After two and a half years, work has finally begun on the long-delayed project to shore up Government Road. But as information has trickled for from City Hall about the “emergency” repairs to the slope that bounds Church Hill to the southeast, residents have expressed frustration that the drafted plans don’t enough traffic-calming components to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe and throttle reckless drivers ripping ‘round the S-curve on their way in and out of the neighborhood.

On Monday morning, local organizers convened a meeting with Department of Public Works (DPW) officials and City Council President and longtime 7th District rep Cynthia Newbille to discuss what can be done to bolster the street-safety features on Government Rd., even as construction crews with contractor Posillico, Inc., are already shoring up the hill beneath it.

The answer? Ideally something. At some point. Stay tuned.

“I'm absolutely committed to the connectivity,” Newbille told some 25 people gathered on the overgrown grass on the easterly edge of Chimborazo Park, responding to a resident’s plea for non-car infrastructure linking Gillies Creek Park and Fulton Hill at the foot of the hill with Church Hill at its crest. “That's not the question. It's how we do it and do it safely.”

Over the course of an hour, residents aired concerns and proposed street-safety adjustments to Newbille and the DPW official managing the project, Tim Lewis, who deferred most of those matters to officials from DPW and Richmond Department of Transportation. (Mayor Danny Avula created RDOT in January 2026 as a division of DPW; the extent of its authority has provoked debate inside and outside City Hall.) Questions about how the city might slow down drivers on the blind curve to protect pedestrians and cyclists using the park directly adjacent to it went acknowledged, but largely unanswered.

“Give me a moment [to] grab the bearings, take some aerial visuals, and really start the work of math and all that goes into asphalt reductions, things of that nature,” said RDOT official Atiba Muse, responding at Newbille’s prompting to a question about what traffic-calming measures are viable on the stretch. “That's going to take some time.”

Several residents expressed frustration to The Lookout that improving safety for non-motorists on Government Rd. and the expansive intersections with North 36th Street and East Broad Street into which it feeds seemed to be an afterthought. “The City should be coming to us—the residents—in the planning stages of a project of this magnitude, not waiting to hold community engagement meetings once concerns are raised,” said Church Hill resident Kathi Sanders in an email exchange after the meeting. “I’m not saying they are purposefully acting with deception, but they definitely need to up their game of community involvement.”

In a report last month, 12 On Your Side’s Madison McNamee noted that RDOT “says its team met with community members multiple times in June and July.” A spokesperson for the city, Jensen Gavulic, clarified that neither RDOT nor DPW convened those meetings, but merely attended them. “Because this is an emergency repair project, it does not follow the standard public engagement process for transportation projects,” explained Gavulic, responding to an emailed inquiry from The Lookout earlier this week. “As such, DPW and RDOT did not convene formal public meetings, but instead participated” in four meetings in June and July.

In a sense, improving multimodal infrastructure on Government Rd. is an afterthought for DPW—at least for now. “The Government Road work is an emergency repair project focused on” repairing the “approximately 600-foot section” of the street that had begun to crack and shift down the hill, said Gavulic. The primary goal of the construction is to get the road shored up and reopened to motor-vehicle traffic, which the city began diverting onto an also-dicy detour on Glenwood Ave. when it first closed Government Rd. in November 2023. After its first request for proposals on the work received no bids, the city reissued its call for contractors in November 2025, eventually awarding the $10-million project to Posillico.

The divergent priorities produced some tension between residents and city officials at Monday’s meeting. “The whole purpose of the project is to get it open and stabilize that slope,” said a visibly annoyed Lewis, responding to a suggestion from Church Hill resident and founder of the Partnership for Smarter Growth Stewart Schwartz that the city might at least consider a protected bike lane on the northern edge of Government Rd. for cyclists coming up the hill, as has been successfully implemented in other cities. “You want to delay this for a long time because we're going to basically have to do a redesign on that slope.”

Despite the friction, Debra Sinnott, the president and founder of the Chimborazo Park Conservancy and the leader of the Friends of Chimborazo Park group, was optimistic that there’s a way to address street-safety concerns as the stabilization work gets underway. She believes it’s just a matter of finding the right people within City Hall to pay attention. “Asking [Lewis] about the safety issues is like asking the painter to do the plumbing, so hence the [R]DOT guy” being directed those questions at Monday’s meeting, she told The Lookout in a phone interview following the meeting, referring to Muse. “This is not just simply an engineering project, it has got to go over to [R]DOT now.”

With the existing Government Rd. project scheduled to be completed in April 2027, the city would have to very move fast to implement any traffic-calming measures before car traffic once again resumes in the area. Towards the end of Monday’s meeting, Newbille told attendees she would respond with more information on October 1st. Perhaps indicating residents’ angst over the city’s communication about this project, several of them thanked her for simply providing a date to expect more information.

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 you’ve likely heard by now, last week the Department of Planning and Development Review published the third draft of its proposed zoning-code refresh for the city. At a press conference at City Hall on Monday to pitch the newest version of the plan—which will be Richmond’s first major zoning overhaul since the ‘70s if City Council approves it, and its implementation isn’t derailed by litigation or either of the two efforts to hold a referendum on it—longtime East Ender Mayor Danny Avula touted contentious process of its drafting as “the essence of our democracy.”

“What we are proposing today is a result of listening well and making changes and finding compromises,” he said, according to a dispatch from the presser by The Richmonder’s housing reporter, Sarah Vogelsong. The Avula administration’s biggest change in this version of the proposal centers on duplexes, but it’s more “retreat” than “compromise:” the construction of this type of building is no longer permitted by right on residential lots under any circumstance in the third draft, a break the first two. It’s a major victory for opponents of the refresh, and “a really big step backwards” for affordable housing in the city, as Housing Opportunities Made Equal analyst and Homes for All Our Neighbors lead Annika Schunn, put it a comment to The Richmonder.

At first glance, the biggest step backwards—er, downwards?—in the East End is the reduction of most lots along the Jefferson Ave./N. 25th St./Nine Mile Rd. corridor from MX-4 to MX-3. This means that mixed-use development on these properties would be restricted to three stories, down from four. Avula has said he hopes to make this version of code refresh the final draft, but there’s no law preventing additional revisions.

Courtesy of Lookout reader Megan Anthony, the latest edition of East End Animal Friend is live now, and cute as hell:

As a reminder, East End Animal Friends is a recurring feature spotlighting the many creature companions of Church Hill and its surrounds. Fill out this form to introduce your beloved animal(s) to the neighborhood in a future edition of The Lookout!

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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