• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

GRTC Connects: Route 3 – Jefe Davis to Highland Park

Wyatt Gordon | June 14, 2019

Topics: authentic tacos, Black Monument Avenue, Gabriel week, GRTC, GRTC Connects, Highland Park, Jefe Davis, Jefferson Davis Highway, Latinx culture, Six Points

The third installment of a monthly series in which a hometown Richmonder who has spent a decade abroad explores the many different neighborhoods accessible by GRTC bus lines to discover the ways transit connects us all.

Jefe Davis:

Even the keenest of eyes could fail to notice the nondescript Doric column in the median of Route 1 announcing: “Richmond City Limit.” Here, at the border of the city’s Southside and northern Chesterfield County, the two localities bleed into one another. Even GRTC reaches beyond the cartographic boundary, extending Route 3 another mile into Chesterfield — the municipality which owns a fifty percent stake in GRTC, but so far pays for just a single route of the three that serve its residents.

Could anyone along this corridor tell you that the Clopton neighborhood was named after John B. Clopton, a state senator that served in the War of 1812? Who remembers that Ampt Hill used to be a plantation back in the 1730s? Does anyone at all know how people began calling this area Bensley? These historic place names have no meaning today.

That’s why I want us to coin a new name for the area: Jefe Davis. Currently most Richmonders refer to this stretch of Route 1 by the Confederate president it honors, but by replacing his forename with “Jefe” — Spanish for “boss” or Mexican slang for “dad” — we could instead subvert the name’s aggressive whiteness with an irreverent wink to the culture of the area’s fastest growing group: Latinos.

Over the past decade, the Richmond region’s Latinx population has exploded. The 2010 census recorded just 13,689 Latinos in our region; however, that population is expected to grow to over 111,581 people by 2020, according to UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center. That same report, commissioned by the General Assembly and released to the public earlier this year, anticipates greater Richmond’s Latinx population to break 207,581 by 2030 and exceed 332,337 by 2040.  

So far, that growth is centered along Route 1 from Willis Road up to Terminal Avenue. Anyone who has driven north through Jefe Davis has surely noticed the concentration of enticing Hispanic eateries that stretches from La Michoacana (the region’s premier paleta shop) up to Azteca (a Mexican grill that garnered criticism at the last City Council meeting for its open air cooking).  Some of Virginia’s finest tacos are sold here in the parking lot of a used car dealership.  

Patricia Bradby enjoys some of the fine tastes Jefe Davis has to offer.

The proliferation of pupusas reveals another hidden truth about Jefe Davis: the area is home to perhaps the largest population of Salvadorans in the Commonwealth. Both the 2000 and 2010 Censuses recorded El Salvador as the top country of origin for new migrants to Virginia. The rapid influx of Latinx people over the past two decades has left greater Richmond’s institutions struggling to catch up.

The high concentration of new arrivals along the corridor means many Jefe Davis residents either cannot vote, or have not been motivated to vote by the policy choices presented to them. Richmond’s 2015 push to enforce new building codes in the area’s many dilapidated trailer parks was not welcomed as an effort to increase the quality of their housing; instead it was seen as an attack on their communities that would force a wave of evictions. While nonprofits like the Sacred Heart Center and Southside Community Development & Housing Corporation’s new bilingual Financial Opportunity Center have expanded their offerings to serve Richmond’s burgeoning Latinx population, localities seem unmotivated to meet even basic needs.

As soon as Chesterfield begins, the sidewalks end. Former Jeff Davis Highway Association president Kim Marble and community activists like Cloud Ramirez have been warning county leaders about the dangerous lack of sidewalks along a 45mph road where hundreds of kids get on and off school buses every day. “Every day without sidewalks puts pedestrians at risk. Lives are at stake,” said Marble in a recent Times-Dispatch article.

A new Northern Jefferson Davis Special Area Plan promises to install sidewalks and reverse the decades-long decay of the corridor, but the lack of a timeline or dedicated funding has many locals worried. The proposed extension of GRTC’s Route 3 service down to John Tyler Community College in Chester could, however, prove a game-changer.

A recent study by the University of Texas showed Latinos — twice as likely not to have access to a car — “have lower poverty rates, experience less pollution, and get more exercise” if they live in walkable, bikeable areas with reliable public transit. Until the proposed sidewalks and the transit pilot project become a reality, Chesterfield residents will have to make do with the gravel-strewn shoulder of Jeff Davis Highway.

The Bus Ride:

Hopping on the Northbound Route 3 bus at the line’s southernmost terminus — the far side of a Food Lion parking lot by Chippenham Parkway — I realized I only had a five-dollar bill for my fare. The driver advised me to go for a $3.50 day pass and make the most of their inability to give riders change. A few stops later another rider came up to me and gave me $1.50 in change. He explained that the driver told him GRTC owed me. Dumbstruck by this unexpected and unnecessary kindness, I looked to the front of the bus just in time to see the driver wave at me and yell, “I got you, baby!”

To get to Six Points in Highland Park, the GRTC app (powered by Google Maps) estimated a travel time of 52 minutes. That would mean I’d be 12 minutes late to meet my friend Patricia Bradby, president of the Better Housing Coalition’s Young Professionals Board. Transit App, on the other hand, assured me I’d be there three minutes early.

As we trundled up Route 1, at each stop a few more people got on the bus, many of them young mothers with adorable toddlers in tow. Several times, the driver noticed someone trying to catch the bus who was a block away or stuck on the other side of the road, due to the heavy traffic and lack of safe crossings. Each time she waited a minute and was met with a relieved rider who otherwise would have had to wait 30 minutes for the next bus. For a casual rider like myself, such a delay would amount to little more than an irritation. For someone on the way to work or to pick up their child, such a delay could mean getting fired or paying a fine.

Passing over the James on 301 we enjoyed the single best view from public transit in the entire city.  The bus emptied out on Broad, and I had the place mostly to myself as we cruised up 4th Avenue. The bus driver checked in on me several times to make sure I hadn’t missed my stop.  When I alighted the bus at Six Points, I checked my phone to notice I was thirteen minutes early. It made sense the lack of stopping from Broad Street northbound had saved us ten minutes.  How the GRTC app (aka Google Maps) was off by twenty-five minutes will forever remain an unforgivable mystery to me.

Highland Park:

Highland Park can be hard to pin down. Geographically, the neighborhood sprawls from Shockoe Valley in the South all the way up to Pensacola Avenue in the North. Some Richmonders use “Highland Park” interchangeably with “Northside.” For others, the name conjures parts of Henrico — known more specifically as East Highland Park — to mind.  

The area can also be somewhat of a mishmash architecturally. Since Highland Park’s founding as a streetcar suburb in 1891, the neighborhood has always been known for having the largest stock of Queen Anne style homes in Richmond. As a reaction to the ornate Victorian and Revival styles of the nineteenth century, around the turn of the century the plain woodwork and practicality of American Foursquare became all the rage. Outside of the Chestnut Hill-Plateau Historic District, however, almost anything goes, so today it’s not uncommon to see an odd amalgam of brick, wood and stucco of all sizes and styles on one block.

The cultural breakdown of Highland Park also began as a unique fusion of Southern and Eastern Europeans. Fleeing the poverty and war of imperial Europe, hard-working Italians, Germans, and Poles flocked to America to start a new life in the land where the streets were paved with gold. Between 1910 and 1930, speculators bought up swaths of Highland Park, constructing small groups of homes intended to mimic the design and size of Sears & Roebuck catalogue homes. The ploy worked, luring in the lower middle-income Catholics that later founded St. Elizabeth’s on Second Avenue.

Later generations of Highland Park residents didn’t prove as welcoming to newcomers. In 1942, nearly all residents of the neighborhood signed a pledge not to be the first on their block to sell their house to a black buyer. Their solidarity held off change for two decades, but in the mid-1960s white flight swept across the neighborhood, and by 1970 roughly seventy percent of all homes in the area had changed hands. Profiteering realtors played on the fears of the remaining whites, buying their homes at a bargain to sell or rent to new black residents, making a killing in the process.

Just as “Six Points” — the intersection of Meadowbridge Road, Second Avenue, East Brookland Park Boulevard, and Dill Avenue — undeniably serves as the heart of Highland Park, African-American culture is increasingly taking center stage in the area’s growth. Last year, historian Free Egunfemi organized the first Gabriel Week, a series of events to honor Gabriel Prosser, a literate, enslaved blacksmith who was hanged for planning a slave rebellion in Richmond in the summer of 1800.

Egunfemi’s push to rebrand Meadowbridge Road as the “Black Monument Avenue” dovetails with other efforts to emphasize the blackness of Highland Park as an asset rather than a liability, such as the Six Points Innovation Center’s Blackedemic in Residence and the Afrikana Film Festival.  

Neighborhood institutions like Boaz & Ruth, Trims Barber Shop, and Chicken Box (arguably the best fried chicken in the city) will be joined by new businesses and neighbors as a slate of projects encompassing the Benefield Building, Firehouse 15, and the Vawter Avenue Warehouse come online. Even the vacant Bank of America branch which caused much despair upon its closure may get a second act as a community hub, should a rumored transfer of the property to the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust go through.

Gentrification and redevelopment are sweeping across all parts of Richmond, bringing the advantages of greater prosperity and new neighbors, as well as the drawbacks of displacement and an increasing housing affordability crisis. In no two other areas, however, is recent growth being driven within a clear cultural context and legacy as it is in Highland Park and along the Latino-dominated stretch of Route 1. The affordability and accessibility of these two neighborhoods along GRTC’s Route 3 have allowed vibrant cultural enclaves to spring up over the past decades. If we value this diversity, the challenge over the coming years will be to implement policies that champion the people who provide it.

Modern photos and screencaps by Wyatt Gordon. Historic photos from The Valentine’s archives

Opinion Paves Way to Rename ‘Racist’ Jefferson Davis Highway

VCU CNS | March 26, 2019

Topics: Arlington County, General Assembly, Jeff Davis Highway, Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis Highway, Mark Herring, Mark Levine, renaming roads, state roads

Attempting to disassociate from the former Confederate president’s legacy of racism and slavery, Arlington County is taking steps to rename their portion of Jefferson Davis Highway. And Attorney General Herring says they have the legal right to do so.

The portion of Jefferson Davis Highway that runs through Arlington County could be renamed as early as this summer thanks to the discovery of a loophole in state law and a legal opinion from the Virginia attorney general.

Attorney General Mark Herring said the name change does not need approval from the General Assembly. Instead, the Commonwealth Transportation Board has authority to rename the section of Jefferson Davis Highway if Arlington County makes such a request, the opinion said.

Herring’s opinion was requested by Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria. Levine opposes having a road named after Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America.

“In Arlington County, one of the most diverse and progressive localities in the nation, we are saddled with a primary highway that honors a racist traitor and slave owner who led the fight to take up arms against our nation in order to preserve the brutal system of slavery,” Levine said in a newsletter to constituents.

“In that brutal Civil War, more Americans died than in all of our other wars combined. We still live with the terrible legacy of that ruthless and once-legal system of terror that represents America’s greatest shame.”

Before Herring issued his opinion, the general understanding was that local governments lacked authority to change names that the General Assembly had placed on certain roads.

Several years ago, the attorney general’s office issued an advisory opinion saying city governments had the power to rename state highways but county governments didn’t. Last year, legislators killed a bill to authorize local governments to rename highways in their jurisdictions.

On Jan. 1, the section of Jefferson Davis Highway through the city of Alexandria was renamed Richmond Highway to match the name the road has always carried in Fairfax County.

To change the highway’s name in Arlington County, Levine took things into his own hands. He found a loophole in a footnote to transportation legislation that the General Assembly passed in 2012.

That legislation deleted a line in state law prohibiting the Commonwealth Transportation Board from changing the names of “highways, bridges or interchanges as have been or hereafter be named by the General Assembly.”

According to the opinion Herring released Thursday, lawmakers’ actions in 2012 showed “clear legislative intent to empower the CTB to rename transportation facilities that were originally named by the General Assembly.”

“Accordingly, it is my opinion that the Commonwealth Transportation Board may change the name of those portions of Jefferson Davis Highway located in Arlington County, provided that its Board of Supervisors adopts a resolution requesting the renaming,” the opinion said.

The designation of Jefferson Davis Highway began almost a century ago. In 1922, the United Daughters of the Confederacy asked that a Southern transcontinental highway be named to honor Davis, who was a senator from the state of Mississippi before becoming the first and only president of the Confederacy.

The Virginia General Assembly’s response was to name Highway 1 as the Jefferson Davis Highway, stretching from Washington, D.C., to the North Carolina line. Today, Jefferson Davis Highway also can go by other names, such as U.S. Route 1 and Route 18.

Some people want to keep the name as Jefferson Davis Highway. More than 600 people signed an online petition saying renaming the road would be “a slap in the face to U.S. soldiers as a whole and should not be permitted to happen.” However, more than 4,300 signed a petition supporting the name change.

Levine said Arlington County supervisors could ask for the name change this month — and then the request would go to the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

“If all goes well, Arlington street signs could be changed as early as this summer,” he said.

Levine said times have changed since the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to honor Davis and preserve his legacy.

“It’s 2019. It is not 1865, nor 1922, nor even 1953,” Levine said. “We live in a post-Charlottesville time. And the vast majority of Northern Virginia no longer wants to honor the Confederacy or the racist legacy of Jefferson Davis.”

By Alexandra Zernik, Capital News Service.

Fighting the Decay on Jefferson Davis Highway

Wyatt Gordon | June 27, 2018

Topics: chesterfield county, Critical State Infrastructure, Jefferson Davis Highway, richmond, Route 1, virginia

Until the completion of I-95 through central Virginia in 1958, the Jefferson Davis Highway comprised the economic backbone of the region. All north-south traffic from Maine to Florida flowed along Route 1 and brought with it the wealth which supported a corridor of bustling manufacturing, small businesses, and vibrant communities.

Kim Marble, President of the Jefferson Davis Highway Association (JDHA)—a community organization that has been working to improve the corridor for over 25 years—fondly remembers her childhood growing up along the area’s popular drive-in theater, many restaurants, swimming lakes, and even a Planter’s Peanuts shop; however, Jeff Davis’ golden era came to an end after I-95 made the thoroughfare redundant. As Marble recalls, “Lifestyles sped up, home and retail developments sprang up further west, and the Corridor began to decline.”

Sixty years later, Jeff Davis is home to the deepest and most intransigent pockets of poverty in Chesterfield County—a prosperous part of the state with an average median income nearly fourteen thousand dollars higher than the overall Virginian.

I-95, the Powhite Parkway, and Route 288 have all pushed development further south and west across the county, gobbling up pristine farmland in favor of subdivisions and strip malls. Chesterfield’s population has quintupled over the decades since the county’s first interstate, and its Board of Supervisors has been frenzily stoking that expansion by channeling Chesterfield’s resources into the necessary infrastructure for new development: roads, water, sewer, schools, and firehouses, etc.  

Route 1 residents’ cries for investment in the corridor have long fallen on deaf ears as greenfield development is cheaper and easier than the complicated and less glamorous task of revitalizing older areas. A plan to improve the fate of Jeff Davis in the 1990’s was implemented half-heartedly at best. However, neglecting the area also comes with costs; the low property values along Jeff Davis are a drag on the county’s coffers while thousands of far-flung Chesterfield residents waste time and money on frustrating commutes to work in Richmond.

The economic and environmental absurdity of ignoring that part of Chesterfield, which is most strategically located next to the region’s economic powerhouse, may have finally dawned on county leaders, but will the recently approved Northern Jefferson Davis Special Area Plan be a first step toward the area’s revitalization or just another empty promise?

Marble, for one, is hopeful, saying, “I like that [the plan] is ambitious, innovative, and pushing the envelope of what could be. I also love the fact that it could possibly raise the ceiling on the hopes and dreams of other struggling communities.” If Chesterfield County prioritizes the corridor’s revitalization, she believes Jeff Davis could become, “a thriving family-friendly, multicultural, innovative, charming, and walkable corridor where people desire to live, work, and play” within a decade. The plan certainly holds a lot of promise, outlining mixed-use and mixed-income communities, fresh streetscapes, and a 3,800-acre Technology Zone which county leaders hope will attract private investment into the area.

Marble hopes the enthusiasm surrounding the new plan will build momentum towards a full rejuvenation of the corridor. The JDHA has been working with county and community leaders for over two decades to plant the seeds of a new start for the area. So far, their accomplishments include the designation of the corridor as an Enterprise (now Technology) Zone, the founding of BizWorks—a non-profit small business incubator—the Historic Route 1 designation, and the installation of new streetlights and banners celebrating the region’s history. Many residents hope the 400th anniversary of the Falling Creek Ironworks next year will draw further attention to Jeff Davis’ many assets.

Despite the promising signs of a new direction for and renewed interest in their community, many Jeff Davis residents worry that the new master plan will remain just that: an unimplemented vision of what their corridor could become with the right support. The Board of Supervisors recently approved their FY2019 budget including $25,000 in federal grant funding to the JDHA to support a part-time executive director position; however, this represents just one quarter of the requested funds. Marble hoped to use the additional resources to hire two new part-time positions that would, “Pursue permanent grant funding, to support existing neighborhood associations, and to improve communications with the more than 12,000 residents and business owners located along the corridor.”  

The development of the 3,800-acre Technology Zone has also proved worrisome. The two billion dollars of private investment and 2,000 new jobs Chesterfield County has been promoting on the site by 2020 would come from Vastly–a Chinese-owned company which recently changed it name from Tranlin, Inc. following a firestorm of bad press after it failed to repay a $5 million dollar grant from the state due to unexplained project delays. Vastly’s plans for a paper mill on the site began to falter after it failed to acquire the necessary environmental permits in a timely manner. Although Vastly has promised to produce its paper with an as yet undisclosed new “green” technology, some Jeff Davis residents fear the new paper mill would be just another example of environmental injustice–the all too common phenomenon in which local governments or companies pack pollution and environmentally detrimental infrastructure into low-income and/or minority communities.

One of Jeff Davis residents’ key concerns has been the lack of a timeline in the plan. There’s nothing stopping county leaders from beginning several long-term processes that will be key to the revitalization of Jeff Davis such as rezoning or developing funding strategies for big ticket items like the streetscape project, yet locals haven’t heard of any action on either front so far. Chesterfield County Planning Commission Chairman Gib Sloan has assured that a timeline will be the first priority of the steering committee he is currently putting together. Jim Holland, the county supervisor for the Dale District in which Route 1 lies, has requested quarterly updates on the plan’s implementation with the full backing of the Board of Supervisors.

Two critical developments indicate the Board of Supervisors mean business this time around. A county-commissioned transportation study due out this year could call for a new partnership with GRTC to bring public transportation to Chesterfield in the form of bus routes along Route 1 and Route 10. Finally, the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust recently received approval for a large community development block grant from Chesterfield in the amount of $500,000 for FY 2018-19. Kirk Turner, director of the newly minted Department of Community Enhancement for the county, believes the land trust could be a key tool to neighborhood stabilization and the creation of long-term affordable housing along Jeff Davis.

In the meantime, Marble hopes Chesterfield County will begin to signal its commitment to the corridor’s rehabilitation through a series of short-term fixes. The county could take the lead in fundraising for the 400th anniversary celebration of Falling Creek Ironworks and the rebuilding of the historic old stone Bridge at Falling Creek. After ownership of its building changed in November, Place of Miracles Cafe—a non-profit feeding warm meals to needy families in the area—has been trying to convince the Board of Supervisors to allow it and a band of other non-profit groups to use the now vacant Perrymont Middle School as a base from which to serve the community. Lastly, Chesterfield’s Economic Development Authority could turn its focus from the “Matoaca Mega Site” and instead prioritize investment and assistance to existing business along Route 1.

Marble recognizes that revitalizing Route 1 will require sustained engagement from Chesterfield’s leaders and says local residents and clergy have been, “praying for a change of heart in and toward the corridor for a few years now.” She hopes that, “Citizens who live in more stable regions of the county will begin expressing their concern and support for areas in need of revitalization” to county leaders to encourage them to see the resurrection of Jefferson Davis through. Though she understands the concerns of both sides in Virginia’s battle over Confederate-named places, she hopes the substantive change of fighting poverty, increasing affordable housing, and improving transportation along the corridor won’t get drowned out by the debate.

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2019 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in