Spotsylvania News
Jeff Branscome writes about Spotsylvania County.
Harrison Road CDA moves to dissolve itself
Some closure may be coming for the Harrison Road Connector Community Development Authority. The board decided today to pass two resolutions, including one to dissolve itself.
The next step is for the Board of Supervisors to accept these resolutions, which would kill the CDA and end–for now–a three-year saga that pitted residents who lived by the mall or owned property impacted by the CDA against county supervisors and executives of the Cafaro Company.
A full story will be in the newspaper, but I wanted to share with you some anecdotes that members of the CDA board shared about J.J. Cafaro, vice president of the company that owns the mall, and who retired this year.
Jane Wallace, a board member and a local Realtor, shared the best story. She said that at one of the first meetings they had, J.J. Cafaro’s phone rang. She said he had this tiny phone that he pulled from his shirt pocket. When he answered the phone, she said you could hear the person who called asking about a donation. She said J.J. replied something to the effect of “Sure, Jerry. I will get that to you, but I am in a meeting so let me call you back.”
“It was Jerry Springer,” she said. “I just thought that was so cool.” J.J. Cafaro mingled with a lot of people, but he surely loved politics, said the mall’s property manager, Mark Gentry.
“He knows everybody,” he said. “He lives for politics.”
As this article states, J.J. was a big player in Washington politics, chiefly because his father wouldn’t let him run for Congress. There’s even mention of the trouble he got into with former U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.
J.J. Cafaro is a convicted felon.
Gentry said J.J.’s home is filled with framed photographs of numerous dignitaries, elected officials, presidents and television stars.
Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/spotsygovt/2010/01/05/harrison-road-cda-moves-to-dissolve-itself/
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