New weddings-and-more venue The Bradbury is open for business on the Downtown Mall—and the team behind the new spot is a who’s who of weddings and events experts: Harvest Moon Catering’s Mark Hahn, Ken Notari, and Anne Peterson, photog Sarah Cramer, Just a Little Ditty’s Dickie Morris, and Second Line Business Management’s John Spagnolo.
The group came together when heralded restaurant Prime 109 met its untimely demise last year due to the pandemic. Morris says she and Hahn had been talking for some time about creating a “venue collective,” and the newly opened spot at 300 E. Main St. checked their boxes.
“It’s just a beautiful space, and Mark put together a great group of like-minded people,” Morris says.
The Bradbury venue proper, which the group named after the architect who designed the building, offers room enough for a standing party of about 250 or 140 for a seated dinner. Hosts can also book the gallery space abutting the venue in the Vault, giving them at least another 150 standing or seated.
The planning supergroup has not made their new venue’s price list publicly available, but Morris assures it’s in line with similar event spaces.
In addition to booking events now—not just weddings but rehearsals, brunches, birthday celebrations, graduation parties, work gatherings—the group intends to launch a café in the space in front of the Vault. It’ll be a place “you could just come in through the front door and grab a coffee or a sandwich,” Morris says. The team has not yet decided on the café’s hours and offerings but is targeting a November 2021 opening.
“We are really trying to get more traffic through the space because it’s such a beautiful centerpiece,” Cramer says. “We would love to get more people enjoying that space, and not just for events and gatherings.”
Morris and Cramer say they know event hosts have many options in Charlottesville, but they think The Bradbury offers several things most other venues don’t. Harvest Moon provides their in-house catering, and they have a pastry chef onsite, a central downtown location, and a “breathtaking” main events room—not to mention that group of experienced planners bringing different expertise areas to the table.
“We all work together beautifully,” Cramer says. “We’ve worked together for such a long time, and we love it. This space just sounded like a fantastic idea. We love Charlottesville—all of us. We want to give back to the community and be a part of it.”