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LIVING
SHOP TALK
TAKE A TRIP Field Trip Bikes brings new life to a Church Hill cycling shop By Ian M. Stewart
Emily Routman, Church Hill Association board member
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Field Trip is the third bike store to occupy 2225 E. Clay St.; the building previously housed Wheel Simple Bicycle Repair and Cyclus.
fitter. “It’s the third bike shop that’s been there, which is so funny,” says Church Hill Association board member Emily Routman. “To have something like Field Trip Bikes in this corridor goes hand in hand [with making] Jefferson [Avenue] so much more bikeable. It’s a great asset for the neighborhood.” Before Field Trip, the building was home to Wheel Simple Bicycle Repair, which occupied the space from 2017 to 2024 and was run by Robbie Wood. “[He was] a neighborhood hero, just an amazing mechanic, a frame builder doing high-level repairs,” Alford says. “I know a lot of people were really sorry to see him go.” Even earlier, it housed Cyclus, which moved from its original home on East Marshall Street to Clay Street and operated from 2013 to 2017. Routman says it’s
amazing to see the building brought to life after sitting empty for two years. “One of the best things about Church Hill [is] all the old buildings and imagining what the booming businesses were like 70 years ago,” she says. “Just being able to see that people care to rehab these buildings and make something beautiful out of them, [to] bring their passion into Church Hill, we’re really grateful.” Unlike Re-Cycles, Alford’s latest venture works exclusively with new products. But similar to Re-Cycles, the shop also offers bike repairs. “Field Trip is different in that there’s nothing that’s reused or refurbished here,” he says. “We’re all new bikes, new components, and we keep it simple that way.” Alford curates Field Trip’s offerings to both his own taste and the needs of Richmond’s diverse cycling community.
ASH DANIEL
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ne of Richmond’s newest bike shops has a familiar face behind it. “I own Re-Cycles Bike Shop, and now I am proud to also have started Field Trip Bikes,” Joel Alford says, standing inside the blue-green building at 2225 E. Clay St. While Re-Cycles is located just past Carytown in the Fan, Field Trip — which sells new road bikes and cycling gear, has taken root in Church Hill across the street from Triangle Park. The name Field Trip stems from Alford’s sense of fun. “It’s going on an adventure with your bike, but it also kind of evokes a playfulness, sort of like being a kid [on a] school field trip,” he says. The roughly 1,800-square-foot building is no stranger to housing a cycling out-
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FIX IT, DON’T NIX IT JUSTIN CHESNEY
AMID A CACOPHONY OF CLICKS, TWEETS AND MELODIC CLANGS
The declining art of repair gets a boost from consumers By Claire Fortier
from the countless clocks covering every surface around him, Greg Hipps is stooped over a dismantled cuckoo clock, oblivious to the insistent reminders that time is ticking away. With the kind of precision the antique timepiece requires, he fits tiny screws and gears back into the ornate wooden case. Soon the clock is cuckooing right on time. “Like any older person, these clocks take a little more time and treatment,” says Aaron Southworth, a professional master clockmaker and co-owner of The Clock Shop of Richmond on West Broad Street. “Greg is incredible, as unique as unique can be,” he says. Southworth met and hired him eight years ago when Hipps went to the shop looking for a part to repair a family cuckoo clock. “I don’t think there is anyone within 200 miles who repairs cuckoo clocks. He’s unique in a dying trade. There are not many of us left anymore.”
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“People are interested in repair because there’s a renewed sense of interest in the things that have been passed down versus just buying new.” —Jennifer Meska, Shades of Light
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to their owners. “But clocks can be grouchy. Some are even haunted. People have so many stories — like clocks that stop the minute a family member dies.” He gestures toward a 7-foot-tall grandfather clock in an ornate hand-carved cabinet, its face hand-engraved in brass with numbers in gold, topped by a triple-chime dial decorated with phases of the moon. “People don’t understand what it takes to fix a clock like this,” he says. “Hours and hours and hours, even days, if you count the testing. There are no machines to help us. Everything we do here is by hand, and everything is by sight or memory.” There are countless moving parts to keep straight, says Anna Tuttle, co-owner of The Clock Shop and the first person customers meet when they walk through the door. “We’re like a car repair shop — so many parts and pieces.” The shop takes in two or three donated grandfather clocks every week, Tuttle says. It’s a sign that younger generations aren’t as attached to behemoth antiques that require daily winding and are a hassle to move. But that doesn’t mean interest in old clocks is disappearing. “We are reselling more things of the 20-year-old variety,” she says. “Like any furniture nowadays, the 20- to 30-year-old things are much nicer than what they’re producing today.” It’s not just antique clocks that have a dwindling number of passionate restorers. In the last half-century, restoration experts for specialty products and everyday goods have closed shops or shifted to a manufacturer-first model that limits access to repairs. Recently, though, inflation-driven price increases and the sustainability issues inherent in disposable products have led some consumers to seek repair options. They are pairing with artisans to advocate for the right to repair goods with ease.
A DIFFERENT LIGHT A mile down West Broad Street, at the lighting and home decor retailer Shades of Light, the appetite for repair over replacement shows up in a different form entirely. “We have absolutely seen a growth in people who want to fix, not throw away,” says Jennifer Meska, who oversees merchandising at the Richmond-founded, now national brand. Shades of Light has offered lamp and fixture repair and restoration for decades, but Meska says that side of the business has grown noticeably in the last two years. “There are not a lot of people who do this work anymore. Folks are always surprised when we tell them it’s even an option. “We have people who come from out of state, people who come from all over to get their lamps fixed because we have such talented repair artisans. I call them artisans because they really are. They are not just repair folks,” she says. The company is trying to cultivate the next generation of artisans. Shades of Light spends time training its own
OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: CLAIRE FORTIER; JUSTIN CHESNEY
Southworth, one of the few clockmakers in the region, has been repairing clocks since he was 9 years old. “My father was a jeweler, and I’d help him,” he says. At 19, he apprenticed under a clockmaker, eventually opening his own shop. Then Joanne Cosavan, former owner of The Clock Shop, convinced him to come work for her. Three years later, he bought the place. “I’ve been here for 25 years,” he says. In that time, Southworth has fixed clocks in the commonwealth’s executive mansion, the Valentine and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, along with old homes and former plantations along Route 5. “The only place I haven’t been is the White House,” he says. “If I do that, I can die in peace.” At 55, Southworth worries there will be no one to replace him when he retires. Almost as difficult as finding true master clockmakers, he adds, is finding parts for the antique pieces. “The parts are selling out and not getting remanufactured. You have to hunt for the parts or find another clock you can pull a part out of.” For newer luxury goods, such as Rolex watches, the obstacle isn’t age; it’s the manufacturer. “With a lot of the more modern stuff, the companies will say, ‘You don’t have an account with us, you’re not a dealer, so we’re not going to sell you the parts,’” he explains. “So I have to hunt for aftermarket parts or reproductions.” Southworth says that while those parts are technically sound, to a purist they are not real Rolex parts. Southworth says heirloom clocks are “very, very important”
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DE C OD I N G THE DR E AM L
ike a ghost, the 500-square-foot cottage lingers behind Main Street Station. In a parking lot adjacent to the recently opened Shockoe Institute at 15th and Franklin streets, there’s a small white clapboard building sitting on steel beams. It was constructed shortly after the Civil War and gifted to a former slave, Emily Winfree, by her owner just before his death in 1867. The cottage was found unattended in Manchester in 2002, in the path of bulldozers clearing the way for a new parking lot. At the last minute, preservationists intervened and relocated the nearly dilapidated structure to Shockoe Bottom, near the site of Lumpkin’s Jail, the 19th-century slave pen known as the “Devil’s Half Acre.”
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F O R G E T T H E D UP LE X E S AN D SP E CI AL U SE P E R M I T S — R I C H M O N D ’ S Z O N I NG REWRITE IS ABOUT DE LI V E R I NG O N AM E R I C A’ S UN F ULF I LLE D P R O M I SE : A C CE S S T O H O U SI NG By Scott Bass Illustrations by Blake Cale
The boarded-up domicile at once represents the power of the American dream and its elusiveness: Homeownership was exceedingly rare for Black Americans during Reconstruction. For Winfree, the tiny house was a lifeline, a source of wealth — along with more than 100 acres in Chesterfield County, also a gift from her former owner — that helped sustain her family for decades. But underneath the Interstate 95 overpass, it sits. Nearly 25 years later, the tiny structure is still waiting for a permanent home. “It is literally the living embodiment of the fact that the city was vacated, left behind,” says Julian Hayter, a historian and professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond.
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duplex proposal in the second draft of Code Refresh, released late last year, which would have allowed three units only if the existing home was preserved. In draft three, which was released in mid-August, city planners scrapped the by-right duplex proposal in most neighborhoods. “We’ve heard people say that they want density that makes sense, and we totally agree,” Mayor Danny Avula said during a press conference Aug. 17. “As a result, this proposal maintains the one-plus-one concept: the right for homeowners to have one primary dwelling and one attached or detached accessory dwelling unit.” Also in draft three, city planners would allow ADUs of up to 1,200 square feet by right; currently, ADUs must be
limited to 500 square feet or no more than a third of the existing home’s square footage, whichever is greater. First District Councilmember Andrew Breton, who didn’t support the previous duplex proposal, spoke in favor of the latest draft at the Aug. 17 presser. “I believe that is the right and careful approach,” he said of eliminating what’s known as the two-plus-one concept. “I think there will be many nervous residents that will breathe a sigh of relief when they see that update.” The first two drafts of the zoning rewrite were roundly criticized by the city’s largest civic and neighborhood associations. In December 2025, a coalition of 17 associations sent a letter to Mayor Avula asking the city to pause the Code Refresh rollout and start over.
The Richmond Civic League, meanwhile, has also led an aggressive campaign to “Stop Code Refresh,” arguing that the zoning rewrite would only lead to market-rate housing development that would drive up property values and lead to more gentrification. Earlier this year, the pushback reached a crescendo, sparking a movement to put the zoning rewrite to voters via referendum. It’s led by Paul Goldman, a longtime political strategist who spearheaded a similar, successful effort to change the city charter to an elected mayor form of government in the early 2000s. Roughly 11,000 signatures are required to put the initiative on the ballot in 2027. As of Richmond magazine’s press time, some of the larger civic and
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SCOTT BASS
hood groups will have fewer opportunities to weigh in on new development projects. Unlike the SUP process, which gives residents multiple chances to offer input as development proposals wend through the Planning Commission and City Council, by-right projects don’t require legislative approval. All of which raises a bigger question, says Damian Pitt, associate professor of urban and regional studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Pitt, who also serves on the city’s Zoning Advisory Council, a committee of citizens helping to guide Code Refresh, says he doesn’t think there’s a universal desire to “have control over each other within our neighborhoods,” but he does see a pattern of resistance to increased density and new residents moving in. “The question here is, should residents and homeowners, property owners in Richmond’s neighborhoods, have the right to object to development that they don’t like? Or should they have the right to veto it and prevent it from happening?” Pitt says. “I think there’s a big difference there.” Casey Overton, a housing advocate and a member of the Zoning Advisory Council, says she struggles to empathize with the opposition’s fear of losing “control.” Richmond is mired in a housing crisis that’s disproportionately affecting minority communities. Creating more housing opportunities for all Richmonders, she says, should remain the primary focus. Overton says she’s disappointed that the city has scrapped the duplex proposal and, seemingly, the goal of increasing diversity and access to housing in all city neighborhoods. “Black people have seen time and time again our neighborhoods changed over, ravaged in ways that we had no control over,” she notes, “so it’s hard to hear folks have this preoccupation with controlling their surroundings when that was really never a luxury that was
Melissa Savenko, an attorney and real estate agent, walks Fan District Association members through Code Refresh, draft two, at Tabernacle Baptist Church in early August.
afforded to a lot of Black communities in Richmond.” At the final meeting of the Zoning Advisory Council on Sept. 9, Annika Schunn, a policy advocate for HOME of Virginia, told members that eliminating duplexes by right runs “counter to Richmond 300, as well as the city’s affordable housing plan, which calls for the legalization of duplexes citywide. Duplexes are starter homes. They’re a wealth-building opportunity for young people. They provide options for seniors to age in place and options for multigenerational families who are trying to live together.” Warren of Homes for All Our Neighbors says the current version “is an improvement on the status quo” that will make “it easier to build housing near bus and rapid-transit connections, which can help build more walkable neighborhoods. It will address some of the unfair decisions in the 1976 code that saw historically Black neighborhoods forced to accept more intensive development than their white counterparts, and it will create a requirement for tree coverage. “That said, make no mistake: It is a big step backward from draft one.”
The mayor would like Code Refresh to be approved by year’s end, an objective that some say is overly ambitious, if not downright risky. “It’s too important to get wrong,” says Savenko, also a member of the Zoning Advisory Council. “We need to get this right.” Others, however, see the zoning rewrite as too important to delay. While it can’t, by itself, solve the housing crisis, reverse discriminatory housing practices or force private developers to build truly affordable housing, it can create a framework for getting there. Ellen Robertson, the longest-serving member of City Council and a vocal advocate for housing equity, says if Code Refresh is approved she’ll introduce legislation to revisit and revise the zoning ordinance every five years. “Segregation by law may be over, but segregation by income is intact,” Robertson says. “If we do not have a rezoning that allows for diversity and inclusion, we are missing the opportunity to prevent segregation in the city of Richmond.” R Harry Kollatz Jr. contributed to this story.
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