It’s been a tough scene for local businesses on the western end of Jefferson Avenue for the past couple years, but hope for walkable commerce springs eternal. Just last month, news broke that the owner of Baltik’s Bagels had purchased the orange stucco building that had previously housed Alamo BBQ, while across the avenue, Field Trip Bikes celebrated its grand opening in the now-turquoise storefront that was once home to Wheel Simple.

“I thought that might be a good spot to give it a shot, to try a new thing,” said Field Trip’s owner, Joel Alford, in a recent phone interview with The Lookout.

To be clear, operating a bike shop is not a new thing for Alford, who is also the owner of Re-Cycles in Carytown. But visitors to Field Trip will notice a key difference: its inventory is composed entirely of new cycles from Bianchi, Higbee, Kona, and Linus, with nary a refurbished steed in sight.

“This is just a regular old bike shop,” said a chuckling Alford, a Charlottesville native who rolled into Richmond after years of “playing in a bunch of punk bands that nobody's ever heard of” and working in shops from New York to Oakland. (He’s a former Church Hill resident, too, though he now resides south of the river.) Focusing on new bikes at Field Trip, he added, is “a way to have the two shops kind of coexist” by offering different pricepoints and inventory while complementing one another with parts-swapping, cross-promotion, and more.

Field Trip has been open for much of the summer, but finally got around to feting its grand opening at the beginning of this month. Visually, the shop is a stunner, boasting bold blue and orange paint scheme throughout, a sunny seating area up front, and beautiful branding by Richmond firm Night Swim. “They were a huge help to helping me to kind of take my rambling thoughts about what I wanted to do with the shop and consolidate it” into a workable concept, said Alford. Smart touches abound. When you purchase a bike, the mechanic on duty tags it with a little brass medallion imprinted with your name (“every shop puts a sticker on your bike,” says the owner) and snaps a Polaroid for the wall—the actual wall, not the one on Facebook.

The fancy form aside, Field Trip is a full-function shop, with three repair stands and a smart selection of clothing and accessories. And it’s no “clubhouse,” either: Alford is determined to make sure it stays a welcoming space for everybody regardless of skill level. “It's not supposed to be a place where a bunch of cool bike dudes are hanging out and talking about people's bikes when they come in,” he said. “That's sort of the opposite of what we are.”

To wit: Alford himself owns only one bike these days. “It's kind of a do-anything bicycle,” he said. “I have plans to get myself a Kona, but I need to make a few more sales here at Field Trip before I can purchase anything for myself.” Hope springs eternal.

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

As any neighborhood cyclist or pedestrian can tell you, by virtually any measure — safety, aesthetics, flooding, etc. — doing something to rework Oliver Hill Way and the other streets of the Shockoe Valley corridor would be better than doing nothing. The Department of Public Works’ vision for the project, which finally received approval from the city’s Planning Commission this past week after almost a decade gestating in the bowels of City Hall, is certainly better than nothing. But having cleared that low bar, critics of the boondoggle-y project—which was rejected by the Urban Design Commission and the city’s own Planning Department just a couple weeks ago—last week lamented the missed opportunity to make more ambitious adjustments to a dicey East End stretch of Richmond’s deadly grid.

“It’s not the same project. It’s not the same budget. It’s not the same anything,” said Planning Commission member Rebecca Rowe, according to a report from The Richmonder’s Sarah Vogelsong from the body’s meeting this past Tuesday. Commissioners and community groups objected to what they perceived as car-centric features, inefficient land use, and the seven-year stretch between opportunities to review the plan even as they praised aspects of the scheme. “I will support this project, but I feel held hostage in a lot of ways, and I resent that,” said Rowe. Including her, every commissioner but one eventually voted to approve the plan.

The sheer length of time DPW has taken to produce its Shockoe Valley Streets Improvement Plan created the approval-at-gunpoint dynamic by jeopardizing outside funding for the project. Per Vogelsong (emphasis added):

The protracted timeline recalls another DPW slog in the neighborhood: the Jefferson Avenue redesign, which remains incomplete over a decade after the Environmental Protection Agency first produced an improvement plan in 2015.

DPW officials have defended their plan for Shockoe Valley, insisting it’s “a pedestrian and bike multimodal-oriented project” despite its inclusion of extra turn lanes for cars at Mosby and Leigh Sts. and Oliver Hill Way and E. Broad St. that detractors say will endanger pedestrians and bike-riders. Vogelsong reported that the project’s backers, which include Bike Walk RVA and RVA Rapid Transit, repeatedly invoked the old “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” adage at Tuesday’s meeting, positioning approval as a matter of savvy pragmatism while conceding DPW’s proposal left some street-safety improvements to be desired. (In “Richmond’s Year of The Pedestrian,” no less!) Either way, Shockoe Valley Streets Improvement Plan finally got its green-light last week.

Following The Lookout’s special report on the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities’ (DPR) latest neighborhood meeting, several readers reached out to ask about the source of the “half a million dollars” earmarked for updating, renovating, and/or reversing construction at Chimborazo Playground after the resolution of l’affair pétanque.

The department “received $900,000 in the FY 27 budget for Neighborhood Parks,” said DPR capital projects manager Ryan Rinn earlier this week, in response to an emailed inquiry. “Improvements made during FY27 to Chimborazo Playground will come from this line item.”

If my math is right, that means that over half ($500,000/$900,000 = 55.5555555555556%) of DPR’s annual budget for neighborhood parks across the city for the entire year may wind up spent at Chimborazo Playground this year. Depending on the results of the department’s online survey regarding the future of the park, a chunk of those funds may well be spent on reversing its own controversial, currently paused pétanque-court expansion. It’s not clear how many of the city’s 40+ official parks are eligible for funds from this budgetary line item. Ross Catrow, the director of the city’s Office of Strategic Communications, did not provide that information before publication.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

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