Tag: neighborhood development services

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Upfitting a West Main building for new kind of donut shop

A company is renovating 917 W. Main St. to be a franchise called Mochinut, which sells Japanese and Korean food. Photo by Sean Tubbs.

While the city may have recently abandoned an expensive plan to upgrade West Main Street to be more of a destination, those who want to take a risk on business continue to make investments. 

At least that’s what a Chesterfield-based firm did when it purchased 917 W. Main St. for $1.3 million in August 2022. 

The city’s Neighborhood Development Services office issued a commercial building permit on July 30 for a tenant upfit. The cost of construction is at least $400,000, according to various permits. Los Angeles-based company Mochinut is listed as one of the contacts. 

According to Mochinut’s website, it offers a unique product.

“Mochi donut is a donut that originated from Hawaii which is a combination of American doughnuts and Japanese mochi,” reads a description. 

Mochi is a Japanese sweet rice cake; a mochi donut appears to be eight balls of this substance arranged in a circle. 

So far, the company has no outlets in Virginia where one can buy the donuts. It also serves Korean-style hot dogs, which are breaded with a variety of different materials.

A request for confirmation and a timeline for opening was not answered at press time. At the moment, the site is still under construction and the sidewalk is blocked. 

Such a store could benefit from the foot traffic of University of Virginia students who live in the apartment buildings in the neighborhood. 

That’s also a reason there is now a 7 Day Junior franchise right across 10th Street on the lower floor of 1001 W. Main St. In the last 15 years, that entire building has been transformed from an auto repair shop into one that has served as multiple restaurants.  

The building at 917 W. Main St. was constructed in 1950, and the current renovation of the facade unveiled an old sign for Charlottesville Office Machine Company. At one point, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville had an office at the location but it has been vacant for at least three years since the nonprofit relocated in 2021.

Both buildings, as well as five others, are within the West Main Architectural Design Control District and any future demolition would have to be approved by the Board of Architectural Review. City Council added that protection in December 2013, when the construction of several large buildings in the neighborhood were proposed. 

In the years that followed, council approved The Flats at West Village, The Standard, and Lark on Main. Special use permits for those mixed-use projects came with conditions that retail space be included on the ground floor, but all three of them have spaces that have never been utilized. 

At the same time, the city had begun work on a project to widen sidewalks, add bike lanes, and add other amenities to West Main Street to improve the urban fabric of what was planned as one of the city’s most dense corridors. In 2022, council agreed to transfer the millions that had been committed to the project to instead expand Buford Middle School. 

While the overall streetscape is desolate, the city is aware of the need to make improvements at a cost much lower than the defunct project’s $50 million estimate. 

“The city does not presently have plans developed for this intersection, but will be kicking off a project looking at the West Main Street corridor [next year] and opportunities to improve safety through low-cost interventions and restriping,” says Afton Schneider, the city’s director of communications and public engagement.

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Condemned house: City prepares to take next step

This home on East Jefferson Street has been condemned for four safety, health and sanitation violations to the Virginia maintenance code. Staff photo

A house on East Jefferson Street, flanked by doors that could hardly be opened, was deemed unfit for human occupancy for being littered with items that made it “impossible to safely travel through the house in the event of an emergency,” just weeks before the emergency responders evacuated a man through a window of the home.

Neighborhood Development Services issued homeowner C. W. Rogers Jr. an order of correction on January 1, which required him and any additional occupants to leave his home at 1108 E. Jefferson St. until he or his power of attorney fixes the four safety, health and sanitation violations to the Virginia maintenance code.

Joe Phillips, a current Charlottesville Fire Department captain and member of more than 17 years, says books and other household items were scattered on the floor of the home when Rogers’ brother arrived to retrieve some paperwork and heard a man moaning from inside a bedroom. After the brother called the fire department for help, Phillips’ crew managed to enter through the front door, but was unable to take the man out that way because of the clutter, according to Phillips.

The man was lying in bed, next to an accessible window when Rogers’ brother called for help. “It was easier to slide him out [a] window than it was to carry him across items in the house,” Phillips says. The crew hitched a ladder slide up to the open window and strapped him into a stokes basket, which is designed to slide down the rails of the ladder.

The man’s relationship to Rogers is unknown, but a neighbor speculates that it was a roommate still living in the home after Rogers relocated. Refusing to give her name, she said Rogers is the street’s oldest inhabitant and that neighbors are fond of him.

Alexander Ikefuna, director of NDS, says the East Jefferson house has already been condemned and a February 15 deadline has been set to institute a plan of action for the structure. In the January notice, the home was cited for unsanitary conditions and, though utilities were activated, records showed they hadn’t been used in several months.

“It is hard to tell what is trash and what might be salvageable household belongings,” the notice reads. “There is trash, rubbish and debris amongst all the accumulation of belongings.”

The home, sold to Rogers in August 1962, was up for a re-inspection on February 5, but Ikefuna says the items in the house had not been removed, so the home was not re-inspected. It is unclear whether the home will require demolition, but in 2011, the city did demolish a structure that wasn’t maintained at 704 Montrose Ave.

According to city records, Rogers also owned that home.

Year to date, Ikefuna says 12 city properties were deemed unfit for human occupancy for various reasons. In some cases, repairs were made immediately and that designation was lifted. For example, he says that after a roof collapse on Market Street just weeks ago, the structure was deemed unsafe and owners immediately had a portion of the building demolished, making the building stable enough to allow workers inside to continue construction.

To condemn a structure, the city follows the Virginia maintenance code “to adjudge unfit for occupancy,” which Ikefuna says has two meanings.

An unsafe structure could be one with conditions causing at least a portion of the building to collapse and endanger the safety of occupants or the surrounding public—such as the Market Street roof collapse—or a structure could have conditions that are dangerous to the occupants or public by disrepair or lack of maintenance, sanitary conditions, lack of utilities or required plumbing facilities—such as the East Jefferson and Montrose Avenue homes.

“If owners make repairs then all is well,” he says. “If owners are neglectful then we can take them to court.”

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Partial demolition underway on West Market

A partial demolition is underway at 206 W Market St. after a January 25 roof collapse. Staff photo

An owner of the two-story brick building on West Market Street says a partial demolition is currently underway after a January 25 roof collapse.

“It would’ve happened one way or another,” owner Josh Rogers says. He and his partners had plans to renovate the 206 W Market St. building for their proposed private club, called Common House. He doesn’t think the roof collapse will significantly interfere with the club’s construction because it was previously ahead of schedule.

“It accelerated our production schedule,” he says, though he hasn’t made any permanent plans for after the demolition.

The building’s roof also collapsed in 2010 when snow cracked one of the trusses supporting the rafters, according to the city’s building code official, Tom Elliott.

While Rogers says he was aware of the initial collapse, the back right corner truss that failed this time was not the one repaired six years ago. He and his partners are paying for the selective demolition, he says, which will require removing loose bricks and wood from the roof and second floor of the building.

According to the Neighborhood Development Services website, specific design criteria for Charlottesville requires buildings to be designed to withstand temperatures of 16 degrees with a ground snow load of 25 inches per square foot. According to principal planner Brian Haluska, that doesn’t translate exactly to number of inches of snowfall.

Rogers says the demolition could take between two and three days and the strip of West Market between Old Preston and 2nd Street NW is projected to stay closed during that time. City inspectors want to be sure engineers have confirmed that falling debris will not be a threat, he says.

Even though the damage is on the backside of the building, city spokesperson Miriam Dickler says, “We want to know the structure is stable and sound before the road opens,” adding that it could stay closed until Saturday.