By Celeste M. Smucker – The term “green” gets a lot of attention these days and can describe environmentally friendly activities of all kinds. When it comes to real estate it usually means investment in products and services that make your home healthier, more comfortable and more energy efficient. Not only does investing in green […]
By Celeste M. Smucker – If selling your home is a priority, you probably know our market is active and that inventory is scarce in many neighborhoods. Sellers may correctly interpret this information to mean their home may sell more quickly and at a better price than in years past. They may also believe all […]
What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, the housing bubble had burst, the hottest area in real estate was foreclosures, and the Downtown Mall was littered with vacancies. Today, the county development scene is “white hot,” according to Albemarle Director of Community Development Mark Graham, and in the city, Director of Economic Development […]
By Ken Wilson – Before there were pumpkin spice lattes and before we were old enough for apple brandy, there were pumpkin pies and apple crisps, cold cider on Indian Summer days and hot cider around the winter fireplace. Even more exciting, for a country boy or an outdoorsy girl, were the pumpkins ripening on […]
By Marilyn Pribus – Central Virginia is widely recognized as a home to wineries and, more recently, craft breweries and cideries. Less well known, but increasing in popularity, are local distilleries that produce hard alcohol like gin, vodka, rum, liqueurs, whisky, and whiskey. What? No, that’s not a typo. While the Scottish spelling is whisky, […]
It’s not just bad driving that has caused nearly 1 million Virginians’ licenses to be suspended. Failure to pay court costs—often unrelated to being behind the wheel at all—has put indigent citizens in a downward spiral of debt, unemployment, and incarceration, according to a civil suit filed by the Legal Aid Justice Center two years […]
‘United by beer’ City boosters and brewmasters have come together to blaze the Charlottesville Ale Trail, a two-mile stretch they’re calling the premier urban and pedestrian beer trail in Virginia. The six stops along the way are Random Row Brewing Co., Brasserie Saison, South Street Brewery, Champion Brewing Company, Three Notch’d Craft Kitchen & Brewery, […]
After months of thousands of community members urging the authority board at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail to stop voluntarily reporting the release dates of undocumented immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the board held a special meeting September 13 to take a revote on that policy. At the local jail, and every jail in […]
Grocery store shelves in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were picked clean last week by people preparing for Hurricane Florence’s worst. But come this week, those cases of water, boxes of batteries, and jars of peanut butter had gone largely unneeded. While a tornado left one person dead in Richmond, and significant flooding threatened folks in […]
When there’s a weather disaster in the forecast, Jerry Stenger is on everyone’s speed dial. We didn’t catch up with the director of the State Climatology Office at UVA until yesterday afternoon, and even though Hurricane Florence has shifted south, here are his predictions for the storm—and tips on what to eat. “For us, the […]