When a small café known for its healthy food opens a bar, a gritty pool hall goes upscale to become a gourmet hamburger joint and an independent record store may make way for a national pharmacy, it is just another year on the Corner. This ever-changing string of shops, bars and restaurants has been called the center of student life at the University for over a century.
This year alone, in less than four short months, the Corner has experienced a number of changes as its patrons and business owners attempt to survive and respond to what some see as the recent downturn in the American economy. Considering this, some Corner business owners are making significant changes to their businesses and the area in order to survive and prosper near the University.
All about alcohol
In Virginia, restaurants serving mixed drinks may only garner a certain amount of their profit from liquor sales. This sales ratio is 45 percent food to 55 percent liquor, said Steve Jones, assistant special agent at the Staunton office of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. In addition to this sales ratio, Jones said, there is also a minimum food sales requirement. Establishments serving liquor by the drink have to sell a minimum of $4,000 a month in food sales, of which $2,000 must be entrees or full-blown meals.
Though these ABC regulations have proven problematic for some Corner restaurants in the past, Martha's Café owner Mike Payne said he does not think they will pose any problems for his establishment. Martha's, which has been on Elliewood Avenue for 10 years, recently opened a bar to boost its profits.
"Martha's Cafe will always serve food," Payne said, adding that the small restaurant's mission has not been changed by the opening of a bar. "The point of opening a bar was to use our space for a longer period of time and make ourselves available to make more money."
Restaurants like Martha's rely on student traffic during the academic year to sustain themselves during off months, Payne said. He added that he hoped the extra profit from the new bar would help float the restaurant during the hot summers and winter breaks when business is typically slow. Though he considered offering breakfast at the restaurant, Payne said his new late-night business brings an entirely different clientele to his establishment. This clientele is more likely to spend money, despite what he characterizes as a "general economy downturn."
"I find that as people's purse strings start to tighten, the amount of money that people have to spend on food goes down, and the amount of money that they have to go and relieve stress goes up," Payne said.
Orbit Billiards & Café, the recently closed restaurant and pool hall on the corner of University Avenue and 14th Street, had a different relationship with alcohol. Its owner Andrew Vaughan, who owns Rapture downtown and Christian's Pizza on the Corner, said it played a role in his decision to close Orbit.
"Alcohol is a tough thing," Vaughan said, adding that he had to be heavily invested in the bar business on the Corner for it to be successful. "It's very tricky. For me, I felt like I'd done it for 10 years and I just wanted to try something different."
Though Vaughan said keeping the ABC's regulations is a "hard thing to do" in the college market, he added that state laws were not what ultimately influenced his decision to close the pool hall. New building tenant J.R. Hadley, however, said Orbit was not selling as much food near the end of its life and noted this was a concern for those involved.
Moving on up
When Hadley and his fellow business associates, owners of Mellow Mushroom, saw Orbit was for sale, Hadley said, they saw a good opportunity for implementing a new business model. Instead of keeping the restaurant largely a bar and pool hall, Hadley said he saw a market for his new business venture, inspired by his prior place of residence, an upscale hamburger restaurant, and he imagines it will be just as popular as Mellow during lunch and dinner hours.
"I sort of stumbled into the gourmet burger business in Las Vegas," Hadley said, adding that his establishment is modeled after the Burger Bar, located between the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and Luxor casino. "I'd never seen anything like it, and I thought Charlottesville was the perfect place to try that."
Changing from Orbit to The Joint, the restaurant's temporary name, will require significant renovation, Hadley said, noting that the location needs a resurrection. This change will help alter the establishment's image, which he wants customers to easily distinguish from Orbit.
"It will be a little more upscale," Hadley said of The Joint's style, comparing it to the Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I think U.Va. students will appreciate that. It's a little nicer and a little cleaner. You feel good about yourself for being in there, and a fight's not going to break out at any second."
Though Hadley did not characterize Orbit this way, he said it had a reputation of attracting more Charlottesville residents than students. To achieve success on the Corner, Hadley said he hopes both students and local residents will be able to mingle at his restaurant because of the changes being made, chief among them a non-smoking policy downstairs.
Still, for all of his promised change, Hadley says The Joint will keep three pool tables upstairs to preserve some of Orbit's old clientele and offer space for patrons looking to play billiards.
Chained to chains
Perhaps the largest change on the Corner this year will be the May closure of record store Plan 9 Music and music venue Satellite Ballroom, both unique establishments in what Corner historian Coy Barefoot has called the area's "food-court era."
In the 1970s, when the drinking age was lowered and women were admitted to the College, the commercial makeup of the Corner changed substantially.
"You sort of see this explosion of bars and restaurants [in the 1970s]," said Barefoot, also director of alumni relations and communications for the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University. "The Corner started to lose what had always been its identity, with grocery stores, retail and beauty parlors. All the things that make it look like a true downtown, you start to see that go away. It starts to look like a food court."
While some like Payne argue that this overpopulation of restaurants is bad for all business owners, Payne still said he hopes rumors of retailer CVS Pharmacy taking the place of Plan 9 and Satellite Ballroom in the Anderson Brothers Building are not true. These rumors have persisted for months without any official announcement from the building's owner Terry Vassalos about the building's next tenant. Payne, among other Corner business owners, said he fears the prospect of a corporate retailer moving in down the street.
"That'd be a crime," Payne said of a CVS moving to the Corner. "I think CVS is a huge corporate undertaking where the profit goes somewhere else. I think keeping money in the community is a far more important thing than making it convenient for people to buy pantyhose or whatever."
Vaughan also expressed concern.
"It seems like a strange choice to me," Vaughan said of CVS's supposed consideration of moving to the Corner. "It's definitely sad to see the music venue and local businesses leave to have this big corporate thing come in."
The history of the Corner, however, is ripe with corporate chains and drugstores, Barefoot said. The Anderson Brothers Building used to neighbor two drugstores: the University Drugstore, now Littlejohn's New York Delicatessen, and Chancellor's Drugstore, now Qdoba Mexican Grill. Also, a Lloyd's Rexall Drug Store, a large chain, was in the building now home to the Student Bookstore from 1957 to 1993.
"It was a huge part of the history of the Corner and familiar to generations of University students," Barefoot said of the Lloyd's. "To them, it was just as much a part of the Corner as Plan 9 is to students today."
Drugstores are not foreign to the Corner, and chain stores are not out of the ordinary as well. Barefoot points to old examples such as the Spalding sporting goods outlet in the Anderson Brothers Building and an A&P grocery store, now Mincer's. He said he has no concerns about the possibility of a CVS coming to the Corner.
"Having a drugstore is very much in keeping with the history of the Corner, and I'd love to see it, whether it's local or national," Barefoot said. "I'm not put off by a national chain, because the history of the Corner is full of chain businesses."
Sign of the times
When Plan 9 Music arrived in the Anderson Brothers Building, after having moved progressively up the Corner for over a decade, owner James Bland said the record store's latest location was a "triumph." Now that the store's sales have slumped in recent years, Bland is leaving the Corner to consolidate the store with the chain's other Charlottesville location in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center.
When the record store moves out by May 31, the face of the Corner will change yet again. It is this unceasing change in the shadow of the seemingly unchanging Academical Village that appeals to some Corner business owners and patrons.
"I find it, quite frankly, remarkable how as I continue to grow older, everyone around me stays the exact same age," Payne said of his wait staff and patrons.
Barefoot expressed it differently, using the example of a student returning to the University after 20 or more years.
"There is this timelessness about being in the Academical Village and walking on the Lawn," Barefoot said. "Then, you stroll down the hill and come to the Corner, and time really hits you in the face like a gust of wind. They sort of bookend this little village that has this incredible timelessness to it and this incredible sense of time passing"
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