A Memphis-based car dealership chain bought Charlottesville’s Brown Automotive Group, an institution in the community for nearly 40 years, on September 19. Umansky Automotive Group, a family-operated company, has 850 employees across 16 dealerships, says owner Dan Umansky. The five local Brown dealerships will be his first locations in Virginia, with the others in Tennessee, […]
A Memphis-based car dealership chain bought Charlottesville’s Brown Automotive Group, an institution in the community for nearly 40 years, on September 19. Umansky Automotive Group, a family-operated company, has 850 employees across 16 dealerships, says owner Dan Umansky. The five local Brown dealerships will be his first locations in Virginia, with the others in Tennessee, […]
By Marilyn Pribus “Charlottesville is a unique place,” declares Payam Pourtaheri, a co-founder of AgroSpheres, one of the many new businesses born right here where he says the entrepreneurial spirit is very strong. “There’s the feeling we’re all in this together. Everyone is supportive—you reach for help and it’s there. There are so many successful […]
President-elect Donald Trump made stopping illegal immigration a cornerstone of his campaign. Legal immigration, however, is another matter, and son Eric Trump’s winery has filed a request with the U.S. Department of Labor to hire six foreign workers to prune grapevines. Trump Vineyard Estates isn’t the only local winery importing laborers on an H-2A visa. […]
When Bank of America closes its branch doors downtown in February, it leaves a grand 1916 building in its wake that will house a steakhouse, according to building owner Hunter Craig. And while he declined to identify the grilled meat purveyor, he did say it would be locally owned, not a national chain. Also inhabiting […]
Governor Terry McAuliffe popped into Mincer’s on the Corner this afternoon because he likes to visit small businesses—and he needed a new polo shirt. “Extra large,” says McAuliffe. “I’m pumped.” He was in Charlottesville to speak to UVA scholars at the Center for Politics and he’d had lunch “with Larry and Terry—” Professor Larry Sabato […]
In the ongoing melodrama between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown, a letter from City Manager Maurice Jones says there’s no way the city will sell its Water Street Parking Garage shares to or even work with Brown, who, perhaps not coincidentally, announced plans to sell the Main Street Arena and take […]
Earlier this year, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control suspended popular watering hole Escafé’s license to sell mixed drinks for the seemingly oxymoronic problem of selling too much booze. In Virginia, where bars are prohibited by Prohibition-era regulations, licensees have to have 45 percent of their sales in food, and if customers prefer drinking […]
Teens in trouble Three young men were arrested for the spate of recent muggings around UVA. Pendarvis Marquette Carrington, 18, was charged with two counts of robbery, two for use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Two 17-year-olds were also charged. Wife killer […]
For most of us, wine and kombucha tea are totally different products and only an idiot would confuse them. Not for Gallo, the $4 billion corporation with a history of trademark bullying. In April it sued local mom-and-pop Barefoot Bucha purveyors Kate and Ethan Zuckerman on the grounds that their kombucha name and logo infringed […]
Chaps owner Tony LaBua spoke for those not in the thick of last week’s Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville coup: “I’m confused. Is George not president?” George Benford wasn’t chair at that point early in an August 17 DBAC board meeting, but within 45 minutes, he was elected co-chair, and Joan Fenton, who had […]