It’s a small world
The cute Mini Cooper becomes Charlottesville’s pet car du jour
It looks at you with the sad eyes of a puppy, its side mirrors like stubby ears yearning to be stroked. It lets out a sigh when you fire the ignition, and whistles as you back out. And you’re hooked.
So say members of Charlottesville’s newest pet-car club: the Mini Cooper scoopers.
At least a dozen of the throwback autos from the U.K. have popped up around town, and their owners, like members of a kennel association, all seem to know each other—if not by name then by color.
There’s a teal one with the white top, and the red-and-silver one on Parkway Street. Then there’s the gold-and-black one that lives off High Street. That’s Sherry Kraft’s. Her 13-year-old daughter urged her to buy the car.
“She thought they were just incredibly cool,” Kraft says. But it was test-driving a friend’s that convinced her the family needed to upgrade from their decidedly un-cool station wagon.
A car, after all, isn’t really about looks or price or even engineering, but about the feeling it exudes, and the Mini—with its very British slogan “Let’s Motor”—embodies that philosophy. Whether you’re into retro or not, you must admit the Cooper exudes hip.
And it has personality. Kraft, a psychologist, understands this. “It has a little face, with mournful eyes,” she says. “It makes you want to keep it clean.”
Mini’s makers have personality, too. Once more the smallest car on the road, the Cooper owes its rebirth to a few development geniuses at BMW, who rescued the car from 30 years of dormancy in 1998 and debuted the redesign at the Paris Auto Show two years later.
Their Web site’s—www.mini.com—message isn’t “BUY NOW!” It’s more like, no pressure, enjoy the ride: “We believe in test drives that cross state lines.” At its 75 dealers stateside, Mini doesn’t employ sales reps. Instead, it has “motoring advisers.”
Crown Mini of Richmond is the authorized dealer closest to Charlottesville. Salesman Steve Stankiewics says his Minis have been motoring off at a steady clip since they hit the U.S. market in March. “People are starting to veer away from the SUV thing,” Stankiewics says. “They want something more economical.”
Minis get 30 to 40 miles per gallon, but if you’re looking for a cheap pet, try the SPCA. The standard Cooper starts at about $17,000. Tack on another three grand and you can by the supercharged, six-speed Mini Cooper S.
Car and Driver magazine has given both versions mixed reviews: high marks for styling and handling, but demerits for engine performance—described as “choppy”—and interior functionality—“fussy.” None of that, though, has deterred drivers angling for that “yeah-baby!,” Austin Powers, spy-car feeling.
When he drives his Mini around town, Jim Brookeman, an MRI physicist at UVA, likes to listen to Cuban jazz and pretend he’s Michael Caine, who, by the way, attended high school with Brookeman.
A real, live Brit himself, Brookeman had a Union Jack decal plastered on the roof his black Mini. He was also the first person in Charlottesville to adopt one. He found it a year ago when it was only a showpiece.
For Brookeman, who owned an original Mini Cooper in his 20s and once drove it over the Alps, the nostalgia was too much to bear: “I came home and said to my wife, ‘I need the checkbook.’”—Robert Armengol
Rock this town
Musictoday.com move could revitalize Crozet
The former ConAgra food processing plant lies dormant along Three Notch’d Road on the eastern edge of Crozet. This town of 2,700 in western Albemarle was devastated when the factory closed and layed off about 650 people in 1999. In the near future, however, the sprawling, 126-acre complex of white buildings and crisscrossing pipes could wake up again, possibly humming with the business of rock and roll.
Coran Capshaw owns the ConAgra site and is eyeing it for the new home of Musictoday.com, an Internet company he founded to peddle t-shirts, concert tickets and all things rock. If the move happens, it could be a catalyst for change in Crozet, a town in the midst of a major evolution.
“The decision hasn’t been finalized, but we are certainly looking at the ConAgra facility as part of the long-term solution to our space needs,” says Jim Kingdon, who wins the Largest Nameplate award for his role as Musictoday’s executive vice-president of corporate strategy.
Kingdon says his company has outgrown its office and warehouse space off Morgantown Road in Ivy, where Musictoday opened in 1999. The company began when Capshaw, manager of the Dave Matthews Band, fused Red Light Communication with Red Light Distribution, the online and merchandising arms of the DMB corporate body. In a cover article on Musictoday [“So much to sell,” September 28, 1999], C-VILLE reported the company started with 40 or 50 employees and after a year was shipping an estimated 300 to 500 packages of t-shirts and CDs per day during the summer and holiday seasons.
Since then, Musictoday has added new high-profile clients, hosting online stores for the likes of Eminem and the Rolling Stones, and the company handles online ticketing for myriad bands, including Phish. Kingdon says that in addition to hosting official band web stores and fan clubs, the company will ship an average of 1,500 orders per day to music fans across the country in 2003. Between 100 and 120 people currently work at Musictoday, according to the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development.
“From what I understand, they’ve been ramping up,” says Bob DeMauri at the TJPED. Kingdon says Musictoday plans to make a decision on a new site and the move will be “under way” by January.
The move could play a significant role in Crozet’s changing identity. C-VILLE’s cover story on the Crozet Master Plan [“Albemarle 2020,” September 17, 2002] described how fast-growing subdivisions have become the most profitable crop in a town that used to be a rural farming outpost.
County planners expect Crozet will see more than 10,000 new residents in the next few years, and they have zoned Crozet to allow more single-family homes in swaths of land owned by Gaylon Beights and Steve Runkle, two major County developers. In July, two firms––Nelson-Byrd Landscape Architecture and Renaissance Planning Group––presented County officials with a plan for infusing the new subdivisions with commercial and business developments, with the premise that Crozet residents could live and work there instead of commuting to jobs in Charlottesville.
One of the Master Plan’s lead designers, landscape architect Warren Byrd, says the 375,000 square-foot ConAgra plant––which abuts the 325,000 square-foot industrial site formerly home to Acme Records––will be a major employment center. The hardest part about moving ideas from the drafting table to reality, however, is persuading the private sector to buy into the planners’ vision.
“Part of growth is just about momentum,” says Lane Bonner, the real estate broker who is trying to lease the Acme complex. Musictoday, he says, could be the catalyst that turns Crozet’s abandoned industrial sites into a hub for the kind of high-tech companies the area is hoping to attract. With more subdivisions and a golf course slated for the near future, Bonner predicts Crozet will evolve into “a viable business location.
“Right now Crozet is just a bedroom community,” says Bonner. “But [Musictoday] is probably the first of many major companies that will end up going out there.”––John Borgmeyer
Taking stock of the Market
Changes at the City Market fuel vendor concerns
Sweet onion tarts, blooming nasturtiums, pastries and tomatoes—Charlottesville’s City Market is the place to go for those hard-to-find, homemade goodies, plants and veggies. And now, with the recent dismissal of 15-year Market manager Judy Johnson and the formation of a controversial new band of Market caretakers, it’s also the place to go for half-baked, homegrown drama.
In November 2002, a small group of vendors banded together to form Market Central, Inc., a non-profit organization with the goal of finding a permanent home for the Market. Throughout its history the Saturday morning staple—currently celebrating its 30th year—has been something of a nomad, moving from outdoor venue to outdoor venue. It’s currently situated at the parking lot between Water and South streets, which is up for sale.
But Market Central is working to set up more permanent roots. Once the group is granted 501(c)3 status, it can accept donations from locals to make its mission a reality. “The Market is 30 years old and has just flown by the seat of its pants up until now,” says one Market Central member who refused to be identified. “Besides, people will take us much more seriously with money in the bank.”
But as the organization nears its one-year anniversary, some of its 50-plus members question what their $10 entry fee is paying for, and the end result of its original mission statement.
Part of that, some say, was the ousting of former director Johnson, who had come under fire for allegedly having a bad attitude, being tardy to the Market or not showing up at all.
“One of Market Central’s stated purposes was to get rid of Judy Johnson,” says John Cole, a 20-year Market vendor showing the most resistance to the up-and-coming Market Central. “And they’ve accomplished that—she simply doesn’t make a good bureaucrat.”
Johnson’s removal followed a July incident in which her van was stolen, along with Market paperwork and the registration forms—and social security numbers—of all Market vendors inside.
For irritated vendors running out of patience with Johnson, this was the mason jar of ecologically safe strawberry jam that broke the camel’s back. As Johnson wrote in her apology letter to Market vendors, “On July 14, there was a meeting with Johnny Ellen [Chief of Recreation for Charlottesville Recreation and Leisure Services] with members of Market Central at which I was not allowed to be present.”
Johnson says she was unaware of the secret meeting or that her job was in jeopardy. She was terminated one week later, even though her van was found, vendors’ ID numbers intact. Since then, the City Department of Parks and Recreation has run the Market, with no current plans to turn it over to Market Central.
Market Central officials insist the timing of their group’s formation was not a grab for power. Furthermore, some members of the group say that Market members who are wary of Central’s future Market plans are merely fringe members.
“Opinions from those who are marginally involved are not always informed,” says Darcy Phillips, a Market Central member who has sold her pottery at the Market for seven years. “The benefits of this are not yet apparent because the results aren’t in yet.”
The prospect of permanent new digs proves equally troubling for some—the Market’s evolution into a supermarket-style permanent structure could ruin its eclectic flavor.
“If you’re going indoors with a market,” says Sarah Lanzman, former Market vendor, “extra overhead can guarantee price increases,” adding that most vendors cannot make a year-long commitment to the Market.
“We see the big picture of Market Central on the wall,” says Cole, “and it doesn’t look good for all the vendors.”—Kathryn E. Goodson