Coming soon: Hundreds of new workers and only 74 parking spaces

The Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, now under construction on the west end of the Downtown Mall, will provide office space for more than 600 workers. But it will include only 74 parking spaces. That drew the ire of a couple members of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, who grilled builders about a potential parking […]

Escafé has served as a gathering spot for many different groups

On the evening of Friday, February 5, artist Bob Anderson stands in the middle of Escafé, identifying the many people in the Escafé Opera murals that his wife, Dominique, painted for the restaurant in 1997 and added to in 2015. There’s the Andersons’ daughter, Adriana, a former server at the restaurant, and the Andersons’ two […]

Feeling blue: Local diner set for closure

  On a recent Sunday morning, a crowd of Blue Moon Diner patrons could be seen hovering outside the side door of the self-proclaimed “best little breakfast, sandwich, burger, dinner, live music, arm wrestling, vinyl record-playing, family-friendly neighborhood bar and activist spot” with menus in hand. Lovers of the eatery, a Charlottesville institution, are shoveling […]

ABC eyes Escafé—again

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 […]

The ratio: ABC regs threaten Escafé

Escafé is a popular place to get a drink, a place a group of people out on the town might choose for a nightcap later in the evening. “It’s an end-up place,” says owner Todd Howard. And that has the restaurant in trouble with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. That’s because to get […]