Retail and commercial vacancy rates in downtown Charlottesville are low and steady. The city’s Office of Economic Development shows the vacancy rate for ground-floor retail spaces on the Downtown Mall as ranging from about 2 percent to 4 percent during 2015. The Charlottesville branch of CBRE Commercial Real Estate offers a similar figure for downtown […]
Author Archives: Noah Zeidman
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Robin and Mani’s All Buddy Camp concludes second annual session
The Charlottesville and Albemarle County Parks and Recreation departments held the second annual Robin and Mani’s All Buddy Camp earlier this month. The camp was created in 2015 to honor Robin Aldridge, a special-needs preschool teacher, and her daughter, Mani, a Charlottesville High School student, who were both killed in December 2014. The weeklong session […]
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Albemarle County fifth graders get free visit to Monticello
In keeping with their mission to educate people about Thomas Jefferson, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation invited Albemarle County fifth graders and their families to Monticello Tuesday for free tours and activities. The fifth grade curriculum includes Virginia history, so the event was an appropriate capstone to the school year. Many of the students and family […]
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Effect of net neutrality ruling on broadband expansion in Albemarle unclear
The effect on Albemarle County of a U.S. appeals court decision that allows internet service to be considered a utility is still unclear, a county official said. The decision, handed down Tuesday, also supported the concept of net neutrality, the idea that providers may not offer faster service to high-paying customers or kneecap the internet […]
Posted inOur neighborhoods, Work/Life
Nine-story office complex with parking planned for Second Street
Developer Jay Blanton has announced plans for a 120,000-square-foot building at 323 Second St. SE, with five stories of office space over a four-story parking structure. Located just south of the Downtown Mall, the site includes Oliver Kuttner’s Glass Building and sits near his just-completed Treehouse building. Kuttner previously attempted to develop the site as […]
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VividCortex builds on success with $4.5 million in funding
SECOND IN A SERIES Charlottesville-based technology startup VividCortex recently announced $4.5 million in funding. New Enterprise Associates, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, led the funding round. The firm previously invested in another Charlottesville tech startup, PsiKick. VividCortex’s database performance monitoring product attracted the attention of NEA partner Harry Weller in 2012. “It […]
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Families making the move from waiting list to preschool classrooms
Kaci Cromwell’s son Adrian started preschool in March. He is one of 20 children who were placed into private preschools through grants from the Virginia Preschool Initiative. Cromwell had spent almost two years on waiting lists to get her son enrolled in a public preschool program. “He was kind of put on the back burner […]
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Local business community weighs in on Downtown Mall seating
Debates about public seating on Charlottesville’s pedestrian Downtown Mall have gone on for as long as the mall has existed. In April, the city’s Department of Parks & Recreation approached the Board of Architectural Review about replacing the mall’s remaining wooden chairs with backless benches. When the BAR called for the preservation of plentiful free […]
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Charlottesville startup DreamPower brings internship, energy efficiency efforts to CATEC
Local energy startup DreamPower is working with the Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center to offer students hands-on internship experience and decrease the school’s energy use. Founded by Alexander Bazhinov, a student at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, DreamPower assesses a customer’s energy use and installs new, more-efficient appliances, such as LED lights […]
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Charlottesville startup Foodio announces seed funding, expands throughout the region
Charlottesville-based online food-ordering startup Foodio recently announced it has raised $585,000 in local seed funding. Jaffray Woodriff, the CEO of Quantitative Investment Management and a Charlottesville resident, made the bulk of that investment with a $575,000 infusion of funds. Foodio’s founders approached Woodriff with their pitch after other companies recommended him as an investor. “We […]
