Community, officials celebrate renovation of Downtown Mall

Charlottesville officials and residents gushed over the Downtown Mall on Friday at a rededication ceremony, held to mark the end of a $7.5 million, four-month-long overhaul of the city’s famed pedestrian strip.

“This is the gathering place for our community,” Mayor Dave Norris said. “This really is a great public space.”
Countless public figures appeared at the Central Place event, including Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, former City Councilors Blake Caravati and Meredith Richards and current Councilors David Brown and Satyendra Huja.
The biggest aspect of the project involved tearing up the mall’s existing bricks and replacing them. Last summer the City Council voted to do the project in four months, after many of the downtown businesses said they would not last should the project be spread out over years, and construction officially started the first week of January.

Controversy had ensued because of the city’s decision to remake the mall — where much of the electrical wiring was not functional and the 1970s bricks were becoming unsettled from cracked mortar between them. Some residents said the project was too expensive and some businesses said the construction was too risky during an economic downturn. Others feared that the mall’s original concept by Lawrence Halprin would be lost with the new bricks.
But at the event, residents relished the new mall and many praised the work done by construction crews. Other amenities have also been added because of the project, such as mall-wide WiFi.
“This is a big day,” said Bob Stroh, chairman of the Downtown Business Association. Stroh said one of the most gratifying things during construction was that “our costumers, our visitors, our patrons never stopped coming downtown.”
A couple of little things still needed to be done as of Friday, such as placing trash cans in their proper locations, project manager Chris Weatherford said.
“It’s 99.9 percent done as of today,” he said.

The mall project’s deadline was May 1, but at the time there were still some rebricking areas to be completed, such as close to the Omni Hotel, where the concrete slab underneath the bricks was in worse shape than contractors had anticipated.
A final price tag has not been tabulated yet, Weatherford said, and would likely not be known until the end of June. Officials have repeatedly said that the entire project would come in under budget, after city staff gave a report earlier this year that said many of the construction bids had come in lower than expected because of the sour economy.
Officials said the maintenance plan for the new mall has been in the works since construction began in January, and the fine details are still being ironed out. Brian

Daly, the city’s acting director for the Department of Parks and Recreation, said the new bricks will require routine resanding, where more sand will be added every three to four months to keep the bricks secure.
“It does wear away,” Daly said. But, he said, the sand that was just poured as the new bricks were laid down should last for at least six months before the layer needs to be topped off.