mondays some time. I have seen your art and been very impressed by your work as well as your contributions to the Richmond community. I even saw that you quoted Arthur Ashe in an article. It might interest you that one of the members of our Civic League, who watched the destruction of Apostletown, whose family was then moved to Gilpin Ct., and who lived through the demise of Lynnhaven and Paces Ferry -- was a lifelong ally (70+ years) of Ashe -- their mothers were friends when they were very young, they both became human rights advocates, they were recognized together as Virginia Heroes and worked together on HIV/AIDs initiatives for the City. Arthur's grandmother was a deaconness at Westwood Baptist Church, his mother grew up in Westwood, his parents met in Westwood, he spoke fondly of Westwood.
Folks, please be polite - I don't want to have to monitor messages on this site and delete messages but I don't need disparaging comments either. This is a history site. Thanks.
Well, I am now monitoring all comments. Don't post rude stuff, and don't be anonymous. If you got a beef with someone, do it on your own time on your own site. - Ray
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