The Ear

Heard on the Street

Plenty of Jobs

The Route 460 project is already generating jobs. 

American Infrastructure, the other partner in the $1.5 billion deal to build a 55-mile, four lane highway from Suffolk to Petersburg, is looking for a public relations manager.

You will be responsible for the process of keeping the general public and key stakeholders informed of the construction and operation of the project.

You will serve as first point of contact.

You will organize and facilitate. That includes public meetings; communicating and educating  civic leagues and business groups; conducting town halls and forums.

Pay and benefits weren’t listed. So don’t get too excited.

The project will be funded mostly by public money and will be open by 2018.

In Dec. Rt. 460 Funding Corporation of Virginia, a non-stock, non-profit entity set up by the state, issued $231.6 million in tax exempt bonds to kick start the project.  

Its board is staffed by state and Commonwealth Transportation Board officials, including Rodney Oliver, interim executive director of the Virginia Port Authority, a state agency, and Aubrey Layne, a member of the Commonwealth Transportation Board.  

An Arena Tale

Word has it that someone very close to someone on Virginia Beach City Council, including Mayor Will Sessoms, owns land adjacent to the proposed arena site.

In fact, this individual is related to a pontifical power in Virginia Beach and would make quite a sum of money if this individual’s land is sold.

Naturally, this individual is a proponent of the arena deal.

Do you think?

The Apartment Front

Access your memory files for a moment.

Do you remember when South Carolina-based US Development, a rehabber of historic properties, arrived in Norfolk in 2009 with a flourish, promising to buy the former Union Mission and 161 Granby Street, dubbed The Savoy?

To date, the Union Mission, a former shelter for homeless men, is still empty, though I sometimes see a light on in an upper window.

I imagine it’s the ghost of a former resident.

And The Savoy is still leaning, still choked by scaffolding, though it’s painted an innocuous and pleasing blue.

A code violation still is plastered on the front door.

Even stranger. When I checked the city tax records, I found that it has two assessments for 2012, and both on the same date.

On July 1, 2012, records show the building and land was assessed at $1,333,900. The second assessment on the same date, at the top of the record, showed an assessed value of $1,066,600.

From 2009 to 2012, the value of the land remained the same. Yet the improvement value of the building – in the midst of code violations – shot up to $1,040,800 in 2012 from $506,200 in 2011.

Then the second or revised assessment of the improvement value of the building for 2012 was reduced to $773,500.

What’s going on?