Month: June 2013

Categories
Living

Amazing Grace Estate: The Crozet winery is setting the bar for true Virginia terroir

Nature nurture: Grace Estate's winemaker, Jake Busching, takes a sustainable approach to vineyard management, eschewing the use of harsh chemicals and pesticides. Photo: Christian Hommel

Having a storied and prolific history of grape production doesn’t guarantee a winery’s success, and to suggest so is unfair to the vintners and vineyard managers who have labored to perfect their crafts. But starting a winery at a farm that already boasts some of the oldest and most vigorous vines in the region can certainly give you a leg up on the competition.

With the opening of Grace Estate Winery at the scenic Mount Juliet Farm in Crozet, owner John Grace and winemaker Jake Busching aim to do just that, and from the early look of things, they are well on their way to accomplishing their goal of establishing a sustainable, terroir-driven, Virginia winery.

While it is technically true that Grace Estate Winery is brand new, having just opened its doors to the public this past April, it is inherently evident as you approach the converted barn that serves as both the winery and satellite tasting room (plus an old silo that’s home to a handful of park benches and some truly wicked acoustics) that this is not just some upstart operation. Not only are there already a few vintages available for public consumption, but the vastness of the 55-acre vineyard in addition to the size and thickness of the vines themselves suggest that some serious viticulture is well underway.

Mount Juliet Farm has been a major player on the Virginia wine scene for nearly two decades, having first planted vitis vinifera in the mid-’90s, and it’s proved to have the ideal growing conditions to support what has now ballooned to 14 different varietals, including the usual suspects like viognier, chardonnay, cabernet, merlot, and petit verdot, but also more exotic and enticing varietals like chenin blanc, pinotage, and tannat.

The term winegrower reflects a person who oversees all aspects of the winemaking process. It is a holistic approach that places as much, if not more, importance on what goes on in the vineyard as the winery. Busching embodies this identity. He doesn’t fancy himself a great winemaker and will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t subscribe to the tricks of the trade that many modern winemakers employ to further extract and manipulate their juice in an effort to cater to the mighty critics who aim to homogenize wine by overemphasizing its most obvious characteristics.

Outside of occasionally adding a little sugar or tartaric acid to keep the pH in check, Busching tends to let nature take its course, and allow the hard work that he’s put into the vineyard speak for itself. Under his guidance, Grace Estate takes the sustainable approach to vineyard management: It eschews the use of chemicals whenever possible, preferring a specialized lawnmower to maintain unwanted undergrowth in the vineyard instead of the harmful sprays and pesticides that most wineries opt for. Of course, none of this would matter if the final product didn’t speak for itself, and in that regard the wines from Grace Estate more than deliver. Achieving the extraction and structure that only vines of considerable maturity can produce, the six estate-grown wines currently being offered in the tasting room are well worth the trip.

The Le Gras Cuve and Le Gras Baril are Grace Estate’s version of the respective white and red table wines that have become so synonymous with the region. They are both soft, fruity, and outright drinkable, but it is the single varietal offerings that truly excite. Grace Estate is currently limited to pouring viognier, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, and tannat, which has proven to thrive in the heat and humidity of summer in central Virginia. However, the number will likely increase as Busching continues to experiment with new varietals in a push to ramp up production to between 5,000 and 6,000 cases over the next few years. While things are sure to change as the winery grows and the newly planted varietals come into their own, the current stars are the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2012 Viognier (see sidebar).

Grace Estate Winery is still growing and exploring ways to make its own mark on Virginia wine. With tons of activity happening throughout the vineyard, ranging from the renovation of the old castle that sits atop Mount Juliet into a permanent, state of the art tasting room with breathtaking views of the entire vineyard, to a team of geologists pulling soil samples to best determine why certain grapes thrive in one area of the vineyard but not others, the groundwork is being laid for a truly exceptional winery experience. While only time will tell what heights Grace Estate will actually reach, the ceiling is sky high and the silo will be full in no time.

Two to try

2012 Viognier: Executed in a style that veers slightly from the traditional Virginia viognier, this viognier quickly engulfs the glass with pure, floral esters and finishes with tons of ripe, white stone fruits and minerality. It retains a lively acidity that is often overpowered by the oak treatment given to most viogniers in the area, and, as a result, it’s one of the rare Virginia wines that is great by itself but actually may improve with food. ($22.95)

2010 Cabernet Sauvignon: Talk about extraction! Boasting all of the currant and cassis that one would expect from a good cabernet, with well-integrated, yet still prevalent tannins, it is a true representation of a great vintage in Virginia. ($29.95)—Andrew Cole

Categories
News

Local HUD-funded programs to see deep cuts

C'erra Rhodes works on a word puzzle at Computers4Kids. Students from low-income families get mentoring help at the Charlottesville nonprofit, which relies on dwindling support from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Photo: Annalee Grant

A Cherry Avenue crosswalk connecting residents to a busy park. New affordable housing units. An after-school study and job-prep program for city kids.

The effects of federal Department of Housing and Urban Development grants can be seen all over Charlottesville. But with a range of HUD programs on the chopping block and facing cuts of up to 50 percent this year, many projects—housing and otherwise—are facing a serious squeeze.

Each year HUD doles out grant money based on census figures. In 2010, Charlottesville received $1,007,754 from the HOME Program, which designates funds for affordable housing projects. That amount has been cut to $534,766 in 2013. The Community Development Block Grant Program, a HUD funding source that supports a number of local efforts that go beyond the scope of housing, brought $579,630 in 2010 and has fallen to only $407,522 this year.

City of Charlottesville Grants Coordinator Melissa Thackston has the difficult job of deciding which programs will be funded each year. She said that because many area nonprofits use the federal funds as matching dollars to leverage other funding from different sources, the loss of HUD money creates a domino effect.

“It’s a sort of double-cut for our community,” she said.

The Thomas Jefferson Community Land Trust, which offers housing assistance to families earning 80 percent less than the area median income, was able to build four affordable housing units since 2008, thanks to an initial grant from the HOME Program that they were able to use to match other funds.

Frazier Bell, chair of the TJCLT board, said the trust wouldn’t be here without those initial funds.

“The fact that all these funds are drying up and going away is going to be an extreme hardship on not just us,” he said.

While $1 million from HUD may not seem like a huge number, only 15 percent of the dwindling funding can go to social programs that rely heavily on the extra revenue. Thackston is worried about the impacts.

“Logically we can assume the number of people that will receive help will be cut in half,” she said.

At Computers4Kids on Second Avenue SE, some of those people—local teenage students who qualify for free and reduced lunch—gather regularly for technology and job skills training. Three years of HUD grants have helped the center expand its mentoring services to high schoolers, offering computer classes and job interview skills. Before that, said Kala Somerville, the organization’s executive director, the program ended after eighth grade.

“We were cutting them loose at a time in their lives that was very difficult,” Somerville said.

And while the Community Block Grant funds are still flowing to Computers4Kids, these days, a dollar spent in one place amounts to a dollar less for another group attempting to give poorer residents a leg up.

That leaves a big question for Thackston as she sorts through grant applications each year, divvying up the increasingly scant federal support: “Do you want to fund one project and make a really big impact, or do you want to spread those funds out?”—Annalee Grant

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: His Girl Friday

Enjoy a star-studded trip to 1940s Hollywood with the suave Cary Grant and glamorous Rosalind Russell in a special screening of Howard Hawks’ classic screwball comedy, His Girl Friday. Adapted from Broadway hit The Front Page, the film features a hard-boiled newspaper editor who learns his ace reporter ex-wife is set to marry a bland insurance man, and he must pull out every trick in the book to sabotage the wedding.

Thursday 6/27  $7.50-10.50, 7:30pm. Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 W. Market St. 977-4911.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Gary Allan

Often appearing on stage in faded tees and ripped jeans, Gary Allan embodies the homegrown simplicity of country music. Injecting elegance into lyrics laden with manly understatement, Allan’s unpolished voice tells the stories of everyday life, love, joy, and pain. In his latest release, Set You Free, the California native proves that raw, unadulterated emotion takes on entirely new depth when dressed up in torn denim and tattoos.

Thursday 6/27  $35-56, 6pm. nTelos Wireless Pavilion, 700 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4910.

Categories
News

Dominion rolls out solar purchase program

Sigora Solar employees install solar panels on a commercial roof. Founder Andy Bindea says Dominion Power’s new solar purchase program could be a boon for customers. Photo: Sigora Solar.

Dominion Virginia is wading into the renewable energy credit market, and it’s offering its customers a way to cash in.

Andy Bindea, co-founder of Waynesboro-based residential and commercial solar installation company Sigora Solar, said Dominion’s new solar power purchase program, launched June 20, is a big step for sustainable energy in the Commonwealth. The power giant will be buying power from customers at a premium, he explained, “so the system gets paid off faster, and the return on investment percentage is higher. It makes the solar energy system a whole lot more attractive.” And that’s good for customers, the planet, and companies like his.

Until now, something called “net metering” was the only option for Dominion customers looking to save by going solar, said Bindea, who created Sigora in 2011 with leftover funds from his Piedmont Virginia Community College engineering scholarship. Under the old setup, said Bindea, “if the consumption is less than the production, the excess goes back into the grid and the meter literally spins backwards and generates a credit, kilowatt hour for kilowatt hour.”

With the new approach, people with solar arrays will buy power as usual from Dominion for the standard rate of 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour. But they’ll also sell all the energy they produce back to the company for 15 cents per kilowatt hour, meaning if their production matches their consumption, they can make a tidy little profit —and ultimately make their solar installation more affordable. The company has agreed to lock into the rate with participating customers for five years.

Sigora estimates the average-sized Virginia household consuming an average of 6,038kwh per person over the life of the program could generate about $3,600.

So why is Dominion selling low and buying high? The idea, said Bindea, is to encourage the creation of a network of mini rooftop power plants, which all generate not just electricity, but renewable energy credits, or RECs.

“A REC is basically the bragging rights that get attached to a bucket of energy,” said Bindea. A whole mini-economy has sprung up around the sale and trade of credits, which power companies can purchase to offset dirtier energy production, so those bragging rights are valuable enough that Dominion is willing to buy customer-produced buckets of solar at a premium so it can claim the RECs that come along with them.

If that seems like a convoluted and confusing way to ramp up green power use, Bindea says he hears you. He also pointed out that Dominion is taking a small first step. It’s only committed to doing three megawatts worth of purchasing, and admission into the program is on a first-come, first-served basis.

“It’s far from perfect, and we wish we’d see a whole lot more involvement from the state, but this is a step in the right direction,” he said. “If we look at it from an environmental standpoint, every single kilowatt hour that gets produced from a renewable energy source versus coal that gets mined from a mountain is a step forward. We keep pushing them in the right direction, and we’re going to get somewhere eventually.”

“It makes the solar energy system a whole lot more attractive,” said Sigora Solar founder Andy Bindea.

Categories
Living

A labor of love: Tradition prevails in classic, slow-cooked risotto

Taste test: Fleurie’s pan-roasted beef tenderloin, red wine risotto, and garden vegetables (top) and Caffe Bocce’s seared scallops, string green peas, edamame, and bacon (below) are both delectable local options for the slow-cooked dish. Photos: Elli Williams

In the vast and varied repertory of Italian cuisine, one dish stands above all others for its versatility and humble beginnings (in my Italian eyes at least). Risotto is the quintessential fare of la cucina povera, or the poor man’s meal. All you really need is rice and some sort of liquid and together they make a warm, creamy dish that can satisfy the emptiest of bellies.

I am a risotto snob. I have eaten risotto, great risotto, all my life. I watched my grandmother Piera at the kitchen stove, juggling pans of homemade broth and a large, old, dented stockpot that she only used to cook risotto. My most vivid memories are of her strong arms stirring the rice with a long wooden spoon. She would stand by the stove vigorously mixing for what seemed like hour-long minutes, the action solely interrupted by the pouring of chicken broth and a quick taste from the spoon, before she returned to her task of stirring. By her facial expression alone, I could tell whether my cousins and I were close to sitting down at the dinner table or if we had an extra 30 minutes of playtime. Still, often it was all I could do to avoid staring at her, admiring the passion and focus she applied to making what she knew was my favorite dish.

Photo: Elli Williams
Photo: Elli Williams

There are disparate theories as to how rice got to Northern Italy (the consensus seems to be that it was brought to the plains near Milan from Naples), but once there, it took hold in people’s daily and regional cuisine. What my grandmother prepared was risotto alla Milanese, the version of risotto that is identified with the region of Northern Italy where I was born, near Milano. It’s risotto cooked with saffron and finished with a dollop of butter and scoopfuls of Parmesan cheese. (This traditional recipe has morphed into several related iterations, such as risotto with Porcini mushrooms and saffron, with sausage and peas, etc.).

Not all types of rice will make a good risotto. Arborio rice, a short-grain white rice rich in starch and with an Italian pedigree, is the preferred and most commonly used type in kitchens around the world. A high-starch content is what gives risotto its creaminess and the secret to a creamy risotto is the addition of liquid in small batches. The starch naturally contained in rice will reduce liquids into some form of a sauce, little by little—hence the stirring. If you leave the rice unstirred for a period of time, you’ll get a doughy concoction or a burned bottom of the pan. (I have learned the hard way in both cases.) Getting the rice to the right consistency is the most difficult and labor intensive task. If the rice bubbles up and is coating the pan with a layer of starch, the risotto is in perfect condition.

Although you could add pretty much any ingredient to the dish, risotto always starts the same way: a soffritto of onion or garlic cooked in extra virgin olive oil for a few minutes, or until translucent. The rice is then added and cooked, or roasted, until it is coated with the onion/garlic mush. It is at this point that the liquid is added. Vegetable or chicken broths are most commonly used to release the starch, and depending on the preferred recipe, fruit juices can add a whimsical and unexpected element to the dish. Risotto with squid ink, which turns rice black and has a distinctive fishy flavor, is the ultimate radical approach for this simple dish—and is quite tasty.

If you ask any Milanese, she will tell you that the best risotto recipe belongs to someone in her family. In mine, it belongs to my aunt Rosanna. Her risotto with pears is extraordinarily delicate: a velvety rice cream with melt-in-your-mouth pear bits and an aftertaste of orange juice, which she uses to caramelize the fruit and rice grains before pouring the broth.

Charlottesville has some impressive versions of risotto, either as a side or a main dish, to satisfy discerning palates—even mine.

Fleurie’s red wine risotto is served to complement pan-roasted beef tenderloin, something to try if you haven’t. Fruit juices elevate the flavor profile of a simple and humble risotto to the levels of haute French cuisine.

Tavola offers a beet-leek risotto as a bed for its mouthwatering capesante ai ferri, pan-roasted sea scallops—the perfect sweet and savory combination.

Caffe Bocce’s scallops and risotto is a refreshing dish for the summer.

Still, if you want to try cooking risotto at home, don’t be deterred by the time commitment. From mise en place to final product, you can expect to spend no less than 25 minutes at the stove; if you want extra creamy risotto, make that 45. But using a pressure cooker, like I do, will cut that time in half. Although frowned upon by purists (sorry, Grandma!), a pressure cooker is an effective alternative to the stovetop method. Just add all the ingredients, seal the pot, and wait 15 minutes.

Categories
News

Green happenings: Charlottesville environmental news and events

David Via holds a mushroom
David Via inspects a mushroom found on a foraging outing in the George Washington National Forest. Photo: Graelyn Brashear

Each week, C-VILLE’s Green Scene page takes a look at local environmental news. The section’s bulletin board has information on local green events and keeps you up to date on statewide happenings. Got an event or a tip you’d like to see here and in the paper? Write us at news@c-ville.com. 

Fun guys: Love mushrooms? Want to learn how to forage for your own? Join Mark Jones of Sharondale Farm for an expedition on Saturday, June 29. Meet at 8:30am at Piedmont Virginia Community College for an introduction to the area’s seasonal wild mushrooms, and then pile into a few cars to find your own in the woods. Don’t forget a knife, magnifying glass, and field guide. For more information, contact PVCC at (434) 961-5354.

Good night: If catching lightning bugs is at the top of your list of favorite summer activities, check out next Tuesday’s event at the Ivy Creek Foundation Natural Area. Join your fellow insect lovers (children included) at 8:30pm on Tuesday, July 2 for a night-time talk about the biologies of fireflies and moths. Don’t forget a flashlight, so you can try your hand at luring the bugs in.

No artificial colors: On Saturday, June 29, join Pat Brodowski for a two-hour workshop on how to create and use natural dyes. Bring a t-shirt or piece of wool and learn how to make dyes from plants like indigo, goldenrod, and onion. Crafters of all ages are welcome. For more information check out http://www.monticello.org/site/visit/events/natural-plant-dyes-workshop.

Categories
Living

The itchy and scratchy show: Seriously, what’s up with all the fleas?

File photo.

Fleas are completely awful. I try to reserve some respect for nature, and I suppose fleas must have their place, but they aren’t the sort of thing that inclines a person to wax poetic about the circle of life. They are ugly, itchy, and can multiply from one to thousands in a few weeks. They drink blood, poop in your pet’s fur, and carry tapeworm. And those are the relatively nice things. Remember when they helped kill half of Europe in the 1300s?

Luckily, we’ve grown very adept at killing the little buggers. The safety and efficacy of modern flea preventatives is extraordinary. There are a variety of products available for fleas, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some are squirted onto your pet’s skin. Some are taken orally. Some kill fleas faster. Some just kill them in a different way. The list of flea products is long and confusing, and getting bigger by the day.

The size of that list makes it impossible to give a single “best choice,” and you should speak with your veterinarian about what makes sense for your situation. But here’s the truth: If you don’t want your pets to have fleas, your pets don’t need to have fleas. Somewhere in that list is a product that can safely be used to solve your problem.

And this is where the frustration sets in. You’ve been using a preventative, but are still seeing fleas. What gives? Do you have super fleas? Are fleas developing resistance to preventatives? These questions are frequently answered with wild speculation, leading to even more frustration and confusion. As of now, absolutely no resistance has been found (and make no mistake, researchers have been looking). That’s not to say it can’t develop in the future. We’ve all seen Jurassic Park. Life finds a way. But as of 2013, fleas are as vulnerable to preventatives as they ever were.

If it’s not resistance, then what is it? Truth is, it’s a lot of things. The biggest, perhaps, is that flea preventatives aren’t magic, despite what their manufacturers tell you. Commercials show green cartoon ninjas swinging in to destroy the invading hordes in a flurry of kitanas and throwing stars. Needless to say, these products do not actually use ninja-based technology, and pet owners frequently aren’t advised of their limitations. One dose doesn’t solve the problem. Established infestations can take months to fall into retreat, and will come back quickly if preventatives are discontinued. Fleas leave cocoons containing their horrid little offspring all over the place, and they can remain viable for months, springing back to life as soon as they get the chance.

Once you have fleas, you can’t just fight them on an as-needed basis. Every animal in the home needs to be protected, or they will just find somewhere else to live. And even with prevention, fleas can still hop onto your pet for a little while. They won’t live very long, but you’re still likely to see them until the environmental supply has been wiped out. Buying one or two doses of preventative when you spot some fleas is a waste of money. Getting rid of fleas is a war of attrition, not a blitz. If you feel like your product isn’t working, it may just be that it’s not working the way you expected it to.

If a large part of the problem comes from the environment, it stands to reason that controlling the environment is a good idea. With established infestations, I always recommend a thorough vacuuming of the home. Those cocoons I mentioned earlier literally glue themselves to carpet fibers, so make sure your vacuum has a rotating brush to loosen their grip. Linens should be run through a hot wash to reduce their numbers even further.

A final word on safety. Many pet owners are concerned about the use of chemicals and poisons on their pets. I can’t argue the basic point. Fleas are pests, and they are killed with pesticides. But that simple statement doesn’t have enough resolution to see the situation as it is. On a daily basis, I see dogs and cats suffering miserably with fleas—perpetually distracted, unable to sleep, and tearing their own skin to shreds. Used properly, the current generation of flea preventatives is remarkably safe, and just as remarkably effective. Natural alternatives (ranging from garlic to brewer’s yeast) are well-intentioned, but ultimately futile. I wish they worked, but they really don’t.

Fleas have been pestering animals since long before pets had veterinarians. The good news is we finally have the tools to stop them. We just need to use them correctly.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since.

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Editor’s Note: How do you define power?

Toan Nguyen wants to harness the collective power of small businesses in his cooperative, C'ville Central. Photo: Ashley Twiggs

Power. Hah. It’s a construct. A misconception. A vision of the world with puppet strings. True power is in God’s hands, or it is the electric-water life force that runs through all things, as evident in the beating of the butterfly’s wings as in the groaning Grand Coulee Dam. Power cannot be a human depth chart.

And yet, the minute we think we can move things, the instant we choose to strive, the depth chart becomes real, and we are vulnerable to its force. At that moment, the man on the top floor in the corner office with the window that looks down on the world can make your livelihood go away by clicking “send.”

At that point, so many eventualities fall into place between him and you that, at times, you feel totally powerless, even to improve the fortunes of your children, much less to pick your own path. Like many other things that are important, the truth about power is paradoxical. It cannot be what it seems to be, but it is.

When I was a naive and hopeful community organizer in training, I underwent a weekend-long boot camp in the desert due east of San Diego. Men and women, some young like me and others at transitional moments in their lives, gathered in bunk houses to learn about collective power as the temporary alignment of individual self-interests grouped around an issue affecting them. No permanent friends, no permanent enemies, the trainers said. Such a cool and calculated resting place for the desire to change things.

This week’s feature obeys the time-honored law that newspapers live in the material world. A clear-eyed (perhaps cynical) place, described as it is, not as it should be. But it also offers a caveat from a powerful player that the hardest thing of all to do is to organize other people to do something good. Collective power lives in crack construction teams, tiny churches, startup companies, community bookstores, and yoga studios, but it’s been a long while since it filled a stadium…or a ballot box.

Categories
News

Local businesses pack up as city makes way for Marriott

LLW Architects’ Paul Lague presented renderings of the proposed Marriott Residence Inn at last week’s Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review meeting. Image courtesy Design Develop LLC

Cat Thrasher opened the doors to her photography studio in the Random Row Warehouse at the corner of West Main Street and McIntire Road during the summer of 2009. She invested money and elbow grease into getting it up to snuff, and even got married in the space. Four years later, her picture-perfect warehouse studio is set to be demolished to make room for a 140-room Marriott hotel.

“I’m going to be in there until they bring in the wrecking ball,” Thrasher said.

Thrasher is among a handful of business owners who will soon vacate the rundown former garage that’s housed everything from consignment clothes and jewelry to cupcakes and poetry readings since 2009, and she said she hasn’t yet found a new home for her studio. Developers and city officials have been in discussion over the parcel of land for years, and after a false alarm last fall, tenants are finally packing up to make way for the new hotel.

The Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review just approved the first architectural renderings of the proposed seven-story Marriott Residence Inn, and last week city staff recommended that City Council approve an ordinance to adapt new sanitary sewer and storm easements on the property. The drawings show the hotel with two conjoined elements—a three-story, brick building facing West Main Street with a seven-story stucco structure behind it.

“It’s a nice healthy blend of traditional architecture and a different material which is more modern,” said Tennessee-based LLW Architects’ Paul Lague. “We wanted to come up with something that is really a statement of today, and not trying to replicate what was done 150 years ago.”

Lague is working closely with local civil engineers at Daggett + Grigg Architects PC to ensure that the design will comply with zoning regulations and fit with the overall scope of West Main.

“It certainly is a unique property,” Lague said.

Bob Mooney inherited the property and the aging warehouse from his grandfather, who bought it in the 1930s.

“That’s where I stomped around when I was a little kid,” he said. “It has many, many memories for me and my family, and it’ll be tough. But it’s time for another chapter to be written here.”

He’s been receiving offers for nearly a decade, Mooney said, and the cost of taxes and upkeep became too much. He said he understands the community’s concern about losing local businesses like Random Row Books, but he’d kept it up and running as long as he could.

“I’m glad that they had a place to go for the past four years,” he said of his tenants. “It could have been a big hole, just an empty lot, as are many other places around town.”

Mooney said he accepted the offer of West Virginia developer Charles Wendell —who did not respond to phone calls requesting comment—on the property because he wanted someone with the experience and vision to transform the corner into a functional anchor that will bring business to both the Downtown Mall and West Main.

“Having a hotel on this corner adds a lot of traffic to West Main, and the Omni just doesn’t do that,” Mooney said. “If you stay at the Omni, you’ll have a tendency to walk out to see the Downtown Mall, but rarely will you cross McIntire.”

As for the project’s timeline, Mooney said it’s still technically not a done deal. The contract is nearly complete, and he expects the title to change hands by the end of the summer.

Director of Economic Development Chris Engel said the new Marriott is expected to bring more than $500,000 in annual tax revenue to the city, and will create at least 50 permanent jobs once it’s up and running. Despite the public’s fear of losing local charm, he said the hotel will breathe even more life into Charlottesville’s broader hospitality industry, which is already responsible for more than $400 million in annual impact and 5,000 jobs in the area.

“Community concern is a natural reaction to change, and in this day and age it is rare to find a project that doesn’t concern someone on some level,” Engel said. “Business owners who choose to lease space always face the possibility of relocation if the property owner decides to sell. Fortunately support for local businesses in Charlottesville is strong and certain to follow to a new location.”

City Clay owner Randy Bill said her only complaint about the ceramics studio’s location at the corner of West Main and McIntire was that its proximity to a busy intersection made certain parts of the day intensely noisy. But aside from the traffic, she described it as the perfect spot, and said she would never have moved to the Harris Street location under different circumstances.

Tourists don’t visit new towns to see the same things they pass every day at home, she said, and she worries that locals won’t have any connection to the new hotel.

“Charlottesville is starting to look more and more like Northern Virginia,” Bill said. “I understand the business end of it, but the shame of it is that you get a national chain there, and all of a sudden everything’s gone that has any local color.”

City Councilor and architect Kathy Galvin said she understands the desire to keep Charlottesville local and “charming,” but there’s more to maintaining a town’s color and charm than just preserving building and streetscapes.

“Are one-story buildings surrounded by surface parking lots, built in an automobile-centric era when no one was supposed to walk anywhere, ever again, charming?” Galvin said. “Is a 1950-60s commercial strip built for easy access by automobiles, not pedestrians, reflective of Charlottesville’s local character, especially when our historic areas are used as models for smart growth in other communities and our comprehensive planning goals call for pedestrian-oriented environments?”

Galvin said the hotel’s plans meet existing zoning guidelines and conforms to the goals of the city’s comprehensive plan, and the lack of pedestrian infrastructure at the intersection is more problematic than a large hotel taking over the space.