The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - "Timeclock Thursday" - 9 News Items, 3 Mins Each; MadCo's Plow & Hearth Closing (100+ Job Losses)

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

The I Love CVille Show headlines: “Timeclock Thursday” – 9 News Items, 3 Mins Each MadCo’s Plow & Hearth Closing (100+ Job Losses) Burnley Vineyards For Sale: $2.9M, 25.7 Acres Second Local Vineyard To Be Listed (White Hall) Legalization Of Retail Weed – Here’s What’s Next All UVA Fraternity Events & Parties Canceled UVA Tops BC In Must Win Game, Eyes NCAA Bid Dave Norris On “Real Talk” At 1015 Am Friday Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Good Thursday afternoon, guys. Thank you kindly for joining us on the I Love Seville Show, live in the shadows of Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia, less than two miles from the Rotunda, less than two miles from the John Paul Jones Arena and Scott Stadium, right around the corner from the police department, the courthouses, and the downtown mall. We are smack dab in the middle of everything Charlottesville, Almaral County, and Central Virginia related at our studio on Market Street.

We're trying an interesting theme for this particular Thursday. We'll see if it sticks. Time clock Thursday is what we're calling it. Nine storylines, three minutes per storyline. With your perspective, three minutes per storyline. With your perspective, welcome on each storyline. An upbeat, fast tempo version of the I Love Ceebo show. Giddy up and get ready.

Judah Wickauer, two shot. Let's weave you into the mix on Time Clock Thursday. I will keep the time. Eventually what I would like to see is a stopwatch on screen that you could reset every three minutes so the viewers and listeners can see the time per topic matter. However, I will start with the first one. Are you ready, my friend? Yep. On your mark, get set, let's go. It's the first one. Unfortunately, this is tough news for Madison County, Virginia. Richmond-based company Evergreen is laying off 100-plus workers

with its Plough and Hearth division and brand. Plough and Hearth, ladies and gentlemen, its warehouse and its outpost is headquartered in Madison County. One thing we know about Madison County, there's not a lot of job opportunities out there. And when one employer like Plough and Hearth closes down, and it's literally happening right now, the job cuts will be effective in early May. 107 workers laid off, almost every single one of them, guys, from the Madison County Plough and Hearth brand. This is going to impact Madison and families that live within Madison

and around Madison County most certainly. Not only is it 107 employees that are being laid off that are working year-round, but they do a lot of seasonal hiring around the Christmas and holiday shopping season where they overload employees to manage the orders that come in. Unfortunately, Plough and Hearth has seen sales struggle, and the sales are struggling much like you've seen with some of the other internet retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair, that have seen some sales slip. This is tough news for Madison. This is tough news for the community.

Plough and Hearth, a brand that's been around for a very, very long time. The Richmond-based headquartered company, Evergreen, is looking immediately to do something differently with its factory, its warehouse space in Madison. Employees were surprised by the notification and the news. Not many jobs out there due to Wichauer. 107 now taking out of the Madison County ecosystem. I know folks directly impacted by this and they were shocked, they were taken aback and they were surprised. Anything you want to add, or you chalk this up to big retailers

with internet presence and economies of scale squeezing yet another little guy out of the ecosystem? That is often the case. I don't know the details of this one in particular, but I wouldn't be surprised. Plough and Harf's web store expected to be taken down in the fall two remaining stores

north of Charlottesville for Plough and Hearth will continue to operate but they are shutting this brand down next topic, Judah Wickauer on the Time Clock Thursday this is some breaking news for you this was passed along to me by my wife as I reset the clock Burnley. This is some breaking news for you. This was passed along to me by my wife as I reset the clock. Burnley Vineyards is for sale. Burnley Vineyards is located in Barbersville, Virginia. Judah's got photos that he's going to rotate on screen ASAP. The asking

price, $2,900,000 for Burnley Vineyards. $2,900,000, the asking price. 25.7 acre opportunity here. The tasting room, guys, is... How would I characterize the tasting room? Antiquated? Are you rotating the photos on? I'd say the tasting room is a bit antiquated. The structure that you're purchasing is 4,500 square feet.

This opportunity happens to come just a mere weeks after Whitehall Vineyards was listed for sale. So this is the second Monticello area vineyard to hit the market. Whitehall Vineyards, a couple of weeks ago, listed for $12 million. Whitehall is also being offered in piecemeal capacity, where you don't have to buy the whole, what's the phrase, kitten caboodle? Yep. You can buy a portion of the land at Whitehall. You can buy the entire kitten caboodle. You can buy just portion of the land at Whitehall. You can buy the entire Kitten Caboodle. You can buy just the tasting room.

You can buy the manor house. They're trying to piecemeal a deal together. So two vineyards in the Monticello area have hit the market for sale. What intrigues me about this, Wine Enthusiast Magazine just called the area the number one wine region in the world. So I'm left with this thought process. Are the folks at Whitehall Vineyards and the folks at Burnley Vineyards trying to capitalize on global notoriety to get top dollar for their businesses? Is that what is happening here? Or are we seeing a saturation point of vineyards and wineries in this area,

and that's why two have hit the market in about a two-week time frame? Could it just be the right place at the right time with rates going down slowly? Rates aren't going down. What? Rates have gone back up. How far up? Far enough that people aren't buying? December, January.

December, January, they dropped below 7. Now healthily above 7%. Okay. It may just be that the families owning these places felt it was time to move on. And you're right, they may be capitalizing on the news that the Charlottesville wine region is top of the world. My bet, the wine enthusiast's attention where Charlottesville and the Monticello area was named Wine Enthusiast Region of the Year in the entire world is incentivizing winery and vineyard owners locally to list their labors of love. Could be. That is what my bet is. The vineyard winery tasting room experience, the bottling of wine for offsite consumption sales, it is a brutal business. And today, Burnley and Barbersville, that is breaking news for you, has hit the market.

A $2,900,000 asking price, 25.7 acres in Barbersville. Next headline, Judah Wickower. The legalization of retail weed. We are on the cusp, what, a third time of making this happen? Yeah, pretty much. Governor Glenn Youngkin has done everything possible to keep retail weed sale from happening. I think he just doesn't care.

I think he is... Oh, I think he cares. You think he cares? I think he absolutely cares. I think Youngkin has shown that he is opposed to retail weed sales. Yeah. He, if McAuliffe had beaten Yunkin, we would have already had retail weed sale. Yeah. Yunkin won because McAuliffe put his foot in his mouth when it came to parents should not have a say in their kids' education. That pushed Yunkin into the governor's mansion.

And Yunkin, one of the things he did was kibosh retail weed sales. Now we're on the cusp of that not being a reality anymore. The thing is, is if you know where to buy weed in Charlottesville, in Alamaro County, or Central Virginia, you could already do it in a retail capacity anyway. There's multiple spots in Charlottesville, and I'm not going to blow up anyone's cover here, but there's multiple spots in Charlottesville around the downtown mall alone where you can walk into a storefront building, you can show a photo ID, you can spend $10 to enter, and you get a cornucopia of cannabis. People smoking weed, people eating weed, people drinking weed tea,

people selling weed butter, people selling weed cupcakes and brownies, people selling vape, people selling oil, people selling flour, people selling daps. It's everywhere. It's not like it's not retail legal right now. Yeah. Go ahead and green light it, pun intended, because it's already happening anyway.

And tax it and make some money and take it off the black market where there's no tax revenue being collected. And gives a boost to small businesses in Virginia. There's nothing I would rather see right now than David Trecorici and his wife at Skuma having no red tape whatsoever when it comes to their business and them being able to sell their product on a shelf

within the letter of the law, mind you, but without big brother looking over their shoulder. Right. Without worrying that they're going to have to shut down the business because all of a sudden there's something or everything you can't sell. Amen. And I'll say this, there's a bill that's floating around right now that's got a lot of people excited. And that bill that's floating around right now in Richmond with Politico's in Richmond, they are on the cusp of legalizing bars. Pot bars? No, drinking bars where you don't have to have food sales. Right now, your food sales have to supersede your alcohol sales by percentage points.

They are very close to making an actual bar where you have to sell no food in Virginia. All you have to do is sell booze legal. And you know what? I say go for it. So be it. The fact that food and beverage restaurant owners are having to call drinks with fruit toppings or fruit garnishes in them food instead of booze when they ring them up,

is a travesty. Everyone's playing a hustle of some kind in their life. That hustle should have to happen. Eradicate the red tape. Telling a food and beverage owner that they have to sell X amount of food for whatever X amount of drinks they do is bogus. Especially when they drive across,

when a customer can drive across an invisible state line and go to another state where there doesn't have to be food sales at bars. It puts folks at a disadvantage. So that's two pieces from Richmond that you need to follow very closely. Retail, we tell very close to a reality second bars only liquor booze beer and wine and no food sales very close to reality and from my vantage point my vantage point hurray to both anything you want to add no I agree. UVA fraternities, how about this topic? UVA fraternity events and parties have been canceled for the foreseeable future. After a pledge at Kappa Sigma, we talked about this yesterday,

got so drunk on his own accord, we think, that he fell down a flight of stairs, hit his head, and is now in a coma. The University of Virginia has suspended new member events and social events with its fraternities. What do you want to make of this? All events suspended until March 20th, a three-week suspension. Is this throwing the baby out of the bathwater? I mean, I don't even know what to think of this. It just sounds like an overreaction. I'm not sure what they hope to accomplish by this. It's not like there was suddenly going to be a rash of UVA students falling downstairs and hitting their heads. Like, I don't know. Are they thinking there's going to be copycats?

Are they thinking that, I just don't understand the, uh, the logic behind, uh, behind making a unilateral move like this. I'm going to tell you what, when you start taking the, I went to UVA. I was the social chair and the rush chair at Phi Kappa Psi at the end of the Mad Bull on Rugby Road. Had the fraternity credit card to take people out to bars and then bring them back to the house and show them the ins and outs of frat life.

That was what I was entrusted to do. Crazy. It was awesome. When you start eliminating parties and social events from the fraternities on grounds, those parties and social events still happen, but they start happening off grounds. And when they happen off grounds, they involve more students driving. They involve less supervision. They involve less of the safety and comfort of being on grounds and more of the vulnerability and exposure to being off grounds. Yeah.

I never felt unsafe while within Phi Kappa size hallways or under Phi Kappa size rooftop, under Chi Phi, under Kappa Sig, under KA, when I was in sororities when I wasn't supposed to be. The time when trouble happened was when we were off grounds at private residences. That's when trouble happened because we were either driving there or we were intermingling with locals that didn't always have the most savory opinion of uva fraternity students our greek life surprise the parties are going to keep happening have them happen close to where students live or actually under the roof they live within. But for suspending all parties

and events for three weeks on grounds at the University of Virginia is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now the students are going to hop in their cars and drive to bars and go into places with their fake IDs. They're not going to stop partying. Vanessa Parkhill watched the program. She said she grew up in Earleysville, Pennsylvania. Make sure you're getting the lower thirds on screen for the topics we're talking about. She said, I grew up in PA, bars everywhere. I'm in favor of eliminating the food requirements. She also asked, how are things going in states where retail marijuana has been legalized? I'm sure it's filling the tax coffers, but how has it affected the communities? I have a good, fun-loving friend who is former law enforcement who is not a fan.

I respect his opinion immensely, so I'm skeptical about the legalization. I understand that. I will say this. When it comes to weed, folks are smoking in any way. We can grow the weed at our house. We can carry the weed on ourselves. We can carry ounces of weed on our person. We could smoke the weed on the downtown mall. We could smoke the weed on West Main Street. We could smoke some shrubbery on the corner. We could do whatever we want when it comes to the flower, when it comes to vaping, when it comes to getting blunted, when it comes to eating a heady cupcake. But let me tell you what. The small business person can't do it retail sales. It's the definition of anti-entrepreneurship, and it puts the small business owner in a significantly less competitive spot

when compared to big pharma. And I already heard a lot of small business owners who had been gearing up for what should have been, you know, the new rules and regulations, the new allowances, and then had the rug pulled out from under them. And thankfully, some of the ones that we know personally have managed to continue to make it work despite not having a... Bureaucracy, red tape, politicians that position their power over the short and long-term success of average Joe and average Sally on Main Street.

Get out of our way, government. Come on now. Talk about the basketball game last night. I don't know about you, but I hate 9 o'clock tip-offs. I've turned into a middle-aged man. I'm waiting for a nine o'clock tip-off and I'm like, good God, I don't think I can make it to the end of this game. By the second half, I was exhausted and my eyelids were getting heavy. But thank the Lord, the University of Virginia basketball team had to Chestnut Hill and got a victory against the Boston College Eagles. Was it easy? No. But Isaac McNeely, Jake Groves, Reese Beekman, and yes, Andrew Rohde came and they performed and Virginia got a must-win victory. Now they got Duke Saturday night in Durham and

Cameron. Are they going to beat the Cameron Crazies? No. They're probably going to lose to Duke. But if they close the season with a home victory against Georgia Tech a week from Saturday at the John Paul Jones Arena, Virginia should go dancing in March. Joey Buckets, Joe Lenardi, the NCAA bracketologist, he has the who's in right now. So you lose to Duke, you beat Georgia Tech, maybe you get one victory in the ACC tournament, and you should go dancing in March. And that's all we want from this Virginia men's basketball team. Tony Bennett made a lineup change.

He put Jake Groves in the starting lineup, and he pulled Andrew Rohde. And it worked. Groves performed and Rohde performed. Rohde was actually hunting his jump shot. Looked great last night coming off the bench. Congratulations to Bennett's boys

for getting the victory on ESPNU. Game finished around 10.45 p.m. at night on a Wednesday. That must have been one in the morning for me. Turned into an old man over here. One programming note.

Tomorrow at 10.15 a.m., Dave Norris is in the house. Dave Norris is the new director of the Carr Foundation. The Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors has launched a non-profit. And the head of this non this nonprofit is Dave Norris. Dave Norris, he's worn some hats in this community professionally. No doubt. He's had some jobs. I love Dave Norris. He's going to be in the house. Neil Williamson's going to be in the house. We're going to talk about this new car nonprofit at 10.15 a.m. on Real Talk with Keith Smith. Very excited for this interview.

10.15 a.m. tomorrow. Make sure you tune in. Dr. John Shave of Pro Renata, welcome to the program. Kevin Yancey says, just like skill games, the state hasn't figured out how to get their cut of Mary Jane. He said, I worked every frat and sorority at UVA. Why do frats like to destroy their own stuff? That's a great question. I don't know how many couches I burned in the Mad Bowl

with lighter fluid after dark. We'd drag them out of our fraternity house. We'd put them in the Mad Bowl. We'd douse them in lighter fluid and threw a match on them and watched them explode. You ever seen a couch catch on fire? A couch drowned in lighter fluid? Not in person. Then you've never seen anything go up in flames that almost burns your eyebrows. Literally, that's how fast it goes up.

It is terrifying and invigorating all at the same time. We then scurried back into our house as if rats when the lights were turned on in the back alley of a restaurant in the downtown mall. Ginny Hu says, while they smoke it on the mall and everywhere, it is still illegal to do so in public, just not in force. That is true. But if something is not in force, is it illegal? If you can walk down the downtown mall by multiple police officers

smoking a joint and they don't do anything, is it then legal? Might as well be. If it's a 25 mile an hour speed zone and everyone goes 35, is that 10 miles over the 25 actually speeding? If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it actually fall?

That's Time Clock Thursday, a new theme we're trying for Thursdays on the I Love Seville Show. Judah Wichauer and Jerry Miller, so long everybody. For obvious reasons. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.