In today’s Staunton News Leader, Alice Mannette reports on the boom in restaurant spending in Waynesboro and its correlation with Charlottesville restauranteurs considering moving over the mountain. Waynesboro doesn’t have particularly rich dining options (though I understand The Purple Foot is always good), so it’s an easier market to tap into than C’ville’s apparently restaurant-based economy.
I’ve long wanted to cultivate a healthy Springfield/Shelbyville type of rivalry between C’ville and W’boro. Maybe we can start it over food.
How about a good vegan restaurant for the area?
So who would be who?
Oh, c’mon — we’d totally be Springfield. “Lemon of Troy” aside, Springfield clearly dominates Shelbyville.
This story in the August Free Press a few weeks ago focused on the same concept, but more on the retail side. Crozet and Waynesboro are becoming more and more interdependent on each other.
i think it all boils down to who gets a monorail first.
My family, most of my extended family (aprox. 25 people), and most all of my neighbors and many of our friends head across the mountain for both food, shopping, business, and health care. C’ville and the county is ruining itself with every passing day. If it weren’t for the fact that we had such deep roots here in western part of the county I know for a fact that I would relocate my family. All that Charlottesville/Albemarle is anymore is a bunch of do-good fruit loops that recently arrived here and now want to slam the shut on everyone – including those of us who were here long before them! This rant ends here…
I just hope they get an Olive Garden over in Waynesboro, Famous Daves wouldn’t be too bad either. Let’s wait for the new shopping center, Waynesboro Common’s, I think it is, to be built and maybe both will show up.
Interesing. I wonder if restaurants alone will be enough to attract people to downtown–as opposed to the Wal-Mart outskirts– of Waynesboro, though.
Scottsville long counted on restaurants to lead the way toward a mainstreet revitalization, and that seemed to be working for a spell.
Now, without additional investment from a variety of merchants, restaurants don’t last long, and Scottsville’s bloom has faded.
Granted, Waynesboro has a much bigger residential base surrounding it, so it’s an imperfect analogy.
The Scottsville analogy doesn’t quite work. It’s a very different place from Waynesboro. The newer restaurants in Scottsville rely largely on seasonal tourist traffic generated by the river and the local yearly events that bring people in (the Scottsville Bluegrass Festival this weekend for example).
Additional merchants in Scottsville just wouldn’t be the draw it would be elsewhere, unless it was something that Cville didn’t have (like an IKEA for example) why would someone drive from Cville to Scottsville to ‘shop’ if there’s already a store closer that sells the same thing? The solution in that instance is not ‘more retail’ but instead a need for ‘non-retail’ businesses, to balance things out and create a core of built in consumers for the off season (which is when a business’s bottom line is truely tested).
The Waynesboro downtown would be better compared to Cville’s. And in that instance I would agree with you, while Waynesboro has a large population base and a variety of other industries which will support their restaurants, a few other activities and regular events downtown the long run will be needed. I imagine once “the Wayne Theater” is eventually renovated it will provide similar entertainment as Cville’s “Paramount.”
Off topic but along the same lines of growth in surrounding areas. Apparently Louisa County is about to get a Super Wal Mart. That will make 3 Wal Marts in the Charlottesville area (29 North, Greene, Louisa) Check out NBC29 for the story.