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By request, here is what I know of Charlottesville’s white flight and decline and recovery. This time is largely missing in the public @DailyProgress archive so I’m working mainly off of hearsay from former Planning Commissioners and City Councilors
The two largest periods of growth for the City were the 20s (streetcars) and 50s (cars), both expanding the city limits, both fraught with white supremacist organizing, cross burnings, and segregation battles and major zoning overhauls.
Our first comprehensive plan from Harland Bartholomew Associates calls for aggressive downzoning, a major program of street widenings and new roads, and urban renewal across all remaining African American areas.
We do what Bartholomew says. We introduce large lot single family zoning, demolish African American neighborhoods across the city, build new segregated public housing, and pave the city with new road capacity, expecting property values to skyrocket.
But that’s not what happens. After the public school system is forced to reopen as an integrated institution, new segregated private schools open and new residential development continues at the edge of the City, outside the limits
The 1970 Bartholomew Comp Plan dreams of a bright future of an expanding Charlottesville of single family neighborhoods and prospering industries, with a broader urban renewal program to enforce it.
After a series of lawsuits and a financial settlement to delay annexation (revenue sharing) the Virginia legislature steps in to “temporarily” ban it statewide, which continues to strangle our historic cities today
The centerpiece of urban renewal, Vinegar Hill, was intended to be a modern, car-oriented commercial superblock, but the deal fell through and Fashion Square Mall broke ground far north of city limits. The land sat empty for ten years at the city’s center.
The @DowntownMall was built as a new pedestrian center on the formerly congested Main Street, with red brick and lovely trees, but businesses keep moving out and rents were low. Existing residents moved out and were not replaced since the new Bartholomew zoning banned homes
Desperate, City Council under the amazingly long tenured Mayor Buck began looking for a silver bullet to bring businesses back into the City. @OmniHotels saw an opportunity and received a massive financial incentive to build where Vinegar Hill met the Downtown Mall.
Many credit Mayor Buck for the turnaround, many say he just threw away taxpayer money for zero public benefit. Hard to say, and he doesn’t like to talk about it.
Crime rose and schools declined as the drug war took over City resources and the public imagination. The Jade Drug Task Force was created and the City focused its efforts on harsh penalties for drug crime, granting @UVA students leniency after a marijuana sting blowback.
There are still a few buildings left from this time with barred windows or no windows at all, built like bunkers against street crime, but most have been redone to welcome visitors.
In 1991, those that remain work to pick up the pieces with a new zoning plan under future mayor Huja. This will be our first zoning effort to downzone in both white and African American areas. I believe this is also when housing is permitted downtown again.
The nineties see a flowering of the local music and beer scene, crime goes down and the schools bounce back, and places like Belmont begin to gentrify as housing costs rise.
Coran Capshaw and Patricia Kluge plow money into restaurants and other new local businesses and Friday’s After Five begins offering free music downtown
Here’s a holdover from the bad old days on 10th NW 
I’m told that @KevinMKruse ‘s White Flight does the best job discussing the broader history and trends during this time. It’s on my to do list for sure press.princeton.edu/titles/8043.ht…
