38th Richmond Marathon Saturday By Fred Jeter
A modern, recreational version of this will unfold Saturday, Nov. 14, when more than 20,000 runners will show off their strides in the 38th Anthem Richmond Marathon. Last year’s field of 21,657 included a record turnout of 6,549 runners for the full, 26.2-mile marathon. Ben Zywicki Please turn to A4
Richmond Free Press
VOL. 24 NO. 46
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RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
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Little could Greek courier Pheidippides have known he was kick-starting an activity that would endure for centuries. The sport now known as the marathon is said to stem from 490 B.C. when Pheidippides ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce the outnumbered Greek army had defeated the invading Persians.
NOVEMBER 12-14, 2015
Children’s hospital axed Plan for Boulevard facility lacked key support By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press
Remembering veterans Wreaths surround the statue Memory at the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond. Wednesday was Veterans Day, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe placed one of the wreaths during a ceremony honoring all veterans at the Shrine of Memory. Located on South Belvidere Street above the James River in Downtown, the shrine has engraved stone and glass walls with the names of Virginians who died in battle from War World II through the Persian Gulf War. The Torch of Liberty, an eternal flame, burns at the feet of Memory, representing that patriotism is everlasting.
ance. The other group, HCA, never supported the hospital. Richmond may get a new children’s Ms. Busser acknowledged that the hospital, but it won’t be going up on alliance could not get Bon Secours the Boulevard. and VCU back to the table. The alliThe vision of a $400 million ance’s plan was based on having both inpatient, child-focused treatment hospital groups turn over most of their center rising on the site where the in-house pediatric operations to a new minor league Richmond Squirrels play hospital they would not control — a baseball has evaporated. That clears prospect that Bon Secours and VCU the way for the city to begin planning found did not make operational or Ms. Busser for a splashy retail-office-residential financial sense. complex on the 62 acres of municipal property While Ms. Busser said Monday the “alliance that includes the aging Diamond baseball stadium is not quitting, but just taking a step back to see and the Arthur Ashe Athletic Center. what other options might be available,” she and The future of the valuable property became other alliance staff members are being laid off, clearer this week when Katherine Busser, out- reducing the alliance to a volunteer operation. going CEO of the Virginia Children’s Hospital “I’m not surprised” that the prospect of a Alliance, notified Richmond City Council Mon- Boulevard hospital has died, said Councilday that her group would not meet a December man Chris A. Hilbert, 3rd District, a staunch deadline to begin the process of seeking state supporter of the idea. He said his own checks approval for development of a proposed free- with people in the field showed “the numbers standing hospital for children. did not work.” As a result, she said the alliance and its chief A firmer prospect for a new children’s hosally, PACKids, a coalition of area pediatricians pital lies with VCU, which confirmed that it and specialists, no longer would keep the hold has begun early work on plans to develop such on the property that Mayor Dwight C. Jones a facility on its medical campus — its fourth and the council had granted in July to give the attempt in the past 16 years. alliance time to prepare its application. According to VCU officials, a new hospital Prospects for the hospital largely disappeared would address the need for at least 75 pediatric in May when two of the area’s three major beds and complement VCU’s outpatient chilhospital groups, Bon Secours and VCU Health, dren’s center that will open next year across the medical arm of Virginia Commonwealth from City Hall. University, pulled out of talks with the alliAt this point, the officials said VCU is looking to couple a children’s hospital with plans to modernize clinical space for adult and child cancer and heart patients as it begins the process of updating its master plan for the medical campus. It could take five to eight years to translate such plans into construction reality. One site being considered for a new facility Please turn to A4
New program helps youths with jobs Photo courtesy of Trice Edney News Wire/Twitter.com/Gary Pinkel
University of Missouri football Coach Gary Pinkel tweeted this photo of protesters, including students, team members, professors and coaches, with the message, “The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players.”
Student protests bring down Mizzou president, chancellor Free Press wire reports
COLUMBIA, Mo. The University of Missouri’s president stepped down Monday, and its chancellor moved aside, after protests by the school’s students and football team over alleged inaction against racial abuse on campus. President Tim Wolfe’s high-profile resignation, followed hours later by news that Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin would move to a new job, was the latest shock to the state of Missouri, and the United States at large, which has been roiled for more than a year by racial tensions after a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teen in nearby Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014. Then, as demonstrations continued at the university and spread to other college campuses across the country, a suspect was taken into custody on Wednesday for making online threats to shoot African-Americans at the university. The announcement followed a post on the social media smartphone app Yik Yak on Tuesday, tagged for the college town of Columbia. The posting read: “I’m going to stand my ground tomorrow and shoot every black person I see.” In a campuswide alert early Wednesday, police said they had apprehended the suspect, Hunter Park, a 21-year-old student at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, about 100 miles south of Columbia, on suspicion of making a terroristic threat on the social network. They said the suspect “was not located on or near the MU campus at the time of the threat.” The threat prompted stepped-up security on
the university campus, but classes were operating on a regular schedule, authorities said. Unrest at the university, widely known as “Mizzou,” started on Sept. 12 when Payton Head, president of the Missouri Student Association, said on his Facebook page that vile, anti-black slurs were hurled at him by someone in a pickup truck while he walked on campus. He said the university did not address the incident for nearly a week. His post went viral, and the lack of any strong reaction by Mr. Wolfe as head of the four-campus university system, led to demonstrations at the school’s homecoming parade in early October. At the time, about 10 AfricanAmerican students linked arms in front of the
red convertible that Mr. Wolfe was riding in during the parade. According to local news reports, as they blocked the car, they took turns reciting points in history where MU students had endured discrimination. Instead of talking with students, Mr. Wolfe tried to drive around them, a video of the demonstration shows. The president’s driver didn’t get past the line, but hit one of the student demonstrators with the car. Mr. Wolfe, according to the video, watched as onlookers manhandled the students and yelled at them. Columbia police also threatened the protesters with pepper spray while Mr. Wolfe Please turn to A4
Coalition to City Council: Slow your roll on rapid transit By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Slow down the rush to install bus rapid transit (BRT) in Richmond and take the time to ensure that the service will not become an expensive boondoggle. That’s the message an alliance of 11 civic groups delivered to Richmond City Council on Monday night in calling attention to the potential drawbacks of the developing service. While the $54 million BRT project dubbed GRTC Pulse is still undergoing design review, speakers from RVA Coalition sought to raise concerns for the council to weigh before the governing body considers putting a final stamp
of approval on a project they previously have endorsed. On a night when the top issue on council’s agenda involved the tax rate to be imposed on owners of homes and businesses, coalition representatives gave council an earful about their BRT concerns. One big one is that the 20,000 city residents — largely African-Americans — who rely on bus service would be disconnected from BRT because the planned 8-mile route skirts black neighborhoods and would do little to improve their access to jobs and services. Please turn to A4
By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Billie Brown knows about youth unemployment. As the founder and owner of a temporary staffing agency that she began almost 16 years ago, she regularly sees young adults who cannot get work because they lack skills, have a felony record or never earned a high school diploma. Dismayed at how little was being done to help them, Ms. Brown and her company, Excel Management Services, have teamed with Saint Paul’s Baptist Church to try to make a dent in the problem. Together, the partners have created Success by 25 Ms. Brown to help unemployed 17- to 20-year-olds get life-changing academic help, skills training and placement in jobs. Launched in September, Success by 25 plans to enroll 125 young people in its first 12 months and has been awarded a $900,000 grant from the Capital Region Workforce Partnership to support the effort. CRWP uses federal funds to operate three area workforce centers to help people find jobs. CRWP hired Success by 25 to replace a previous contractor for youth services. The program already has enrolled its first 31 students and is still working with 40 enrollees who started with the previous youth contractor. In December, at least 30 new enrollees will start, with new participants being added every three months. Next week, Ms. Brown, her staff and current program participants will hold a public information session to get the word out about the new effort. The session will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, at Saint Paul’s Baptist Church — Belt Boulevard Campus, 700 E. Belt Blvd., across from Southside Plaza in South Side. “Youth unemployment is a huge problem in the Richmond region,” Ms. Brown noted. People in the 17 to 20 age group represent the largest and fastest growing segment of the impoverished, she said. “Nearly half of our youths in that age Please turn to A4