Drink up now, Charlottesville, so you can say you drank it when. Crozet-based Starr Hill Brewery announced today that the company has reached a distribution deal with megabrewer Anheuser-Busch to distribute Starr Hill’s microbrewed suds across the mid-Atlantic region starting in 2011, with plans to go national as early as 2013.

“We want to follow the model of breweries like Sierra Nevada, Widmer, and Red Hook to become the next great national beer,” says Starr Hill founder and president Mark Thompson. “Anheuser-Busch is the best distribution network anywhere, so the sky’s the limit.”

The deal means a definite increase in volume for the eight-year old brewery which got its start at the defunct Starr Hill Music Hall and counts music mogul Coran Capshaw among its backers. Yet, Thompson says the brewery has no plans to (more)

Comments(3)

Kroger has recalled over 500 pounds of its house-brand smoked salmon dip in Virginia and 16 other states because it may be contaminated with Listeria, NBC29 reports. Meanwhile, holiday hostesses scramble to find a color-coordinated substitute for the potentially fatal 7.5-ounce smoked salmon dip (”use by” date November 4), Cajun salmon dip, southern crab dip, and sundried tomato crab.

Comments(0)

For years the buzz has been that Crozet was about to get a grocery store, first a Food Lion and more recently a Harris Teeter.

Yesterday Great Eastern Management Company confirmed that it’s breaking ground September 21 for a Harris Teeter on U.S. 250 west beside Blue Ridge Builders Supply and across from the Clover Lawn Shopping Center.

The store is expected to open in late 2008 or early 2009, and it will be joined by 11,000 square feet of retail space suitable for small shops in the new Blue Ridge Shopping Center beside the Builders Supply. The parcel has room for a restaurant or bank as well.

Great Eastern has owned the property since at least 1990, estimates Andrew Boninti with CB Richard Ellis, the brokerage firm that negotiated the lease. Principals Chuck Rotgin and Don Wagner, who developed Seminole Square and Pantops shopping centers, are no strangers to lengthy development projects that can take decades, such as North Pointe on U.S. 29 north past the airport.

When the company first considered adding a grocery store to Crozet all those years ago, it was going to be a Food Lion, says Boninti. But as Crozet’s demographics have changed with more upscale developments like Old Trail, Grayrock, and Waylands Grant, the company opted for a Harris Teeter instead.

Comments(2)

In partnership with Camp Holiday Trails and Kohl’s department stores, UVA is lending its expertise to an extended weekend camp for families with an obese child. According to a UVA release, the whole family is invited to learn healthy eating and exercise habits for nearly four days in September. Cost: $25. Value: priceless. Well, actually UVA says it’s $500 worth of food, lodging, and instruction subsidized by the actual operator of the program, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Childhood Obesity Task Force.

Comments(1)

NBC29 is reporting this morning that four members of a Rockingham farming family, including two girls, ages 9 and 11, have died after they and and an employee were fatally overcome by methane gas in a manure pit on the farm.

Comments(0)