Acacia considers Rocketts Landing

Acacia’s closing its Carytown doors and looking for waterfront property, and, according to Style, “it’s not a secret that he’s one of at least three local chefs looking to Rocketts Landing as the next step in destination dining.”

Rocketts is building “a lively riverfront promenade with restaurants and shops right on the James…” according to the development’s website. It would be a great location for Acacia.

Rocketts is a promising project, which plans to mix residential and commercial development to promote a pedestrian-friendly environment.

“[S]tores and offices [will be] strategically intermixed with the neighborhood. People who live and work here will also enjoy conveniences such as dry cleaners, a pharmacy and grocery store all within walking distance.”

If you haven’t been out to the site of Rocketts Landing yet, I highly recommend a visit. They’ve worked an amazing transformation of the old industrial site with a mix of new construction and adaptive reuse of old warehouses. Pictures of their progress are available on their website.

I just hope its not as creepy as some other new urbanist developments. I recently visited “New Town” in Williamsburg which tries to create “a traditional town setting.” There’s Main St., lined with retail and apartments and surrounded by offices and housing. But if you peek behind Main St., there’s acres and acres of parking. It feels like the Truman show, one look behind the facade of the “traditional town” and you see that the “tradition” is purely manufactured. It does nothing to break the impact of our car dependence on town design.

Take a look at the site plan and you’ll see what I mean:

Hopefully, Rocketts will be able to avoid this fate as they build.

Here’s their site plan. It doesn’t look as bad as New Town, but there’s still a lot of room for cars (there’s parking decks that are unlabeled on the map as well as the surface lots):

At any rate, I wish success to any development that seeks to lessen our dependence on the automobile and I hope Acacia and Rocketts Landing can help each other succeed.

 

Harrison St. Coffee reopens

A fire closed Harrison St. Coffee a few weeks ago- but it’s back open for business.  Time to go get a beer-battered tofu sandwich.

 

New Restaurant Update: Canvas & Lighthouse Diner

Jake Crocker of development group Prodigy Partners stopped by my blog and commented about the progress they’re making on 2 new restaurants- Canvas on E. Broad and Lighthouse Diner on Hull St. in Manchester. I thought his update was news-worthy and deserving of more attention than it’s receiving as a comment on an old post, so I’m posting it here:

We are on schedule to open Canvas on Dec. 1st; we’re currently in the demo stage. The first floor will be a counter order cafe; mainly catering to the lunch crowd. The second floor will feature small art gallery, a couch and arm chair lounge area and a large glass ceiling atrium addition that will service the dinner and bar crowd. The third floor will feature another small art gallery, two private meeting/dining rooms and a rooftop deck that will have a spectacular view of the CNB tower looming overhead. We’re confident that Canvas will eject life back into that area just in time for the opening of the Hilton, Federal Courthouse and Richmond CenterStage. It will do to the city center area what the Tobacco Company did to Shockoe Slip and will give convention center visitors something to talk about when they go home other than the urban decay that currently exists outside the Convention Center’s door.

As for the Lighthouse Diner, we are working on it, but won’t put our full attention into that project until Canvas is up and running. Look for it to open in late 2008/early 2009. Old Manchester will be another Carytown, I encourage more people to set up shop with us down there.

Our group is dedicated to not only purchasing and renovating buildings in downtown Richmond, but to establishing thriving businesses that will accelerate revitalization of those areas.

Thanks,

Jake Crocker
Prodigy Partnership, LLC

Thanks to Jake for keeping us updated.

 

New Restaurant Announced for E. Broad St. Downtown

The 300 block of E. Broad St. will see a new 3-story restaurant opening by the end of the year.

According to the TD, who buried this story in an article about a suburban pharmacy, Prodigy Partners is planning a restaurant to be called Canvas at 306 & 308 E. Broad.

The art gallery-themed restaurant would occupy the two buildings on all three floors. A café would be on the first floor, a restaurant and full bar on the second floor and private dining and meeting rooms on the third floor.

No word on who the chef will be or what style food will be served, but the concept seems intriguing. An “art gallery-themed ” restaurant sounds like they’ll be trying to tie into the art renaissance further west on Broad, which would effectively draw that crowd further east than any other current galleries or restaurants.

Unfortunately the Prodigy Partner’s website Jake Crocker advertised in the comments section of this blog in an earlier post is still not live. So for now we’ll still have to rely on the media to alert us to new developments by this investment group.

 

Fire closes Harrison St. Coffee

I walked by Harrison St. Coffee Shop this morning and there was a paper sign taped up in the window saying “Closed until further notice.”

Next to it was a sign saying “Please deliver mail to Rumors next door.”  Rumors is a new clothing boutique.

So I stopped in Rumors to ask if they knew what was happening with Harrison St.  They said there’d been a fire and the cafe would be closed for several weeks while they determined what needed fixing.  But they assured me they plan to reopen as soon as possible.

Which is good because I’d miss their beer-battered tofu sandwich and fair-trade coffee. And good for their employees and owners too.

 

Carytown’s Viva Mexico- 2 mediocre reviews

Viva Mexico, Carytown’s only Mexican restaurant (Nacho Mama’s is Tex-Mex), has spanish-speaking staff, and typical Mexican-restaurant-in-the-States decor. But their food is not impressing many. I visited a while ago, but since I’ve decided to cede restaurant reviewing to other bloggers, I declined to post my opinions on-line. My own opinions are well-represented by the two recent reviews from the TD and local blogger RVA Foodie.

The TD reviewer sums up, “its food needs more pizazz to convert me from my current Mexican mainstays.” I disagree with her take on their chile rellenos, about which she wrote, “The chile relleno, however, was full of creamy queso and generously soaked in that tangy verde sauce.” I found the dish to be a disappointingly overcooked chile filled with unusually flavorless cheese. Otherwise, her experience and mine were very similar.

I scanned and posted Viva Mexico’s menu right after they first opened.  You can find it here.

RVA Foodie also offers up a review and personal experience with Aladdin’s in the same post, where I can personally recommend the Falafel combo pita with baba ganouj, an amazing combination of perfectly-cooked, crisp falafel complemented by the creamy, garlicy eggplant spread.

 

BlackFinn Restaurant & Saloon will open soon

BlackFinn, a restaurant slated to open soon at Riverside on the James, had a tent set up last night at Friday Cheers.  They promised a June 15th opening date.

They advertise themselves as an Irish saloon (and here I always thought of saloon’s as part of the “wild west” of America and pubs as Irish- shows you what I know.)  BlackFinn started in NYC, and Richmond will be their 10th location, 2nd in VA (Norfolk’s the other).

The list of groups who’ve booked events at the saloon should give you a sense of its character: the Junior League, Young Republicans, the Richmond Bar Association, and Parrotheads (I’m assuming the Jimmy Buffet fan-type of parrothead, I’d be delighted if I were wrong.)

Oh and they’ve got a website now too, complete with menu & prices:
http://www.blackfinnrichmond.com/home.html

While it doesn’t really look like my scene, I’m glad to see more life coming to the canal walk.

 

New Coffee Shop

So I happened upon a 6-week-old coffee shop this morning on Broad near Laurel St. (just west of Belvidere) called “Common Groundz.” They have a myspace profile, but no webpage.

They’re serving Bev’s Ice Cream, Zuppa soup & sandwiches, and in the fall will add Bottom’s Up Pizza to the menu. And their coffee’s fair trade.

Plus they’re hosting local music & poetry shows- 13 scheduled so far in June (schedule is available at their myspace profile).

Their support of local restaurants & artists makes them a great addition to the Richmond community. In their own words: “We promote Local Artists, Local Music, and Local Food in an effort to enrich our own community’s varied gifts and talents into this city and this place.”

And the owners have a story too:

[T]he owners of Common Groundz are persons in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. We are proud to say this in an attempt to dispel the belief that once an addict, always an addict. We are living examples of change and progress. We do become responsible, productive members of society. We welcome those of you in our community who choose to fellowship with those of us in recovery.

I hope the shop succeeds!

 

R.I.P.: 6th St. Marketplace

The city is finally pulling the plug on the last remnants of 6th St. Marketplace: the food court & a few city offices.  That’s a good thing, as the TD reports that the city was losing $600,000 to $800,000 each year on the building.

Wilder gave all tenants – private businesses as well as city agencies – 90 days to vacate.

Read the full story here, including the rather sad stories of folks who’re losing gobs of money they’ve invested in their businesses.

In terms of redeveloping the site, the TD reports, “Richmond officials say they intend to publicly solicit plans for redeveloping the property, owned by the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority.”

Let’s hope private developers can do what the city couldn’t.  There’s plenty of blame to go around for the failure of 6th St., but it should serve as a warning to all about the promises of elected officials that big-ticket publicly financed projects aren’t necessarily all they’re cracked up to be.  Again from the TD, “The building is all that remains of 6th Street Marketplace, envisioned as the catalyst for downtown renewal when it opened amid fanfare in 1985.”

In my opinion, there’s definitely a role for government in redevelopment of aging urban areas.  But we need to ask hard questions about feasibility and cost, and demand rigorous public scrutiny of the projects.

And as for the market remnants, I’m going to make one last nostalgic trip to remember the infrequent trips made there in my youth.  I can still see the kites and hear the bell signaling the public candy-making show at the Fudgery .

 

Finally: Southern Culture’s replacement

Southern Culture, the restaurant, that is.

Construction has started in the burnt-out building that used to house Southern Culture restaurant on Addison & Main.  I’ve been wondering what’s happening- and Style has the answers.

A “loungy diner” to be called DeLux will open soon.  Southern Culture’s owners, the Richmond Restaurant Group are creating the new place.  Not surprising to anyone who’s visited the Restaurant Group’s other restaurants (especially Lucky Buddha and Europa), it sounds like atmosphere will be at least as big a focus as the food:

DeLux will have sliding windows on two sides, an upstairs fireplace and bar, half-round booths downstairs near a central staircase and curvy bar, and eventually a patio with fireplace and seating for 30. Breakfast, lunch and dinner of the comfort-food variety will be served daily.

One more stop on the restaurant/bar-crawl on Main St. coming soon.