Telmnstr

Hah, what is the business to the right of Alchemy that was complaining?

Maybe the operating costs are just too high there. I think there are special taxes because it's Town Center, and I'm pretty confident the rent is to the max there. I just recorded an event in Baltimore myself. Took 7 hours to drive a 3 hour 40 minute trip. Grrr.

Dave and Busters is coming to Lynnhaven Mall. A friend interviewed for the technician role for the arcade and said the offer was $11/hr no benefits. Sheesh. Also in the news, Red Star Tavern at Town Center closed. Can't pay their tax bill. Is Town Center traffic down? http://hamptonroads.com/2013/07/va-beachs-red-star-tavern-closes-owes-taxes

brikkman - was it impossible to get food because it was so busy with customers? That's not a bad place to be. If it was impossible to get food because the service was so bad -- yow.

Forget redirecting taxpayer money to build huge stadiums for egotistical overpaid sports stars. I didn't make it to Tool, but got text messages from friends the second the first laser fired off.

I have a theory about Urban Outfitters. The newspaper article said that Wright had been trying to get UO to come to Norfolk forever. They wouldn't. Then they agree to do it. Right as the president quits. I think the president pushed the Norfolk store as punishment to the company. Heh heh.

We rode it again tonight from near my workplace (Macarthur Station) back to York Street to bring a MS Visio CD over to the hackerspace. There was a lot of people boarding at the MacArthur station headed towards Newtown. The train was pretty loaded with people when it arrived at MacArthur station heading towards EVMS. Not sure how many riders would really need to get off at those two stops. Monticello let off very few, as did York Street. Maybe they were all going to EVMS, but I'm thinking joy riding.

I think it was the restaurant. Low cost Mexican = win. Not that I'm that cheap but it always seemed high priced, it was a question if the place was even open, and somewhat of a wild card. I look forward to it.

Yea, I'm thinking there are a bunch of people just riding the thing all day. I know people who are actually using it to commute to work. One person said they will stop when it's no longer free, they are doing it more for the novelty. It actually adds a good amount of time to their commute. Still it's pretty amusing. I rode it Thursday evening after a friend said it was open. Some friends and myself took it last night from the York Street station to MacArthur. Went to Hells Kitchen. Then rode it back to finish up working on projects @ the hackerspace on Bute.

How? What is the recipe for this? How do you lower rents, bring in young people, but not have the hood kids show up and wreck it?

http://hamptonroads.com/2011/08/state-police-said-man-shot-i264-was-altercation Shooting on 264 originated at The Palace on Plume. Note that other black clubs were shut down for similar reason (Posh Dolche.) Plume has ties to the city gov't that shut down all competition. Will anything happen to Plume? It's been a year and 8 months since the hackerspace opened. Maybe it's because of the times I'm there and my attention, but it seems like the foot traffic that we used to always see heading from the Freemason neighborhood to downtown Norfolk has really dropped off since earlier in the year. How is Granby Street doing?

zepp - yea, I think it's a home design firm or something. I noticed that the for rent sign came down in another place on Granby that I think was a tax place. It's a smaller older space, sort of near Bobbi's Deli or whatever that place is. I thought there was activity at the old La Galleria building, but it was just people moving stuff from TCC.

Wow! Very interesting points. It would be interesting if Portsmouth jumped on the light rail thing quickly. They are kind of an underdog in the area. It's been a few days with the train running. It was cute at first, but it's annoying now. DING DING DING DING DING DING DING. Ugh. I went into the office where I "work" which is right next to the station where the library used to be. You could clearly hear the thing in the middle of the building, as well as all of the offices. Maybe they will turn it down once it's been running for a few weeks.

I'm catching up, and I know I'm not well liked on forums because of my pessimistic views of some things. But so far I think I've been right. With regards to condos, whatever. I've heard there are still lots of empty ones for sale. I think that some of the higher end ones downtown are held by people that don't live here just as toys. So that doesn't really help the foot traffic. What's the market for condos anyways? I never got it. The big part of ownership is owning the LAND. Condos don't really have that. A friend just took a job in Atlanta. Bought an AWESOME house I think. Cost less than the crap housing around here. Job is better, pays better, and has more potential. Stock options, company sells, it pays for the house in full type of thing. You don't see a lot of that around 757. In terms of parking, yea. Virginia Beach is crazy busy at town center on the weekends. Norfolk ain't. The downside is people might not want to actually walk from a parking garage to the restaurants. Lazy people, you know. I think safety is a big one, when it comes to walking to the car. The light rail stops at 11pm, so that leaves the bars in the cold and parking in the cold (I think?) I totally agree about jobs. I've said it before, there just aren't a lot of good jobs here. The big companies we have don't compete at ALL with whats out there in other cities. I mean to be all up honest, Hampton Roads really is garbage. People are trying to change it, and that is so great. But in the end, is it worth spending your life trying to change an area when you can just relocate somewhere better? I've worked for a number of companies in the area, and a few startups. The startups were SO much better. It's hard to describe. With the gov't you get people looking to get by. It's mostly safe. Often overstaffed. Layers of BS bureaucracy. With startups you feel like you are making a change. The unknown. The risk. Etc. But there aren't really many successful ones that call Hampton Roads home. People are trying to change that, but I dunno. It's kind of odd since as a whole the US is failing. So in the larger scheme whats hip in 757 matters less. Where do you think Hampton Roads will be in 10 years? In the mean time, eff it. Do something cool. Maybe make people laugh. I think it's time for another good prank.

I saw them framing out walls in the basement. Our slumlord rented out space in the basement to some guy with a small IT firm here in Freemason. I remember seeing the guy pulling all his stuff out after it met a foot or so of water. I just couldn't feel safe with space sitting below ground. Although I think TCC has a downstairs, but I dunno. I noticed the Blockbuster for lease sign gone and the construction dumpster gone. This clothing store that was on Granby next to this spa place opened and closed already. Notice everything was missing. AJ Gators is back online. Pure seems to have lost it's Pure Energy. The old club 7's building is for sale.

Virginia Beach oceanfront picking up town center really would be a winning move. Flipper McCoys without paying parking. Man.

I have no idea what he makes but I assume my friend who has worked for them for a while is making $80K+. He said they can't find good IT people. And they were offering real paychecks. He said it didn't matter, they just couldn't find people. He just left the area for California. Dominion Enterprises is saying the same thing so they opened another office in Texas. But they don't have a history of paying well.

AJ Gators on Granby has been closed. Has a sign on the door about unexpected renovations (yea right) and some sorta Realtor lock box. Other friend was saying Time looked dead, but I'm not sure about this. I think it might have just been the end of the weekend? Friends and myself are investigating opening a large classic arcade on Granby Street. Pinballs/classic games up to more modern stuff. No redemption, no chuck e cheese, etc. Thoughts?

My friend said they laid off ~30 people in the past two weeks. They now have an LA office with like 100 people and a DC office with perhaps the same number. I don't remember the numbers exactly but it was pretty high. Both of those offices are new. The LA one is so they can be near their major donors and all of that, the DC one is their lobbyists. They are keeping some operations stuff here. Friend said they are getting all corporate and it's not the same.

Did you all see the news on Pilot Online that the Norfolk Waterside Marriott can't pay their December rent? FAIL!

I don't know if affordable housing will happen. Old people / wealthy people can hold it hostage. Still some 9 million foreclosures expected, banks sitting on tons of inventory. While it's AWESOME that there is more activity going on, I still hear people talking about moving out of the area all over. Of course some are moving to areas that are much more expensive than Hampton Roads but there are awesome job opportunities there. I just checked out a neat building that is dilapidated and busted. Of course they want $650K for it. And there is little to no parking. People gave PETA like 7 buildings in Hampton Roads as donations. All that, and PETA is leaving the area.

I went to the council meeting for the Tivest thing. Really wasn't interested in that or the council meeting so much. It was crazy to watch. Basically, it was corruption and garbage. Every tenant of the building was taxpayer funded. The rental rate for one of the orgs was going to be 1.5 million a year. Watching the city council and manager do a sales pitch for the thing to the other council people was pretty wild. And Riddick goes into it's about race. It was just nutty from the get go. You can rent space cheaper in downtown. It was hilarious to watch, but sad at the same time. To hear some council lady moron go on about how now it's a great deal that she's heard more about it. They talk about how the city is currently renting all of this space and they need to get out of renting and move to owning. The numbers they gave worked out to them paying on avg $9.3 a square foot a year, meanwhile the new building was going to be $25/sqft. Of course they could buy the condo after 10 years. Whatever. Just nutty. In the actual council part where they televise it and all that, like 1/4th of the people were going on about how it's racial. Someone did bring up Wachovia tower, where the land was given away. But at the end of the day, the tenants of Wachovia tower (at least the ones I know of) aren't all taxpayer funded. I'm all for redevelopment in bad areas and all of that. But to have the city back stop it, or pay extra high rates for no reason, because it's their friend building it, is wrong. Like too many commas in a sentence wrong. Actually, having seen all of that, it just makes me that much more sad over humanity. Our country is doomed. Oh yea, a friend of mine emailed me talking about doing a recall petition or something. I'd have to dig up the email but is that something people are interested in?

Could of just gone to Waterside, then over to the mall or something. I dunno, they can figure it out. They put crazy tight turns in on Bute Street. Or split the directions. People don't want to walk! Also, the parking costs money. And not everyone carries around cash.

Waterside's lack of parking hurts it greatly. I always thought the light rail should have been elevated in downtown and stopped at the 2nd floors of MacArthur and Waterside.

Zeppelin14 - howdy neighbor! Did bootleggers change hands? The window paint says Pure. Some guy named Tom Arney owned Bootleggers, along with taking ownership of Havana's. He also bought what was Club 7s and the talk was of turning it into whatever passes as a strip club in VA. The windows were tinted but since then it's pretty much been dead. Now it has a for sale sign on it. I wonder. I was thinking if you wanted to get an alcohol license, come up with a club that city leaders wouldn't whine about and that wouldn't threaten their personal off to the side interests, then switch over after you get the permit. If I had money I have a ton of ideas for various venues. I wonder if something like DNA Lounge would survive in Hampton Roads? It's a techie founded place that has live music (and a proper live music setup unlike all of the local venues.) The one thing they have that we don't is .com millions to fund stuff like that.