The future (finally) comes into focus for Jefferson Ave.

Editor’s note: Sorry for the late edition, folks. I just got back from a reporting trip in Atlanta for my main beat. Thanks for your patience, have a great weekend!—Dave.

It’s hot asphalt summer (?) in the East End. Union Hill’s roads were resurfaced earlier in the season, and just this week paving crews have descended on a bunch of deteriorated blocks in Church Hill to lay down new layers of that stinky, sticky black stuff. But if you feel like you’ve been waiting awhile for this desperately needed roadwork… well, I mean, has it been a decade? Because if not, Ed Fendley’s got you beat.

Last month, The Coalition for A Safer Jefferson Avenue’s (CFSJA) Fendley shared with The Lookout the long-awaited blueprints for Phases 3 and 4 of the neighborhood artery’s ongoing redesign. (Phase 2, which just wrapped a few months ago, included those bodacious new bump-outs and newly planted trees.) “We do think that the city is moving forward with the vision that we set out 10 years ago,” he told The Lookout in a phone interview in early July.

You read that right: Fendley and his street-safety compatriots have been organizing to improve Jefferson Ave. for pedestrians and cyclists for well nigh a decade. And through it all, he has somehow remained optimistic. “Like a lot of community advocates, I've learned over the years, [I] got into this saying ‘I'll see if I can help out, y’know, devote a few months and try to lend a hand here, and then I'm gonna dip out,” he said, responding with good humor to my question about how the hell he’s kept the faith—and kept up the pressure—since 2015. “But then it turns out, sometimes things like this take a little longer.” Or a lot longer, as the case may be.

The schematics, prepared for the city by the Timmons Group (which laid out the previous redesign phases as well), are so-called “30%” plans: broad-stroke looks at how the city’s Department of Public Works (DPW) will finish the job on Jefferson Ave. You can check them out in full on The Lookout’s share drive. As you can see from the excerpted portion above, they’re far from final, and they only offer limited detail on Phases 3 and 4, the former of which is scheduled to begin in summer 2026. (“Fingers crossed,” Fendley was sure to add.) But with plenty of experience reading draft proposals for overhauling the thoroughfare over the years, the neighborhood advocate likes what he sees.

“We think we’re doing great overall,” he said, characterizing CFSJA’s first-blush reaction to the to the documents, which earmark the westernmost blocks of the avenue for similar makeovers as those you can already see between Union Market and Sub Rosa’s currently (but not permanently!) idled building at the intersection with N. 25th and M Sts. Phase 3 in particular will reduce the width of every crosswalk across Jefferson Ave. and each of the involved feeder streets: N. 22nd & 23rd Sts., as well as E. Clay St. As sketched (remember, this is all very much in a draft state), N. 23rd would also become one-way northbound, and the north and south sides of Jefferson Ave. adjacent to Triangle Park would get angled back-in parking.

A meticulous student of the street’s potential after 10 years of working to unlock it, Fendley of course had some notes on the 30% plans, and in fact already passed them along to DPW earlier this month. But the CFSJA lead was emphatic in our interview that the differences are minor, and the progress represented in the docs meaningful. “If you go out to the rebuilt area [redesigned in Phases 1 and 2], we have seen, and our neighbors tell us, that they see more families out there, they see more people walking and biking, they see more people enjoying the restaurants and the shops there,” he said. That certainly tracks with your humble Lookout editor’s experience. The new stretch of Jefferson Ave. from Union Market to Pizza Bones is already a paragon of safe city strolling in Church Hill just months after its completion.

“We'd love to lock in all that success for Jefferson Ave., but then make it the sort of thing that the city is just routinely doing everywhere, not just Jefferson Ave,” Fendley continued.

In his view, that paradigm shift is within reach, in part thanks to the city’s eventual buy-in. He repeatedly praised the work of DPW’s Yongping Wang for her responsiveness (“a model for what city staff should be”), and the commitment of City Richmond Council president and 7th District council member Cynthia Newbille for her work securing the funding. (DPW projects this phase will cost $2,200,000.) “We would love this to become just the way we do business around the city,” he told me, referring to the relative ease with which these latter phases of the Jefferson Ave. redesign have advanced compared to the earlier ones. That’s high praise from a guy who’s been slugging it out in the safe-street trenches for as long as Fendley has.

📜 Possum Poetry

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!

⚠️ Feds accessed RPD’s Flock data for “immigration enforcement”

It’s been awhile since The Lookout last reported on Flock Safety, the for-profit surveillance-technology firm that sold Richmond Police Department (RPD) nearly 100 of its cameras and gunshot detection devices for almost $400,000 last year. But at the beginning of July, The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism (VCIJ) at WHRO published a report³ showing that at least five counties in the commonwealth had shared surveillance data collected by Flock’s network with federal officials as part of immigration-related enforcement action. As somebody who has covered the panopticon potential of Flock and other automated license-plate reader (ALPR) providers, the report didn’t surprise me; under the Trump administration, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already done so in other states, despite the firm’s flimsy promise that such use of its tech is prohibited. But it gave me a reason to ask RPD the obvious follow-up question: had immigration-obsessed feds accessed the trove of surveillance data that Flock’s cameras are hoovering up here in Church Hill?

RPD has yet to respond to me. But roughly one hour after I reached out this past Tuesday,¹  the department issued a release stating that in June, an “analyst” with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives² “had been granted access to the RPD system and had made queries for immigration enforcement in violation of RPD’s operational standards.” The Richmonder and the Richmond Times-Dispatch both had items on this situation, and I’ll have more reporting on what it means for our neighborhood next week. For now I’ll just say that a) privacy advocates and civil-liberties experts have been screaming warnings that this system was going to be used in this way, which is why b) I skeptical of RPD’s stated claim that it won’t happen again.

🍺 Who’s the Church Hill Chelada-ficionado?

Just a few weeks ago, The Lookout report on the still-unsolved mystery of the De-Beaker of S Street. Today, I turn your attention to another perplexing neighborhood perpetrator: Church Hill’s Chelada-ficionado. A certain unidentified someone has clearly developed quite a taste for tallboys of Modelo’s Chelada Especial, the popular tomato juice-infused spinoff of the country’s leading beer brand. Which is fine! But our incognito flavor-chaser seems to savor chugging their Cheladas in public and leaving behind the empty cans on sidewalks, stoops, etc. as container-based calling cards of their evening imbibing. Which is… ¿Cómo se dice?… a smidge unsavory.

For months, The Lookout has been tirelessly documenting this aluminum evidence, which has mostly appeared on the 2600 and 2700 blocks of E. Broad and E. Marshall Sts. Alas, this shoe-leather lager reportage has yet to pay off; at publication, the local Chelada-ficionado remains at large. Whoever they are, at least they’re supplying Penelope Poubelle with leftover sips of stale spiced suds.

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Show up for Shockoe: The Shockoe Project is holding a public planning event tomorrow (7/12) from 1-3pm at Abner Clay Park to unveil design concepts and solicit feedback for a permanent monument to the African burial ground on Shockoe Hill. More here.

• Shop under the stars: The Richmond Night Market is back tomorrow from 5-9pm down in Shockoe Bottom. Details right here. 

• Find a wine lover: Second Bottle is holding a “Queer Night” edition of its popular Not So Speedy Dating series next Friday (7/18) 8-9:30pm. Tickets are available now.

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!

📸 A Very CHill Photo

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.

1  I’m not trying to claim a scoop here: RPD claims in its statement had received a “media inquiry” about this matter from an unspecified outlet “last Wednesday” (i.e., July 2, the day the VCIJ/WHRO story went live), so it sounds like somebody else was sniffing around this before me. Which, I mean, good: I’m a “pre-revenue” neighborhood newsletter publisher, I should fucking hope so.

2  Which is now running errands for ICE, by the by.

3  That report is itself based in part on an explosive investigation published in late May by the independent technology outlet 404 Media, which has been all over the Flock situation nationally.