Chipotle & Panera coming to VCU

Rumor has it that Chipotle and Panera are coming to VCU- where the old Pizza Hut was on the corner of Grace and Laurel. Can anyone confirm or deny this news?  I cannot find anything online, but VCU students are all abuzz about it.

That’s the building under construction next to Hyperlink Cafe, which doesn’t seem a big enough space for both restaurants.

Chain restaurants are really taking hold in that part of town- 1 block away on Broad St. there’s Qdoba, 5 Guys, Tropical Smoothie, Extreme Pizza, Quizno’s, and a little further away on the corner of Belivdere and Cary there’s a new Chile’s.

**Update- rumor tentatively confirmed, read the comments for more info.

 

Other ways to save on gasoline costs

Now that Ukrop’s has made the newsworthy decision to reduce its “fuelperks!” gasonline discount from $0.10 to $0.05 per gallon, I thought I’d offer some helpful tips to Richmonders reeling from this blow to their budgets.

If you have a 15-gallon tank, you were saving $1.50 per tank (for every $50 spent at Ukrop’s).
Now you’ll be saving $0.75 per tank.

So I have some suggestions on how to save 3/4 of a dollar in gasoline costs:

1. Walk
2. Ride your bike
3. Carpool
4. Combine errands
5. Stop driving out of your way to the participating fuelperks! gas stations
6. Stop driving everywhere all the time

If you do one of those once a week on one of your regular errands, I can guarantee you will make up those lost savings.

And you’ll be doing the state VDOT budget a favor by lessening the strain on our roads (and then maybe they wouldn’t have to keep raising tolls).

And you’d be doing our lungs a favor by sending less pollutants into our shared air.

And you’d be doing your health a favor by excercising more (applies to options 1 & 2 only).

As you longtime Urban Richmond readers know, I hate cars. They’re a scourge on our urban landscape.

 

Happy New Year Richmond

Positive changes coming in Richmond in 2009:

• Affordable housing and environmental sustainability finally merge: all Habitat houses built in Richmond will be Earth Craft certified, something that Better Housing Coalition has been doing for 2 years already.  Look for 300 or more affordable units to be built by these 2 non-profits this year.
• Legend Brewery expanding.
  “The Nielsen Co., a consumer research firm, considers beer one of the most recession-resistant consumer products.”  They’ll start creating 6-packs and increasing production.
• The new Bogart’s location is almost open. Good news for live music fans!
  
• Richmond finally gets a good Indian restaurant (good, at least, according to Style).
  And it’s in an old Aunt Sarah’s I used to frequent in high school.  I’ll be sure to review it here when I get there.
• 9 restaurants opening near downtown (from Rocketts Landing to Grove & Libbie) – including ceviche & tapas bar, another Carytown sushi spot, more soul food, and more.
  

And last, but certainly not least, Richmond enters 2009 a much safer city than it has been in years.  Though I haven’t seen a final tally, our murder and violent crimes rates have dropped tremendously.

 

It’s cold…

And my pipes are frozen.
I’ve been under the house with a hair dryer all morning and have managed to get one sink working.  I’m wondering if it would be really dangerous to put a space heater under there so I can stay inside.

The joy of old, historic, uninsulated homes.

 

Cheap food & drink

I am a food snob.  I like to drink.  I’m also a cheapskate, which means I hunt down every restaurant special I can find.  I would love to see a directory of local restaurants that lists when they offer specials and what they discount.  Here’s where you come in- what are your favorite food and/or drink specials in the city?

While I’ve been thinking about this for years, it’s Style’s “Short Order” restaurant news section that reminded me of my goal with its report on a new special at Julep’s:

Deal at Julep’s

Early birds get a discount off the entire check at Julep’s New Southern Cuisine, one of the little jewels of Shockoe Bottom for its creative fare, professional service and two-level, fireplace-lighted dining rooms and bar. Owner Amy Cabaniss offers a flat 20 percent off the entire dinner check for parties of four or fewer who reserve tables Mondays through Thursdays, 5:30-6:30 p.m. 1719 E. Franklin St. 377-3968. www.juleps.net.

Other specials:

• Sam Miller’s: $0.75 oysters during Thur. & Fri. happy hour (4-8?)
• 821: Thursday is happy hour all day (with Legend on tap!)
• Cafe Gutenberg: Wed. is half-price wine night
• Sticky Rice: half-price sushi on Fri. (5-6) and Mon. (10:30-12:30)
• Capital Ale House: cheap domestic drafts ($2-3) on Sundays (1-5); $1 burger night on Mondays (no sides included)
• Que Pasa (church hill): also has $1 burger nights on Mondays

Additions, please…

 

Ugly History

Some of Richmond’s troubling and painful history are being uncovered in Shockoe Bottom.  The Times-Dispatch led off its article about the Lumpkin’s Jail excavation with one of the most disturbing discoveries:

With young black men used as bait, dogs were trained to track and pursue runaway slaves in the cobblestone courtyard of a Richmond slave jail….The cobblestone courtyard was referenced in the writings of 19th-century author and abolitionist Richard Henry Dana, said Philip J. Schwarz, a member of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission.

“The dogs would accompany the coffle [a group chained together] taking people south. If somebody tried to run away, they let the dogs loose,” Schwarz said. “It was part of the brutality.”

Of course, the excavation sheds light on a contested section of our city: Shockoe Bottom.  Debates have been ongoing for years now about what to do with this land.  McQuinn, the current chair of the city’s Slave Trail Commission, proclaims that these findings will factor in whatever development happens in the area:

[McQuinn] said it was too early to discuss a developer’s plans for a baseball stadium and condominiums in the area, but that they would continue to pursue their goals “not be deterred by a developer’s plans.”

“Richmond will speak loud and clear what they want for this particular area,” McQuinn said.

As always, I hope that meaningful public participation will be part of any development plan for the area.

And I hope that in this city so filled with history, some kind of public memorial will be built for this history we’ve buried for too long.

 

RVA Blogs: clean up your act! A few friendly suggestions

I have been thinking recently of getting back into the blogging world, dropping my anonymity and expanding (slightly) the scope of Urban Richmond. I can think of no better way of ramping back up than posting a guest author’s thoughts on blogging in Richmond, which is what follows below.

Jason Guard/RVA Foodie asked me to post this on his behalf  so that he doesn’t distract students/teachers (who, along with RVA Blogs form the subject of his post) who are just getting introduced to his blog. Here it is:

I have a couple, relatively minor, gripes with the RVA Blogs website. I bring up the topic of “what’s wrong with RVA Blogs” because it’s a lot easier to level a few bits of constructive criticism as opposed to a verbose solilique on the benefits of Richmond’s virtual community that manifests under this convenient URL. Also, I don’t mean to be insensitive, especially considering that RVA Blogs most popular author just offered some pointed feedback about the new layout of the sister site, RVANews.com. Never having met, Ross or Val, I still don’t think it’s appropriate to pick on them as they just gave birth to a three month old baby (10.5 lbs!).

Disclaimers aside, I mostly wanna tell a little story. On Tuesday, I was the guest speaker at a local ESOL class (English for Speakers of Other Languages – formerly known as ESL). They wanted me to talk about blogging. The class is experimenting with some online writing assignments and they just happen to be planning a field trip to a restaurant, so my talk served as a good intro to an upcoming bit of homework. The talk went really well and the group was pretty engaged (to the degree that they actually understood me). But it could have gone better… Why?

As I prepared some mental notes before heading over to the the adult school, I popped by RVA Blogs to see if I had anything in the popular posts list that I could use as a segue. It would be great to show the class how many blogs there are in Richmond and lure them into blogging with the expectation of gaining exposure (and building community) through RVA Blogs. At the very least, they could practice their reading skills on the pithy posts of In Vino Veritas, or bask in the common language of d’amor at Jack Goes Forth. Well, on second thought, I better clarify that anyone can say anything on their blog (and they/we often do). But wait, what’s this?

As I scanned the list of Popular Posts, I came across one titled “Erotic Photography from Le Chagrin.” Uh oh. I don’t want the class to see this projected on the wall. Someone’s gonna tell me to click it. Well, I’m sure it’s innocent enough (I think to myself as I click the link while sitting at my desk – AT WORK). I’m taken to a site that I had been to recently, where a guy who was layed off from the RTD forecasts the demise of the paper. This time around, he’s posting porn. Well, I guess you’d have to be the judge. The booty shots and the implied cunnilingus would probably be rated R. But the one with the spread eagle lady with a guy’s blank in her blank (think proctology exam)… um, that X rated contra-ban is gonna get me in trouble if anyone thinks I walked into a public school and pointed people in that direction.

Damn. I really could have used RVA Blogs as a convenient example of the potential of Web 2.0 applications. I poked around the aggregator looking for ways to circumvent the link to erotic photography. The more I looked over the site, it started to seem like a much less appealing example. The blog roll of postings is dominated by spam from corporate sites (Elliot in the Morning, RTD’s numerous “blogs,” Ellwood’s filabustering hot bar advertisements). The independent voices hardly come through. Sure, the unrepresentative abundance of right wing postings may be a thorn in my craw. And the alleged popularity of these costume blogs where wierdos get off portraying themselves as buffoons makes me shake my head in dismay. But I still believed that RVA Blogs would be a good place to direct those looking to learn about the personal perspectives that make up our city.

Instead of talking about RVA Blogs, I gave examples of professional blogs vs. personal blogs. Then I provided an example of a community blog (CHPN), highlighting the potential for discussion. The class seemed to like the idea of posting on a site where they aren’t solely responsible for the content. So, I played up the multi-purpose functions of blogs, from recipes to food reviews, from baby pictures to political diatribes: something for everyone. Maybe they would choose to self-publish after all. If there was one concern, it was the fear of writing in isolation, the need for their valuable time to go towards interaction, which will further their fluency. Hence, the need for connection, a la RVA Blogs.

Recommendations:

• Remove all corporate pseudo-blogs that clutter the site.
• Post some basic terms for aggregation (include “no hate speech”, and adult material should be hidden under “adult only” disclaimer screens – which most blog software includes, right? and maybe something about activity level to remain listed).
• Create a separate list called “RVA Bizarro Blogs” where people can access those sites where the author pretends to be some convenient butt of jokes demographic (gap toothed women, religious zealot folk singers, and bartender jiggalos – sorry Jack, your promiscuity is too far fetched to be believed).
• Otherwise, manage the site in whatever way is sustainable and consistent with the Catrow morals and the Bill of Rights.

 

What if the bus were free?

Would anyone in Richmond ride it ?

Apparently, if you’re a U of R employee, the answer is no.

I heartily applaud the new president’s efforts to green the campus and hand out free bus passes to employees. However, only 97 of 1500 employees had accepted the offer when the TD published their story on Saturday. That’s just over 6% of folks taking a FREE bus pass- never mind how many actually ride the bus.

30-40 employees were regular bus riders before the program began. So about 60 people may be enticed onto the bus. Which, don’t get me wrong, is fabulous. I’d just hope for more.

 

New downtown highrise proposed

A 10-story or taller high rise to extend over the expressway and the RMA parking deck? Maybe. People are talking, but nothing’s certain yet.

A surface parking lot between 9th & 10th on Canal has been under contract since early this year, according to the TD.

An RMA exec said the adjacent RMA parking deck “was built in anticipation that someday there would be a high-rise building adjacent to that deck and actually cantilevering over a part of our air rights.”

The deck was built 16 years ago. Slow down that development pace! We can’t keep up!

Cantilever. An unfortunately underused word for the common building practice of building overhanging structures without external bracing. And that’s what they’re talking about doing over the deck and possibly the expressway. But I say, don’t hold your breath. The number of proposals flying around this town that don’t come to fruition is depressing.

Until they name a developer, which city and RMA officials aren’t yet doing, I refuse to get excited.

 

Residences at John Marshall: Coming Soon?

The Hotel John Marshall, long-rumored to be slated for some kind of adaptive re-use (condos? apartments? hotel? a mixture?), now has its own website indicating that someone’s still planning for the place.

The website is long on design and short on details.  In fact, there are no details to be found.  But you can see cool old pictures, and learn that the name is “Residences at Hotel John Marshall.”

The Monroe Ward community news site reported on some rumors several days ago:

The John Marshall is expected to be under renovation in early summer. The rooftop sign will be airlifted to The Diamond, restored and re-mounted after construction is completed. First Market Bank will establish a branch there as well as a grocery store (Ukrops?) and other commercial space will be available. Across Franklin (where the barber shop is presently located), all buildings from mid-block to and including the ugly one on the corner of 6th and Franklin will be demolished and a garage for tenants will be erected on the lot. Dominion Partners is the developer.

The place, to be called The Residences at the John Marshall, is either a condo development or will be apartments.

Commenters indicated that Ukrop’s is a no, unsurprising in terms of their latest downtown failure, and that First Market is a maybe.  No sources were named, however, so take it all with a grain of salt.

At the very least, while we stare at the giant vacant high-rise building, we can go to the website, hear some nice old-timey jazz, and see what Richmond used to look like.  Here’s hoping the future looks better (and more racially integrated).