Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Graphs

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 6, 2009 in In Brief. 3 Comments

The DP illustrates a 30% drop in UVa’s endowment with a graph that gets 58% smaller. Not a lot of statisticians go into the news biz, I guess.  #

Ethanol Station Opens in C’ville

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 5, 2009 in In Brief. 6 Comments

There’s an E85 station in Albemarle now.  #

Urban Outfitters Downtown

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 2, 2009 in In Brief. 58 Comments

Urban Outfitters to open up in the old Hardware Store. Ugh. The very worst of Old Town Alexandria, right here in C’ville.  #

Daily Progress HQ on the Market

Published by Waldo Jaquith on January 1, 2009 in Business and Meta News. 37 Comments

Media General is selling the Daily Progress‘ offices, predictably enough. Though the property assessed at $4M a year ago, the utter collapse of the real estate industry has probably reduced significantly the value of the building. This may, in retrospect, look like the absolute worst time to try to unload 29,000 square feet of commercial space. The fact that they’re doing it now speaks to how hard up that Media General must be for an infusion of cash.

Though it’s possible that this could be a really great opportunity for the paper to become decentralized and nimble (as one former employee pointed out in July), it seems more likely that this will mark the beginning of a painful slide for the paper. With the slim publication consisting of more and more wire stories, printed in Richmond, and owned by a Richmond-headquartered media conglomerate, it’s tough to see the Progress as a local paper anymore. If the value of advertising continues to slide, the economy stays in the tank, and the format in which news is delivered continues to change (witness Detroit’s dailies curtailing of home delivery and the Christian Science Monitor going weekly and web-based), it’s possible that Charlottesville will prove too small of a market to support a daily newspaper. What happens then is anybody’s guess.

Hauser Homes in Financial Trouble?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 31, 2008 in Business and Development. 7 Comments

Brian McNeill reports in today’s Daily Progress that Robert Hauser Homes appears to be in some financial trouble. One homebuilder is suing Hauser, alleging that Hauser was contractually obligated to buy $2.56M in lots, but didn’t, and the builder is now stuck with the land (and mortgage payments). And one of the developers behind Old Trail has sued Hauser over a similar matter, in that case nine lots worth $1.4M. And a county flooring company went after Hauser in court for unpaid bills, though that’s since been sorted out. Like many local businesses (especially developers), they’ve laid off employees, shut down one of their offices, and dramatically scaled back construction plans. Bob Hauser tells McNeill that “it’s been slow…it’s been very challenging.”

This is something I’ve had my eye on for a while now. To my eye, Hauser was hugely overextended when the bubble burst. They’d expanded to construction in developments near Fredericksburg (Fawn Lake and Somerset, if memory serves) while riding the bubble hard here in town. I’ve worked with and gotten estimates from a bunch of guys in the construction business in the past year, and more than a few have told me that they’re hurting because of outstanding debts from Hauser.