Monthly Archive for April, 2011

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Portico Publications and Better Publications Merge

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 12, 2011 in Business and Meta News. 11 Comments

The parent companies that produce C-Ville Weekly and The Hook are merging, undoing a corporate divorce that began in January 2002. The plan is just to merge the companies, not the publications, under the name of Charlottesville Publishing Group. There’s no way anybody saw this coming.

It was nine years ago when two of the three owners of C-Ville Weekly pushed out Hawes Spencer from Portico Publications. Within weeks, Spencer started The Hook, taking a bunch of employees with him, under the corporate aegis of Better Publications. That left Rob Jiranek and Bill Chapman with C-Ville Weekly, and the two publications as sometimes-bitter rivals. Jiranek left Portico Publications in 2006, and Portico’s expansion attempts failed earlier this year, just as Cathy Harding resigned as editor.

Presumably this merger will mean that the two businesses can save a lot of money by sharing resources—office space, advertising staff, distribution services, printing costs, etc. C-Ville Weekly currently lacks for an editor, after the departure of Harding, the editor who bridged the gap between Spencer’s departure and now. Between this new corporate arrangement and this opportunity to take C-Ville Weekly in a different editorial direction—for the love of all that is good and holy, axe “The Rant”—the C-Ville Weekly of 2012 could be very different than the C-Ville Weekly of today.

10:00 PM Update: Bill Chapman provides some clarifications and corrections. In a nutshell, Portico still exists—it now publishes the Free Times—and there are no plans to share staff or offices, but contracted work like distribution and printing are certainly areas where they intend to save some money.

Fenwick Declares Council Candidacy

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 11, 2011 in Politics. 9 Comments

Independent Bob Fenwick is running for City Council again, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. Fenwick ran two years ago on an anti-Parkway, anti-YMCA, pro-dredging platform, and he’s doing the same thing this time around. He hasn’t filed to run yet, and has ten days to do so with the registrar.

Other candidates for Council—Democrats and, if they bother to field a candidate this year, Republicans—may not announce for a while, a result of redistricting this year. Primaries have been pushed back to August, rather than June, while everybody figures out what district that they’re in. While redistricting doesn’t directly affect the council race, it does push back the nominations and will have the effect of shortening the campaign season. Independent Scott Bandy filed last month, and Satyendra Huja delcared he’s running for reelection, while incumbents Holly Edwards and David Brown are not seeking reelection.

Kluge Vineyards’ Goal: “Most Visited Place in America”

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 10, 2011 in Business and Development. 13 Comments

From The Daily Beast’s interview with Patricia Kluge:

Rumors had swirled that the widow of her ex-husband, billionaire John Kluge, would buy the land, that a neighbor would take it over and destroy the vines, or another would plow up the Arnold Palmer golf course. But that is in the past. Now, “Donald [Trump] plans to open it to the public and make it the most amazing experience in the world. Hopefully it will be the most visited place in America.” A Disneyland, I ask? “Good lord,” she responds with horror, “nothing that vulgar.”

[…]

She is especially thrilled that she had her husband have been asked to stay on to oversee the wines, which have been served at the White House and at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. “We were monumentally relevant to the world of wine,” states Kluge. “Not just nationally, but internationally. London, Paris you name it. Donald has saved all that, now we are coming back, and we’re coming back with a vengeance.”

(Emphasis mine.)

For comparison, the nation’s most-visited place is Times Square, with 37.6M visitors annually. This woman is delusional. Like I said: this will end badly.

Trump Buys Kluge Estate Winery

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 7, 2011 in Business and Development. 14 Comments

Donald Trump has purchased Kluge Estate Winery at auction, Lisa Provence reports for The Hook. The 64-year-old New York billionaire and current presidential candidate bought the estate for $7.3M. Trump now owns a bit more than a square mile of Albemarle farmland about five miles south of town. Another 100+ acre chunk was bought by northern Virginia developer Sal Cangiano, who “thought it would be fun” to run a winery—he has a checkered history in acquiring historic rural properties in Virginia.

Trump’s bound to throw around some contributions to local organizations (I’d put money on him giving money to The Paramount) in an effort to get a little local respect, and while generally celebrities are welcomed to town with open arms, I think things will go poorly for this abrasive birther. This will end badly.

County Approves $304M Budget

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 6, 2011 in Government, Politics and Taxes. Closed

The Board of Supervisors approved a $304M budget that holds the real estate tax at its current rate, the Daily Progress reports. That’s a 74.2¢ rate—or 0.7% of assessed value—which, coupled with decreased property values, drops the average homeowner’s taxes by $36.