Charlottesville Breaking News

Cupcakes, cookies, macaroons, muffins, tarts, croissants…you can't swing a rolling pin these days without hitting a sweet shop somewhere in town. Come May 6,  you'll be able to sink your sweet tooth into goodies at Pearl's Bake Shoppe between Sweethaus and the Albemarle Baking Company on West Main in the historic ‪Peyton-Ellington Building at 711 West Main Street. The Richmond-based cupcake-centric bakery comes with an impressive resumé. Open since 2010 on Richmond's Grove Avenue, the shop's cupcakes have been voted Richmond's best by Richmond Magazine, and last year, Virginia Living Magazine voted them the state's best. Sweet!

The inspiration for the venture has some local roots, as co-owner Laurie Chapman Blakey says it came from her grandmother, Pearl Gentry Chapman, who lived her entire life in Greene County.

"My Grandmother was the most amazing cook. She cooked everything from scratch, using home-grown ingredients," says Blakey. "Even as a child, I appreciated the extraordinary culinary efforts it took to prepare the deliciousness that came from my Grandmother's garden and kitchen."

Indeed, that effort and attention to detail appears to be the secret. According to Blakey's partner, Laura Condrey, when they opened in Richmond, they were inundated with customers.

"We were hoping for...

Hunter Craig has a way of snatching victory from defeat. Craig's masterstrokes in the field and in the courtroom follow a tumultuous year for the now 52-year-old media-shy banker, developer, and UVA Board of Visitors member. In May 2012, he withstood a publicized effort to remove him from the bank he helped launch. Two months earlier, one of his children was diagnosed with cancer. While arranging for the girl's treatment, Craig suddenly found himself near the center of what became known as "UVA June."

As the lone Charlottesville-based executive committee member of the University of Virginia's governing body, Craig initially signed off on the resignation of President Teresa Sullivan last summer– and found himself vilified. But as turmoil mounted over the ouster of the popular president, Craig publicly offered to resign to make way for a faculty member on the Board, and he expressed frustration that he wasn't able to muster the votes to bring back the president. A few days later, over the objections of Rector Helen Dragas, Craig and two others forced a Board meeting to take another vote. Although Dragas quickly issued her right-move-the-wrong-way memorandum and secretly plotted to push student leaders to parrot sentiments provided by paid spin-doctors, support for the ouster crumbled. Sullivan was reinstated.

And then, of course, there's Biscuit Run, the 1,200-acre southern Albemarle County tract that Craig and a group of investors donated to the state in...