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I don't know. They had a sales office on Bute Street. I went in there and dissed them in front of customers filling out applications. Screw these rich A holes out to clobber the young people. They moved the office, and rented out the unit. How many people are really willing to shell out $1600-$1700 a month for a two bedroom apartment? The building I live in is fairly empty (lots of damage occurred during the noreaster and some people bailed because of that, others are leaving the area.) It's much cheaper, and I still think it's too much. Meanwhile, other buildings nearby have vacancies. Nothing about Hampton Roads is worth $1700 a month. You can rent a nice 4 bedroom SFH in a nice neighborhood in Virginia Beach for that kind of money. Most of the young professional people I know bought houses. None of them would ever pay that kind of money to rent an apartment. The building along Bute looks pretty full. The big buildings (the two) along Brambleton look like they have some occupancy. But I'm slightly suspicious that there are timers on lights. I haven't paid that much attention. I was talking to a visitor that was in town from Houston that wanted to check out the hacker space, and I was telling him about the housing bubble here and how those buildings were a result of it. There wasn't a window lit in the one building closest to Bousch street, the backside facing the parking garage. It was kind of eerie, like all of the condo towers in other areas you read about. Housing oversupply. Yes, I'm currently paying $1875 a month in rent, I could afford to rent in the Belmont if I cared. That's split across 3 places, and will be going down. But one thing to remember. There are companies that rent corporate housing. I used to work for one years ago that paid some $3000/mo for a house over off of Great Neck. It was $1200 for the house (3bd/2bath) and then $1500 to rent the beds and couches. They didn't really care, because they were a gov't contractor getting loads of our tax dollars. The president even dissed Hampton Roads, saying "this is hampton roads, you don't pay real salaries here." Direct quote. So there may be a market from corporate types for those apartments. I know of corporate rented places over on Granby. But there is only going to be so much demand for that. I think the rents are above navy housing allowance, but perhaps they will split an apartment rent into two and let two dudes rent a 2 bedroom or something. I dunno. Most slumlords here track the BHA numbers I think. I'd be willing to bet lots of Navy people skip renting now and just buy, cause you know, you can't lose. Software installs done, rant done. I emailed the Belmont anyways to see if they will give up the occupancy #s. Probably not. By the way, I know people who worked for apartment buildings in other cities and they told me that it was part of their job every week to call all of the competitors, and trade all of the numbers with them. What their rents are, what their rents will be, all upcoming specials, etc. And the others did the same. They traded this openly and the decision makers used the spreadsheet numbers to price fix the rents. The people I know didn't really get the downside to this, or that it's possibly illegal. I noticed that a storage unit I used to rent from in Chesapeake, the guy at the counter pretty much told me they do the same thing with the other nearby storage units. So perhaps it's popular everywhere. Note, storage units often lie about the square footage, which is the only metric you have to compare them. It's in the contract that all numbers are estimates. This is a big deal given the high cost per square foot of the space, and pretty sleezy.

*blush* Just was eating lunch on the patio of Chili's with two friends from Dom Enterprises. It was a nice day. Thanks!

They've done a lot of work to it! I inquired about it when it was for sale. Too much $$ for it IMHO, but whatever. I think it sold for 30% off the listed price, not sure. Should be interesting. See if the city runs em out of town. Heh.

They are currently putting the tracks in in front of our clubhouse (www.757labs.com, Hampton Road's hackerspace) so once that is done along with the work over on Granby near The Monistary and City Hall / Plume, then the track will go all the way through downtown, no? I've also noticed some poles have gone up in various places, either for signage or for the power lines at intersections.

Europe is way small and petrol is way expensive.

Was that the Italian place or whatever? They had a sign out offering discounts to specific businesses around there, but only the large ones. Turned me off. There were like Sheriff's notices on the door and such. Yea. The good life is eating outside on a nice day. Granby Bistro or Granby Pizza. It was fun when I had coworkers and we'd go down there. It was also fun chilling at Gustos watching the Bible guy with the huge protest sign in front of TCC.

I just took a picture of that banner for the palace on plume yesterday. Thought I was gonna be all new :-) Guess not. www.thepalaceonplume.com Who's behind it? Also, 3 way cafe. That name is kind of... funny!

Very true. Pushing hard to clean up all neighborhoods would go a long way. Some of the roads are atrocious. Between the vehicle break ins and the roads, it's like my car has aged 6 years in 1.5

What jobs are the taxpayers providing now?

We just don't have good jobs here. It's probably the psyche of the average residents. People here don't do anything. Maybe it's because gov't jobs breeds followers not leaders. I dunno what the reason is, but this area is crap compared to others. The rapid expansion the past few years happened everywhere. It wasn't just Hampton Roads, and it happened much more in other markets. Miami got themselves some 10+ years of extra unused condos in just a few short years of speculators waiting in tents to buy a place to flip. Buildings are nice, but at the end of the day the underlying fundamentals of the area are weak.

I'll get some pics when I go to lunch in 40 minutes.

Oh yea, forgot to mention, someone is moving in where the Blue Plate used to be. Signs of demo work. Also that old Heritage Bank building that was bought and is being turned into a night club (IIRC). It's still funny how !!!tty all the venues are around here.

Didn't know us Norfolk citizens were 2nd class. I say put down the region as a whole instead. It's like having 7 deformed kittens. Sure one might be uglier than the other, but in the end none are best of breed. In the end though, Norfolk is a city with a pretty high poverty rate, and little new growth. I think Virginia Beach is next. People move up and out. But of course, much of the wealth in this area is fake anyways, high debt loads. That which isn't is highly socialist, coming from the gov't. In terms of crime, I've heard reports directly from others in other cities with light rail that said that it did increase crime around the stops. Also, I've heard stories about heat maps that show that crime goes down in the low income neighborhoods but goes up in other farther out ones. We'll see. I don't know why light rail would be any different though. Most of the area served by it, is accessible by bicycle anyways.

Harrys BBQ / Jazz on Taz back with a sign that says under renovation. Been up for two weeks I think. Failing again? Saw people sniffing around the empty jewelery place on the 1st floor of City Center (used to by Nygards.) I thought a hot dog place was supposed to be moving in on Granby, but not that much renovation going on. Al's is win, anyways. Kabob place never seems to be open (it's where Zero's was).

Fascinating pictures. I'd always wondered if you could roll into the Kirn library Sargent McMemorialMcRoom (whatever it's called) and scan lots of stuff with your tiny flatbed scanner you brought.

$35,000 a month in rent, or do you run a website? Humorous comments. I didn't think chocolate bars were that expensive. It was like $3 or something for one at Lindt.

Hah, you removed my comment because I said it like it was? Debate me but don't censor me. It's true. Just got back from lunch at Havannas. They raised the prices. $8 for a side of red beans and rice, ain't that the staple food of poor people everywhere? Sheesh. Didn't use the lunch specials today. If I go back that will be the only way. Food ain't bad but it ain't a steak.

I hit NYC every two years as some friends and myself help with a conference called HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth.) The hotel that the conference is held in was supposed to be demolished, because Merril Lynch wanted to build a new HQ. Of course with the financial crisis, this isn't the case. None the less, lots of people were all up in arms saying how the hotel should be saved, it's old, yadda yadda. These are supposed to be the people who are all about freedom. At the end of the day, the owner of the building should be free to sell it to whomever he wants. If someone has the money to hold onto the building and retrofit it to meet current standards and needs, that's nice. But there isn't progress without losses. We should preserve some history, but you can't mark everything as a keeper and grow. Also, old buildings suck when it comes to facilities.

*GASP* you hated on the beautiful AT&T building! EEEK! Still looking for a tour of that sucker. Not the CLEC side. Not the ILEC side. The AT&T side. I've heard it's mostly empty. Makes sense now that we've left SxS / Strowger switching behind and moved to digital, and the size is so compact. But other rumors say it's nuclear hardened, as it transports communications at wartime. It also used to be part of the early warning radar system. Pretty cool. And it looks nice. Sure there aren't any windows, but still. It doesn't look cheap.

It's very large given the size of the space under it, and bright. But I assume once it has something over the neon it won't be as bright. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a country themed bar or a pirate themed bar. **COMMENT REMOVED BY ADMINISTRATOR**

Sure they were pretty, but I thought you all were about nice skylines? I hate to admit it here, but I LOVE the darth vader building! AT&T is another favorite. Bank of America building is garbage though. The waffle iron. Wonderful pictures. As I recall, wasn't Norfolk kind of the dregs in much of it's history? Fascinating photos. Do you have any of the AT&T building being built?!? What about old photos with the microwave horns? A friend of mine had some photos of the building when it had the microwave horns (not his pictures) but didn't put them online, and he unfortunately passed away.

There was another restaurant in MacCenter where California Pizza Kitchen was. They too ran up a huge rent bill, and that's when I first learned how retarded the rents were at MacArthur. I want to say they owed like $550,000 after 6 months of nonpayment. Two story stores are pretty cool :-)

Interesting. Is it the building with the pillars? Royster building or something? There was a tallish building that was blown up in the 90s to make way for MacArthur Center. JcPennys or an insurance company (CMA? something like that) were the names I heard associated to it. It had a microwave horn on it, back when those were in style (before high bandwidth fiber optic glass rules the world.) AT&T building also had a bunch of microwave horns (for long lines or something) and also I believe was a scopelight radar early warning site. Now it is probably home to a NSA program where they spy on US citizens, (See frontline / Spying on the home front.) Speaking of history, and not to hijack the tall building. But what is the history of the Wainwright building?