Posts tagged Albemarle

Goodbye Five Guys and South Street Brewery

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The rumors on facebook and Twitter over the weekend seem to be true – South Street Brewery has been sold to Blue Mountain Brewery. If Blue Mountain, who are already killing it, replicate what they’re doing in Afton, they’re going to continue their massive success.

Five Guys on the Downtown Mall closed the other day – there are now no chain restaurants on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall; if you need your Five Guys fix, they’re still open in Barracks Road and Hollymead Town Center. Ironically, the first commercial I saw this morning on NBC29 was one for Chaps Ice Cream with him saying, “you don’t need five guys to make a good burger!”

Update 3 JulyBlue Mountain is buying South Street, but they’re not changing the name from South Street. Good stuff.

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Prepping for Mid-Year 2014 Market Update

Looking briefly at the homes that have gone under contract in Albemarle and Charlottesville from 1 January to 30 June (June’s not yet over as of this writing) and if you do the math, you’ll see that this year’s market is (broadly) moving a bit faster than last year’s. I’m looking forward to digging into the numbers.

Halfway through 2014 and the market remains odd. Low inventory in some market segments, high inventory in others, houses hitting the market prior to hitting the MLS more often than I’ve ever seen, new construction prices increasing rapidly, new developments selling like crazy, and I’m starting to look at data to figure out what the market’s been doing.

Here’s a little bit of data looking at some price range statistics for Charlottesville and Albemarle so far this year – June 2014.

Questions, comments about the market? Let me know.

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Monday Reading – 16 June 2014

This should be required reading8 Surprise expenses for homeowners. Changing locks, pest control … in something as rare as a purple dinosaur eating a banana in the middle of a soccer stadium talking on a cell phone, many of the comments are useful.

City of Charlottesville City Council will discuss Belmont Bridge and the Albemarle Planning Commission will discuss downtown Crozet’s possible renovation, among other big meetings.

– This part of the conceptual plan for West Main Street is absurd:

Another change that the street could see is the addition of elevated and protected bicycle lanes on both sides of the road. Providing bike lanes that are protected from on-street parking could help to reduce the number of bicycle accidents that have occurred along the road.

“The bike lanes will probably mostly be used by people who are tootling along, a little slower, maybe have children on bikes, and it’s a safer environment,” said committee member Rachel Lloyd. “People who are really moving can go in the vehicular lanes.”

Instead of elevated bike lanes, why not protected ones?

– There is so much to the pocket listing conversation; it’s fascinating that Colorado’s Real Estate Commission may be entering the fray. I wrote about pocket listings last year and earlier this year in my note.

– Creepy. What data brokers know about you. One day soon, this will (openly) affect lending.

– This is a really interesting conversation on “what businesses should come to Crozet?” I missed the opportunity to better define the question – what anchor industries should come to Crozet? but the discussion was great all the same. Lots and lots of Facebook comments, too.

– With clients yesterday, we debated whether the folks who designed Stonefield were drunk or high. We concluded they were probably both.

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Charlottesville’s Homogenization Continues

Great story by Sean Tubbs with Charlottesville Tomorrow

Anderson’s Carriage Food House on Barracks Road and C’Ville Market on Carlton Avenue both closed for the final time on Friday, with managers of each store citing tough competition as one reason for going out of business.

Nice usage of “-monger” in the story, too.

Homogenization is not what makes Charlottesville special; but that’s economics.

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