Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Eating Locally-ish

“Patience Crabstick” is going to see how long she can do all of her family’s grocery shopping at locally-owned stores.  #

Silverman Planning a Downtown Grocery Store

It looks like a grocery store is coming downtown, Seth Rosen writes in the Daily Progress. Developer Gabe Silverman has long wanted to bring a grocery store downtown, and now the BAR has approved some changes to his 2,400 sq. ft. space on the corner of 5th and Main that would allow him to do just that. There’s no word as to what chain, if any, would be setting up shop there.

The A&N at that location closed in January of last year, despite Silverman’s best efforts to retain them. A&N is, interestingly, a Virginia business, founded in Richmond right after the Civil War.

What a BoS Upset Would Mean

Will Goldsmith has a breakdown of what a victory for each BoS candidate would mean in the current C-Ville. He forecasts that a win on the part of challengers Ann Mallek and Marcia Joseph would mean developers paying their fair share, rural protection ordinances would pass, and property taxes would go up. If incumbents win, presumably things will stay the same. Goldsmith is pretty frank, and it’ll annoy some people, but it makes sense.

The Wood/Boyd/NGIC Situation in a Nutshell

A commenter provides this coherent, revealing summation of the Wendell Wood/Ken Boyd/NGIC situation. I feel like I understand this much better now.  #

Planning Commission Denies Wood Rezoning

The Albemarle Planning Commission has denied Wendell Wood’s request to add land into the growth area, Jeremy Borden writes in the Daily Progress. Wood sold the land to NGIC for what he says is $9M less than it’s worth, a result of Supervisor Ken Boyd’s claim that he received a phone call from an NGIC employee — he won’t say who it was — saying that they’d pack up and leave town if they couldn’t expand. (Boyd’s campaign now says that this was a fabrication on the part of C-Ville.) Wood says the county owes him for taking a hit, and figures that having 30 acres reclassified from rural to growth area would be fair. NGIC has the land, and they’re expanding, so that’s not a concern anymore. Of course, the BoS is forever overruling the planning commission — they wouldn’t let a little thing like a unanimous vote stand in their way.

Borden also had a pair of articles today about Boyd’s reelection bid — one about Boyd and one about his challenger, Marcia Joseph.