Month: February 2011

It was all the way back in August when we reported Plan9 would be moving from its Albemarle Square location. The downsizing record store has found a new spot in the nearby strip Seminole Square, which puts it a little bit closer to town, but further from the highly stoppable Rio/Seminole intersection. They’re open for business as I type.

“We’ve been stuck in that very large space for quite a long time, and it’s way too big for us for what the Charlottesville market is these days," said Plan9 owner Jim Bland in August, of the store’s old location.

The move comes on the heels of news that the once-almighty Old Dominion music chain would look to downsize its flagship location in Richmond’s Carytown. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that like they’ll try to keep the store in the Carytown neighborhood, where they’ve been hawking tuneage since 1981.

But it’s been a tough few years for music retailers. A marketing firm called the Almighty Institute of Music Retail reported that 3,100 record stores closed between 2003 and 2008. Plan 9 lost locations in Roanoke, Lynchburg and Harrisonburg in 2009, Williamsburg this year and on the Corner in 2008.

Will you check out Plan9’s new location?

 
In his first year in office, Ken Cuccinelli demonstrated a knack for busting the traditional bounds of an attorney general. Health care? Carbon emissions? Abortion clinics? Gay rights? Cuccinelli craftily found ways to insert himself into each issue with his own lawsuits, rulings, and interpretations. Down in Richmond, some Democratic lawmakers are trying a new strategy to wall off Cuccinelli’s reach: Cut away his powers. Read this week’s cover story, on Cuccinelli’s pursuit of the big issues, right here, and don’t forget to leave comments.

Although raw data seems to highlight the flattening of the real estate market, the city’s residential property value assessments declined by an average .14 percent, while commercial properties saw a .79 percent drop. Combined, assessments decreased by .36 percent, the second straight year of decline for existing property values, according to the city.

Add $33 million in new construction, and the story is slightly different. Factored into the city’s overall properties, new construction increases the property assessment average by .63 percent.

Among the city’s 12,887 taxable residential properties, approximately 32 percent declined in value, while 39 percent held steady. City Assessor Roosevelt Barbour says that the decrease in value is directly related to the slow economy and added that, in his opinion, the real estate market will bottom out in 2013.