One of the two main free weekly newspapers in town -- C-Ville -- ran a story this week on the planned development of a site in town to add a hotel near one end of Charlottesville's Downtown Mall.
A few months back, a similar story ran in C-Ville, and it was our impression then that the development included only a single building, which currently houses a new pottery studio called City Clay. This week we learned, however, that the planned development of this area of town is also going to mean the end of Random Row Books -- as we've known it, at least.
I have written before that Random Row is my favorite bookstore space in Charlottesville. Daedalus is great, and has more books, and will probably yield more for us in the long run, but Random Row is just a great space with a great mission, and we've done well there for ourselves.
We've not yet been in Charlottesville for a year, but we've been around long enough to know that aside from being a really terrific bookstore with terrific people running it, Random Row has also been a valued community space, and a key component in the revitalization of the area of Charlottesville known as Midtown, which essentially describes the geographic area of Main St. between the University of Virginia and the Downtown Mall.
Random Row helped turn that part of town into a destination for the people who live in Charlottesville and the surrounding area, and they helped other businesses grow by proving it was possible to exist in that part of the city. And to know now that it's all going away so that a hotel -- which, despite the jobs it may bring to local folks, is really a business serving visitors -- is going to replace that whole stretch of businesses that has thrived in Midtown, is very disheartening on a citizen level, in addition to how it makes us feel as people who love used-book stores.
What does the impending change say about the value of books in a community? What does it mean that a town long trying to connect its two main ends will witness the removal of community-oriented businesses accomplishing just that, in favor of a hotel serving a temporary, ever-rotating population that has no stake in being a member of the Charlottesville community?
As I said, we haven't lived here very long, and the time we have lived here has largely been spent being either very pregnant or new parents, so we haven't exactly taken advantage of Random Row's community events, but just knowing that it existed in that way was enough for us. It's one of the things that we have loved about Charlottesville, that a place like that can do well here.
So where does that leave us now? We have been planning to visit Random Row for reasons related to "Get a Spine" itself, and now we will certainly add fact-finding about the future of Random Row to our visit. We'd like to think there is some kind "Save Random Row" movement brewing out there, at the very least to help find a new space if the current one can no longer be. But we'll get some answers, and provide an update when we can.
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