Just a few years ago, West Main Street was the way you got from UVA to Downtown Charlottesville. Now, it’s Mid-Town. And it’s booming.
Sean Tubbs reports that yet another project – this time a high-end hotel – is being proposed for West Main Street. The prospective developers, Carr Hospitality, have in their portfolio Embassy Suites, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn & Suites and the Willard Intercontinental in DC.
Keeping up with West Main is nearly a full-time job (thanks, Charlottesville Tomorrow!)
So what? West Main is becoming more of an economic force in Charlottesville, adding stuff – new restaurants, new hotels, new apartments … new traffic. I suspect that this density and coming congestion will have at least two effects on the Charlottesville real estate market – 1) more will want to live close to this stuff, and I’d wager many of these will be renters of apartments rather than homeowners and 2) more will want to live away from this density and congestion.
Turns out, I’ve done a couple videos of West Main, and I thought it would be interesting to look back at a few of them:
West Main Street on 12 October 2012.
Playing with Instagram’s #Hyperlapse app on 16 September 2014:
8 May 2014 – West Main, the back of the (now new) Flats @ West Main apartments and the entrance to Walker Square.
May 8, 2014 – All of West Main up to the new Battle Building at UVA.
About a decade ago, I had a conversation with a man who had the franchise rights to a restaurant chain for Charlottesville. He wanted to get in on West Main, between the University and the train tracks. The chain said no, and instead he’s somewhere up the morass of 29 North. I wonder how well he’d be positioned for the future had he gotten in early on W. Main.
I don’t know … very, very different dynamics …
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