C-BIZ

Squeaky clean: Car wash business expands, but keeps it local

Last April, Jeff Kamrath opened Aqua Cville Hand Car Wash on Emmet Street, and the weather promptly turned against him. In his first year in business, he says, “It rained 41 percent of the days we could have been open.” That was far from ideal, but Aqua Cville made it to its first anniversary anyway. […]

Erika Howsare | June 5, 2019

Abode

Modern makeover: A hidden midcentury masterpiece gets a major update

On a quiet street in Charlottesville sits a not-too-eyecatching house, its plain brick façade all but obscured by a screen of trees. Yet this is far from an ordinary rancher. In fact, it serves as a connection to a wider, more cosmopolitan world, and to an optimistic time in architectural history, when the International Style […]

Erika Howsare | May 17, 2019

Abode

Local turf: An Orange County farm for ready-made lawns

Ever wonder where those Yodels-like rolls of grass come from that you’ve seen stacked on pallets or laid out in front of a newly built home? From a sod farm, of course. Growing and harvesting sod is a practice that thrives mainly out of sight (and out of mind). But in Orange County, Andy and […]

Erika Howsare | May 15, 2019

Unbound

Outsider art: Our favorite plein-air murals and sculptures

In a self-styled art town like Charlottesville, you don’t have to step into a gallery to have an art encounter. There are lots of places to see murals, sculptures, and even interactive works from your car or the sidewalk, or while strolling through the IX Art Park. Increasing the accessibility, the Charlottesville Mural Project—which has […]

Erika Howsare | May 9, 2019

Unbound

Urban wilderness: Creating a native habitat in town

When Devin Floyd and his team at the Center for Urban Habitats design gardens, they don’t just think about which plants will bloom in which season. Their approach is far more complex, encompassing the request that client David Wimberley made when he first hired them in 2014. “He came to us because he wanted to […]

Erika Howsare | May 8, 2019

Living

Modern living: Five local houses that break with tradition

Architects in Charlottesville have big shoes to fill—founding-father-sized shoes. Our town is often represented by one of two iconic buildings designed by Jefferson: one private (Monticello) and one public (the Rotunda). Each has an outsized influence on what folks generally expect local architecture to look like. In the middle of the last decade, a debate […]

Erika Howsare | April 24, 2019