The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Tourism Created 7K Jobs In CVille & AlbCo In 2023; 7K Tourism Jobs A Blessing & Curse For Our Area

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Tourism Created 7K Jobs In CVille & AlbCo In 2023 7K Tourism Jobs A Blessing & Curse For Our Area 2 More New Listings In Upzoned Lewis Mountain City Neighborhood Most Impacted By Upzoning? More Housing Coming Across From Brownsville Market Make Downtown Mall H2O Fountains More Dynamic If UVA Beats Maryland, Will Hoos Be Top 25 Team? Friends Of CVille Launching New Show 9/12 2:30PM 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, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

Good Thursday afternoon, guys. I'm Jerry Miller. Thank you kindly for joining us on the I Love Seville Show. We are live in downtown Charlottesville, eight blocks we care dearly about. Our headquarters have been in downtown Charlottesville for 16 plus years now, not only where we operate our business, but where we also own real estate, where we volunteer our time, where we try to champion an eight blocks that is the most critical and important in a region we call Central Virginia that's 300,000 people strong. We will showcase that influence and importance of downtown Charlottesville throughout the day today. We're going to talk tourism, a $1 billion nearly impact in 2023, the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau highlighting

the $1 billion impact tied to tourism and highlighting that 7,000 jobs created from folks visiting in large part downtown Charlottesville, the breweries, the wineries, the restaurants, the music venues, the hiking opportunities in our fine and fair community. I want to unpack what 7,000 new jobs means to the community, 7,000 jobs tied to tourism means to the community. For the most part, a blessing, but if we're being realistic,

there's a little bit of curse that comes with those 7,000 jobs as well. We'll talk Lewis Mountain. I love highlighting this neighborhood. I love highlighting this neighborhood. It's a neighborhood that is tony, that is affluent, that is well-positioned, a neighborhood of movers and shakers, a neighborhood where single-family detached homes generally start in the $800,000 range and can go north of $2 million. Because of the position of the Lewis Mountain neighborhood, it is my belief that the new zoning

ordinance will change this neighborhood more than any single other neighborhood in the city we call Charlottesville that is 10.2 square miles. I will ask you, the viewer and listener, to give me a neighborhood in the city of Charlottesville that will be changed more than Lewis Mountain. I can think of a few others, but I want you to think about what Lewis Mountain offers. Affluence, for the most part, single-family detached homes, home to professors, stakeholders, business owners, bankers, realtors, attorneys, heavy hitters. Now, in the eye of the new zoning ordinance storm, and soon, those single-family detached homes will be density via apartments, condos, and townhomes. We'll talk about that today. I want to highlight on today's

program a movement that's happening of making downtown Charlottesville more dynamic, more engaging for families, for walkers, for passerbys. It's a park. Downtown's a public park. Many put their hands in the air and they say, we need benches. We need more opportunities for families to come down and to enjoy downtown when it's not necessarily spending money at the restaurants and bars that we love so dearly. We've talked about benches. We've talked about family activity. Perhaps it's time we start discussing the many water fountains in downtown Seville. Should they be positioned differently? Should they be more interactive, more engaging? Should they have more of a human element?

Most of the water fountains now fenced off for enjoyment with call to action signage saying, don't touch the chemically treated water, basically alluding to poisonous H2O. I want to highlight that on today's program. I'm going to ask you this question, viewers and listeners. If the University of Virginia football team beats Maryland on Saturday at Scott Stadium, it's an eight o'clock kick on the ACC network. The Terrapins, a two and a half point favorite. The over-under is moving. 57 and a half points, the over-under. It was lower on Monday. Vegas suggests this could be a shootout, and of course it could be with Calandria, the quarterback under center. I'll ask you the question, if Tony Elliott's team beats Maryland, will they be honored with a top 25 ranking? The Hoos have not started 3-0 to begin a football campaign since 2019 when they won the Coastal Division.

If they start 3-0, are they in the top 25? If they're not in the top 25, is Tony Elliott's team in the receiving votes portion of the polls? I want to unpack that today. And I'm very excited, ladies and gentlemen, to highlight a new show coming to the I Love Seville Network. The fabulous Greer Achenbach is going to be hosting the show. It's the downtown spotlight where she will conversate and interview stakeholders of merit that are driving positive impacts for the eight blocks we call the mall. That show, 2.30 p.m. today on the I Love Seville Network. A cast of talented characters on her lineup. Judah Wickhauer on a two-shot as we give props to Pro Renata. If there's any kind of visual imagery we

can put on screen for Pro Renata in soon Mexicali, that would be much appreciated. John Chabon, Pro Renata are doing awesome things. Pro Renata, the last two weekends, my family and another family have spent at what has become a family-centric sports bar in Crozet. They're brewing the beer now in the old Skipping Rock location in the Shenandoah Valley. They're doing real estate development, restaurant development, brewery and bar development in downtown Stanton. Crozet is a location that's got playgrounds, fire pits, it's got outdoor offerings, live music, pizza by Dino's, ice cream by Muthru, and some fantastic beer. Remember, Pro Renata secured the brewer from Basic City just a short while ago. So that beer is elevated, upscale, and talked about. And how about Johnny Ornelas at Mexicali Restaurant,

River Hawkins at Mexicali Restaurant, and the Flats, a 10-year anniversary for the Flats, 50 parking spaces on site for Mexicali. Guys, if you haven't been to Mexicali Restaurant, you are missing one of my favorite dining experiences in the region. I sincerely mean it. It is a plus, plus, plus, plus. Judah Wickauer, my friend, which headline most compelling to you and why before I get into 7,000 jobs from 2023 that could be a blessing and a curse for our fine and fair Charlottesville footprint? My friend, the show is yours, Judah. You know, like I said, I'm interested in the turnaround for the downtown mall.

I think the downtown mall has a lot of potential, and I see a lot of it wasted, and it would be nice to see it looking better and bringing more people around. So the headline for you was the water, the fountains. Is that the one? Yeah. I was just walking by that big central fountain the other day, and I was thinking, you know, in every big city I've ever been to,

the one thing you can always count on in a fountain is coins. There's like a handful of coins in that central fountain. And it just feels like a, I don't know, it just feels like such a wasted space to me. It's a big, interesting-looking space, but there are no seats near it. And it just kind of becomes a background element that people walk by and don't really pay attention to. And I think that's kind of sad. I like it. try to make the water fountains that when I first started here as a student at the University of Virginia in 2000 were a very different experience for passerbys on the mall. I remember watching kids wade in the fountain at Central Place in front of Ludwig Kutner's. I would say one of the

most critical components on the mall is what Ludwig owns, where Zocalo and Petit Pois and his apartments are located. What is that, the corner juice right there? Yeah. Or the juice bar. It might not be the corner juice, but the juice bar right next to Zocalo. Let's make the fountains more dynamic. Right now, they're fenced off, many of them, and they have signs that highlight that they're chemically treated, basically appealing to mob fear, poisonous H2O here. Keep your kids out of them. One thing the mall needs, I talked about this on LinkedIn with John Blair. One thing the mall needs is an experience that caters to families and their kids. One of the reasons my family is very much enjoying our time

at Pro Renata in Crozet, there's a playground. My wife and I, the couple, Alex and Missy, we hung out with this past weekend. We were enjoying hazy IPAs and lagers while our four kids were playing on a playground. It was an experience that catered to the adults and the kids. I'm going to ask you this question. If mom and dad, two couples met on a weekend,

and they said, let's go downtown, the couples, the adults, are going to find something to do. They'll try cocktails. They'll try cocktails. They'll try food. They'll go shopping. They'll go in the restaurants. I want to sincerely ask you this question. What are the kids going to do on the eight blocks we call downtown?

They may go to Decades Arcade, a fantastic addition to downtown Charlottesville. Love what Lindsay Daniels and the Decades team are doing. Okay? Charlottesville. Love what Lindsay Daniels and the Decades team are doing. Okay. They may go to the Discovery Museum, although that is certainly capped from an age standpoint. I'd say maybe that's five or six and under. Yeah. Besides that, what are the kids going to do? John's made this point in the past. I think he made this point on Twitter. He bought a football. He and his son were throwing it around the mall a handful of years ago. And as they were throwing the pigskin up and down the mall, passerbys and folks were looking at him like, hey, what are you doing? You don't throw this football in this public park. That's uncouth. That's not cool. Now, I want you to think about what I just said.

A public park, a father and a son having a game of catch, and the vibe for this game of catch while the family was looking to patronize and spend was one of resistance and friction and one of unwelcomingness. That's something that has to change. The consumer's dollar has more competition for it than ever before. This dollar has competition not only from in-person experiences, actual life events, but from the internet and having those experiences delivered to your doorstep, whether through Amazon, whether through DoorDash, whether through Uber Eats, Whole Foods, Walmart, you name it. When the competition for our spending dollar is more significant than it's ever been maybe in American history.

Credit card debt's high, inflation's high, things are flat out expensive. We're trying to save money to pay our bills, to put food on the table, to pay our electricity, to cover our rent and mortgage. Do we have the disposable income to get ice cream cones and slices of pizza and burgers and music venue tickets and to go shopping at high-end stores? Not all of us do. So when the consumer is so compelled to spend elsewhere, why not figure out ways to broaden the base of customers by welcoming families with kids in every way possible. I think that's one of the things that Friends of Seville is doing extremely well. I was at the farmer's market, my wife, our two sons, on Saturday. And Judah, we have a tradition in our house of waking up early on Saturday morning. Our 22-month-old basically is an effing rooster. You hear of

roosters, cock-a-doodle-a-doing when the sun rises? Our 22-month-old wakes up before the sunrise. It's like an internal clock, okay? 5.45 to 6 a.m., the boy's up, he's in his crib, he's standing, he's draped in his sleep sack. His pampers are full, and he's got his binky in his mouth, and he's hitting the crib. We're waking up with the baby monitor. Not the alarm on our phones, not the alarm on our iPhones, but our 22-month-old banging his crib, the baby monitor next to us. We're hearing thump, thump, thump. And that's how we've woken up every day, perhaps for the last 22 months. I walk downstairs. My wife walks downstairs.

We immediately put some coffee in the pot. We get that going. We put the French toast sticks from the freezer into the toaster oven because as soon as the 22-month-old comes out of the crib, he's starving, and the French toast sticks better be ready. We go get the 22-month-old out of the crib. At that point, the six-year-old wakes up. Next thing you know, it's 625 in the morning, every day of the week, and the entire family is punch drunk with grogginess and a bit bristled with hunger. On Saturday mornings, we choose to leave the house,

get in the Family Explorer, and drive to Ick's Park because my wife loves the breakfast sandwiches from... Is it Timber Creek Farm, sweetheart? I'm not sure what it is. She'll help correct me on this. We go and get breakfast sandwiches from a stall, and lo and behold, at the farmer's market, I'm watching the downtown train for kids

riding through the farmer's market with little tykes and toddlers in the train smiling ear to ear like the Cheshire cat with the sleeve of Ritz crackers and a tin of cheese whiz. That downtown train that Friends of Seville has championed, that downtown train that Friends of Seville has made a reality, was branded with local stakeholders, local businesses. I loved seeing it. You had a conductor driving it in and out of the stalls, kids smiling ear to ear. That's the kind of stuff that we need more of. And that's the kind of stuff that I'm very proud to see materialize in large part thanks to the efforts of Friends of Seville and a non-profit

that's going to launch a show today at 2.30 p.m. Let's get those water fountains more engaged and dynamic. Let's take the mom fear signage off the fencing that says chemically treated, and let's instead have a call to action that says, make a wish, toss a coin. Yeah. It's hot outside. Get your feet wet. Yeah. That would be amazing. Your dog is thirsty. Maybe he wants to walk through here. And then you have a visual engagement piece that's not tied to spending money that will attract people downtown.

Now, speaking of the mall, it was a critical component in the 2023 results that were recently released by the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau. We talked about this briefly. In 2023, Charlottesville City and Albemarle County, nearly $1 billion, $956 million to be exact, in tourism revenue, strictly inlottesville and alamaro county this is an eye-popping number this represents about three percent of total visitor spending in the entire commonwealth of the virginia only city and county of alamaro this was a six percent um uptick versus 2022 that makes sense 2022 we were still climbing out of the pandemic. I would bet you 2024 is going to be even higher than the 956 million. This number generated Judah and viewers and listeners

$47 million in taxes for the city and the county. And Judah, this number, created 7,000 jobs in the region. 7,000 jobs, J-dubs, tied to tourism in 2023. I'll give you carte blanche here, anywhere you want to go. I value your opinion on on this i called it in the rundown the headlines you see on screen the lower thirds that judah's rotating on screen a blessing and a curse pick it apart like thanksgiving turkey well i know that ultimately uh those jobs are going to create hardship for people that want to work them but either have to travel in from Buckingham County or other parts unknown in order to find affordable living spaces

or they're going to have to struggle with living in Charlottesville. Because as we've covered before, the fact of the matter is these tourism jobs are not going to be high-paying industry jobs. food and beverage and other, you know, working at wineries, working at restaurants and bars, working at hotels. They're good jobs, but they're not going to be paying, you know, the type of money that you need to be living in charlottesville uh today or uh for the foreseeable future um the thing is as you've also said maybe we just don't live in that world anymore maybe it's time to maybe it's time to admit that uh somebody working a tourism job in charlottesville needs to work 70 or 80 hours a week, right?

Who's been saying that? You. Who scoffed at that comment? I did, and I still do. Who scoffed at that comment? I just... Who said 24 months ago that Charlottesville-Dalmar County, the greater Charlottesville metro area, is no longer a 40-hour-a-week community.

I got so much resistance from viewers and listeners and from you with making that comment. I said the days of working 40 hours a week, the days of working 50 hours a week, those are yesteryear. In particular, if you're working a frontline industry, a service-oriented industry, tied to food and beverage, hospitality, tourism, music, experiential. Which tells me that those jobs aren't going to exist here forever because that's unsustainable. Why is that unsustainable? Because you can't just keep telling people they have to work more and more in order to live. Someone's going to do that.

It's fine to say that 60 hours a week is the new normal, but if in five years you say, oh, I'm sorry, now 60 hours, 65, 70 hours a week is the new normal. One is 80 hours a week the new normal. A lot. One is 80 hours a week, the new normal. A lot of people work 80 hours a week, Judah. I didn't say they don't. If someone's going to work 80 hours a week and someone's going to work 40 hours a week,

who's going to be able to afford to live here most likely? Okay. If the problem is housing affordability, one component to affording the housing that's expensive is probably working more hours, whether folks want to admit that or not. We're a one-income household, the Miller House. The one-income provider, bare minimum, is clocking 60 hours a week. Bare minimum. When I'm not in this office,

I'm thinking about work. When I'm at dinner, I'm thinking about work. When I'm watching Netflix next to my wife, or I'm on HBO Max watching industry, I'm thinking about work. It's incredibly sad. You call it sad. I say, got 24 rental properties, a house on four acres with a swimming pool and ivy. Watched my kid learn how to do freestyle swimming in the backyard of our house in the beginning of this summer. While thinking about work. While watching him learn how to swim in our home.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm not sure how that relates. You're the beholder. You look at someone thinking of work. I look at it. My hard work created an opportunity for our six-year-old to learn how to

swim in our backyard pool. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My point is this. We have 7,000 jobs that have been created from tourism. Judah makes the argument that these 7,000 jobs are not going to be sustainable because the jobs that are being created are tied to tourism in this area.

And he made a very good point. Our jobs that, frankly, probably aren't paying the best. And if you had a two-income household, and those two incomes were tied to tourism, the combined incomes are likely below the $124,200 that HUD says is the average for Charlottesville's metro area. Two tourism jobs in a family probably not clocking a buck twenty four two. Most likely not. Most likely not. So that family has to do one of two things

work more hours or as you've pointed out move to Buckingham or the outer counties and commute to work. The problem with doing that is, I don't know if you see it this way, but I see a 90-minute commute or a one-hour commute or a 45-minute commute from an outer county to the epicenter of employment, Charlottesville, as work. I see that as part of the workday. It's also part of the expense. And eventually, eventually,

you get to the point where you go far enough and you're essentially, you might as well buy a place that you can't afford in town because it's just as unaffordable to drive that far. There you go. And the odds of buying it are probably not realistic.

Most likely, it's you're renting it. So here's the double-edged sword, the blessing and the curse. 7,000 jobs tied to what is... I mean, the $1 billion tied to what is... I mean, the $1 billion tied to tourism, according to the Charlottesville Admiral Convention and Visitors Bureau,

is below the $1.3 billion that the defense sector has generated. A white paper that was commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce, Admiral County, and the City of Charlottesville found that the defense sector in our region generated $1.3 billion in economic vitality. So tourism, most likely,

is your second slotted industry of economic vitality. I would love to see someone commission a white paper to determine the economic vitality or the money that's generated from real estate. We don't know that number. We do know that the defense sector did 1.3 billion, and now we know that tourism has done 950, what's the exact number? 956 million. So we're going to use data here based on facts and data. An analysis commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce, Albemarle County, and City of Charlottesville says defense did 1.3 billion. An analysis done by the Charlottesville, Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau said tourism did 956 million.

I'm going to put tourism in the two slot. If we're comparing and contrasting the impacts of defense sector economic vitality with tourism economic vitality, there should be a couple of significant points to highlight. The first point to highlight, the jobs associated with the defense sector and the 1.3 billion with a B economic impact are high paying jobs. Six figure salaries. Six figure for one person. To put that in perspective, Northrop Grumman is opening up a $300 million facility in Waynesboro. And the average salary for people in that Waynesboro facility is $94,000. That's going to come to market in the next 12 to 24 months. Tourism, not a chance in H-E double hockey sticks, my friend. Do those jobs generate six figures? Not a chance in heck. Second, this is important to highlight. With tourism,

the strain on infrastructure is probably a bit lighter than the strain that's associated with the defense sector. With tourism, people visit the community. They bring their credit cards, their Amex, their black cards. They spend money, and they leave. They're not taxed on our roads. They're not taxed on our schools. They're not taxing our roads. They're not taxing our schools. They're not taxing our water. They come here for three, four days, a long weekend, a week, maybe two weeks. They spend a boatload of

moolah and then they leave. Defense sector, the folks tied to the defense sector in the 1.3 billion, they're living here. They're using our schools. They're using our roads. They're using our water. They're using our sidewalk. They're using our roads. They're using our water. They're using our sidewalk. They're using our infrastructure. It's important to highlight that as well. I'm going to straight up say this. It's easy to get enam, phenomenal work, 956 million tourism, 2023, 7,000 jobs, tourism. They're positioning the tax justification or the tax ROI, 47 million for Charlottesville and Albemarle County. This is damn good stuff. We should champion this. And for the most part, it's really,

really good. But if we're unpacking it, the 7,000 jobs that come from tourism and 956 million in 2023 are undoubtedly in the affordable housing crisis in that category. And a good chunk of this tax revenue, this $47 million in local taxes, a good chunk of that is going to solve the problem that's tied with the 7,000 jobs created by tourism. City of Charlottesville just gave a bridge loan to Habitat for Humanity and PHA to buy a mobile home park.

That bridge loan was over what? $7 million because there was an offer from an unknown entity for $7 million for the mobile home park. That bridge loan was over what? $7 million because there was an offer from an unknown entity for $7 million for the mobile home park. You put that in and that $47 million in taxes, that was generated. Right? City of Charlottesville

just bought a plot of land on High Street from Wendell Wood, kept Bo Carrington from building apartments over there. Turn it into a park instead of housing. You take that from the $47 million, don't you? It's important to take a deep dive on stories and not just be enamored or hypnotized

or romanticized with headlines. That's what we try to do here at the water cooler of Charlottesville. Let's go to number one in the family, Deep Throat. Then we'll go to number two in the family, John Blair. Number one, I love the economic development people beat their chest about the $40 million of tax impact. Deep Throat says, but are studiously silent about the tens of millions we have to pay for social services and affordable housing for the underpaid workers. The blessing and the curse is right there. You see what he's saying? You pound your chest about the $40 million tax impact,

but you keep it on the hush-hush, what you're paying on the other side for social services and affordable housing because of the 7,000 jobs created with this industry. He also adds, an industry of this size and on this wage scale is not sustainable. The industry should be more expensive and smaller. Your point. Yeah, I mean, it eventually will be. More expensive and smaller. What does he mean by that? Being able to cover its own cost. More expensive and smaller means less workers, not 7,000. Cut that number down. You pay them more, and they work longer hours. And to pay them more, you're going to have to charge more.

Hotel rooms go up. Music tickets go up. Cost of a steakhouse burger at Citizen eclipsed 20 bones. The grilled cheese that you so dearly love at Jack Brown's, Judah turning into the mayor of this saloon on the downtown mall, what's it, $4 now? Yeah. Get ready for that to 2X.

And he closes with this deep throat. You have to be careful of this partial equilibrium economic impact analysis. I guarantee you that if you totaled up all the sectorial impact studies that each industry does to try to talk itself up, you would get to like 2x the actual GDP. John Blair. He says, I can only point out that Winchester's pedestrian mall, which is very similar to Charlottesville, has a splash park on it. That would bring kids and families to the mall mall maybe put it in the space to the east of the omni where it would easy to be easy to access and there currently is only a semi-circle of chairs and some old paper boxes what do you think would a splash park work to get families on the

mall hells to the yeah a splash park would work since our first grader has matriculated from preschool to kindergarten to first grade, you know how many birthday parties and play dates we've been at? I think it's Greenleaf. Is it Greenleaf that has the splash pad? My wife would be able to rattle this off right now. I'm pretty sure it's Greenleaf, the splash pad. I have been to this splash pad. Is it Greenleaf? Can somebody help me out? I have been to this splash pad probably a dozen times personally. I would not be surprised if my wife has been to that splash pad four or five dozen times for birthday parties in Greenleaf and get-togethers. Thank you, Deep Throat. The splash pad is clean. It gives the kids two hours of something to do outside and off screen. And

the parents can hang out under the shelter drinking their iced coffee. Or maybe they're a little bit mischievous and using a black Yeti cup with I Love Seville branding in it and have an emperor of clouds inside. No one knows because you're drinking out of a straw. put a splash pad on them all and see what happens it's a damn good idea johnny blair a damn good idea john blair janice boyce trevillian says those on your on our feet for 60 to 70 hours a week, that's a hard job. 100%. Let me ask you a question though, Janice Boyce Trevelyan. 60, 70 hours on your feet a week, Judah, working in tourism, how's it any different than the 60, 70 hours a week a teacher or a nurse is working? My grandma, love her dearly, her name is Betty. Educated at the University of Richmond before it

was the University of Richmond. U of R used to be a women-only college, and then there was the male college. I'm drawing a blank on what the woman-only college was named. Betty goes from Hampton Baptist Church, Southern Baptist upbringing, to an undergraduate at the women's college that is now the University of Richmond. She gets a degree through the educational school and becomes a teacher, where she served as a teacher for 35 to 40 years. She beams when she talks about being a teacher. She also talks about the physical

impact that had on her knees, on varicose veins, on her body, and how her body would not support her standing on her feet for that long. And that's why she retired. Explain the difference to me of working 60 hours a week as a nurse or a teacher and working 60 hours a week in tourism and hospitality. And I don't know if anyone wants to hear this, because for the most part I've found, and maybe this is an unfortunate aspect of society, not many people seem to enjoy their job. I've said on this program, I love, love, love what I do.

My favorite day of the week is Monday. I say this to my wife all the time. She said, Jerry, you created the company and built a job around what you like to do. That's not the norm. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But it's called work for a reason. If it was fun, it would be called fun. And you laugh and you joke over there. I laugh because it's funny. I'm not making fun of you. People don't say, let's go to fun.

It's Monday. It's 8 a.m. I have to go to fun. I got to clock in at fun. I need to go to fun to pay for my house and my mortgage and my rent and my car. People don't say I got to work overtime at fun. I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is. It's effing work.

People don't want to hear this. 60 hour a week. City and county now. Maybe in Fluvanna and Buckingham. Maybe in Green or Waynesboro. It's a 40 hour work week. But in the city and county, if you want to live here, it's 60. And some will do it and some won't.

And that's going to be the separation of who has what and who does not. And you know what that's called? The separation of the haves and the have-nots? Darwinism. Oh. Go on. The capitalistic version of Darwinism. That's what that is.

West Hampton, Holly Foster and Henrico. That's exactly where she went. Thank you, Holly Foster. She's a proud West Hampton, Holly Foster and Henrico, that's exactly where she went. Thank you, Holly Foster. She's a proud West Hampton graduate. Betty, my grandma. Thank you, Holly Foster. Bingo. I drew a blank on that.

My grandma would say, shame on you, Jerry. She's a proud West Hampton graduate and a proud University of Richmond supporter. You talk about one of the most beautiful campuses in the Commonwealth of Virginia, University of Richmond. I'm getting off track. That is a paradise, a paradise in Richmond. Now you're going to pay for it. It ain't cheap to go there, but you come out of U of R, University of Richmond with a degree, you have a networking opportunity and an alumni base that will champion and support you from now until the end of your working time. Oh, sorry, your fun time. Get off. We'll close with this. Make the argument of why 60 to 70 is not going to be sustainable for much longer. Because we're about to make a very poignant argument.

Because, I mean, it's the progression of things. You can't just add more hours to someone's work week every year and say this is the new norm. I mean, your hours are capped. Yeah. You're clocking 43. And I'm making a set

amount. That's increased every year. Homeowner, now you do have some advantages. You're frugal. You're an excellent saver. You don't have kids.

Those little things are expensive as all get out. But you get above cost of living raise, no matter performance. We're not going to go down the road of this because confidentiality, and I have too much respect for you. matter performance. We're not going to go down the road of this because confidentiality and I have too much respect for you. But I see your point. You can't just keep

asking people, oh, you've got to clock another five hours this year. Another five hours next year. We may be seeing an increase in population in Charlottesville, but that's not happening everywhere. And there are, if you read...

It's happening in Almaral. Yeah, I don't care. That's not what I'm talking about. The fact of the matter is, that's not because more people are having kids. That's because people are moving here. Yes. It's not a natural increase in population.

It's a rebalancing, if you will. And the fact of the matter is, if you read the tea leaves, there are a lot of younger people who are just straight up saying, we're not going to have kids. There is no, we can't do it. Dinks. Because people like you are going to say, look, I'm sorry. Not everybody is out here saying that,

I'm sorry, it's a 60-hour work week now. If you're working less than that, then get the hell out of town. That's not what I'm saying. I know you're not saying get the hell out of town. I'm being hyperbolic. But the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of people that see your viewpoint

and say, look, I'm just going to live out the rest of my life and not participate. Okay. And, and, and anyone, but the fine do that. But Jerry, our, our entire way of life, the United States business model is based on having more people and more people and more people. If that stops, you're going to see more and more of this, what, 7K tourism jobs is a blessing and a curse because people can't survive. And I don't presume to know how things are going to change. I presume to know. Okay. But finish your thought. No, go ahead. You know how the 7K tourism jobs are going to change? I agree with you that the sustainability

of someone being paid $12 an hour, $15 an hour, $17 an hour, $20 an hour, $20 an hour, 40K, kids, a wife, mortgage, going to be challenging. Those positions are going to evolve into digital positions, positions cannibalized by digital AI, kiosks, ordering apps, smartphone technology. You disagree? Oh, no, no. I was laughing at your pronunciation of kiosks. You disagree with that? Well, but see, then the problem is going to get worse. How is the problem going to get worse?

Do you see that? How? You're talking about how 7K tourism jobs is a blessing and a curse. What would happen in Charlottesville if there were no 7K tourism jobs? Tourism would still chug along. People are still going to go drink $35 a bottle wine at Keswick or King Family. People are still going to hike humpback rocks or go see Disco Rusque at the Southern. I'm not sure what hiking humpback rock has to do with tourism. They're still going to go to the music venues

and spend money on the downtown mall and still go to the John Paul Jones Arena in Scott Stadium for Tony Bennett and Tony Elliott. And they're still going to bar crawl from Mexicali to Public to the Whiskey Jar to Draft Taproom. Damn it, is the beer coming?

When is the beer coming? People are still going to come. It's just they're going to be served differently. They're going to be served digitally. They're going to be served through phones and ordering apps. Tourism's not going to stop. Just the population's going to become more homogenous and even deeper wealthy.

That's all that's going to happen. I've said on this program so many times, Charlottesville is a resort community, a resort vacation community that had a menage a trois with a art entertainment community and a finance technology community. It's like Austin, Texas,

Boomshakalaka with Vail, Colorado and Greenwich, Connecticut. That's what Charlottesville's become. You got the quirkiness and the weirdoness of Austin and Asheville rendezvousing with Vail while Greenwich and FIDE jump in the middle at the end and Charlottesville's birthed. Okay.

All those economic ecosystems are chugging along. They've just become more homogenous and wealthy and the same. And I ain't saying that's good. I'm not saying that's good. I'm saying that's what's happening. And I think we need to highlight that the tourism piece is incredibly awesome,

but it also has an undertow that we're not seeing that is pulling a large portion, dragging the undertow, a large portion of the population into very tumultuous waters. Vanessa Parkhill says, was there ever a time when living in the city was affordable for F&B workers? I would say there was, right?

Remember the downtown grill? Yeah. Robert Sarver's downtown grill where the Bebedero currently is and Rockfish Brewery currently is. The late, great Wilson Ritchie bought that building. When you went to the Downtown Grill, Hamilton's and the Aberdeen Barn could afford to live in Charlottesville and Almar County. But you know what really radicalized and revolutionized and changed the community?

And it's not unique to us. You know what it was? It's COVID. Because we realized when the government made us stay at home and gave us free money to stay at home, demanded that we stay home, we realized that a lot of businesses could still work from home. They could still pump along and chug along when their lower management, middle management, and upper management were driving revenue in their tighty-whities or their bathrobes. Now that hybrid work remote, log into an ISP, punch 60 hours of fun, sorry, work, and make your six figures is allowing people to move to a community they love.

And everyone got punch drunk with Charlottesville after going to the University of Virginia. You talk with somebody who went to the University of Virginia, and I would, speaking from experience, I would bet you nine out of ten of those people that attended undergraduate school at the University of Virginia would say, Jesus, it was some of the best four years of my life. And they got punch drunk with it, and they want to move back to experience it because it's called nostalgia. I think that's true of colleges. Not all of them. Oh, definitely not all of them. Not all of them. But that's an idealized time in your life. For sure. And it's easy to look back on those days and be like, man, you know,

I'd love to relive my youth. I'd love to relive those times that I had in X place. I love the places that I went to college. Exactly. Because you're free of responsibility for the most part. You're away from your parents. You got a little bit of money. You don't have to have fun that much. Sorry, work that much.

That's what's changed Charlottesville now, Merle. The folks are moving here, got a boatload of money, got jobs that aren't tied to here, don't really have a ton of affiliation to here besides going to school here decades ago, and they're changing the community. Let's talk the Lewis Mountain neighborhood if you want to put those lower thirds on screen.

I got this coming in via DM. He says, I got two points. Mr. Anonymous here. Number one for Judah. Judah, I hear you and work-life balance is very important. However, Jerry has a point. I currently work about 60 hours a week and live my life because I worked about 70 to 80 hours a week the first 15 years post-college, either via work plus grad school at some time or just working in general. The life most desired here requires 60 plus a week if you have a family to support and it takes more to get down to 60. Two, he says, as the city and county become higher AGI less and less teens and college students need to do the work that service jobs that teens and college students did 20 years ago.

High AGI parents reduce working youngsters, further stressing service labor in our market. That's a damn good point. I think I need to hear that again. No, I'll put it in very labor, I'll put it in very straightforward terms here. This is me putting it in straightforward terminology, okay? His second point is this.

Wealthy families are moving to the area. Wealthy families can move to the area because they can work remotely or hybridly now. They have paychecks from major metropolitan areas not tied to Charlottesville. And as wealthy families move to the area, seriously wealthy families, they don't need their kids, their teens, their young adults to go work front line or service industry kids offshoot our Scrooge McDuck and gold coins, they don't need a bartend, bar back, bus tables, clean dishes, wait or serve. That shrinks the supply of frontline workers down. And as the frontline worker supply is

shrunk down, the business struggles to staff and the staff it can find to work, it has to pay more because it realizes the staff has more leverage. Because the staff realizes it has more leverage. And all of that is passed on to the consumer. Or is that the burden of the business owner? That's an effing good point. That's another

point that I need to start making much more on this program. I should start making making much more on this program. I should start making that point more on the program. The gentrification of the community, the sociology of the community, is not just a homogenous one and a wealthy one, but it's the kids of the wealthy not working the front line or service jobs like I had to work. My first job, Judah, was cutting grass in our neighborhood in Williamsburg. And I realized very quickly, 12 years old, that I could make more money if I knocked on doors and got people to work for Jerry's Grass Cutting Service and then hired his buddies to cut the grass. We charged $20 a yard. I knocked on the door. I kept

ten. My buddy made ten. We did five or six yards a weekend. Before I could only do two yards and make 40 bucks. Or I could do five or six yards and make 60 bucks, 50 or 60 bucks, and not do the work and just talk to people. After that, 13, 14 started busting tables for Rick Phillips at the Sportsman's Grill. We didn't come from money. We were middle class. Because we were middle class, my parents fought tooth and nail to afford the tuition from my brother and I to go to a private school called Walsingham Academy. We realized at this private school, sons of CPAs, son of a CPA, that oh my God, these people are so much more wealthy than we are. Kids driving to school in Hummers and Mercedes-Benz, Land Rovers and Lexuses.

We had a beat up 740 GLE Volvo. The reason we drove that, because it was safe. Had no radio, was four cylinder, the air condition barely worked. We had to work. My brother worked at the trellis as a server. I worked my way through UVA at Ruby Tuesdays and Barracks Road so I didn't have any student debt. Is that going to be the way of our kids? I don't know.

One of the things that I don't know. One of the things that I talk about with my wife all the time. First generation success. How does that impact the generation that earned the success? A lot of people says it creates silver spoon and spoiled offspring. I hope to God ours aren't that. We won't let them be that. Go get the dog's poop from the yard. You're not above that. Do it now. And while you're at it, clean the dishes and take the trash out. And do it with a smile on

your face. Said that yesterday to our six-year-old. Vanessa Parkhill, people will continue to come with every new class of first years. That's life in a college town. Not every community benefits from the constant crop of new people. There are towns throughout the Rust Belt where people just left and no one has gone back. Well said, VP. And Janice Boyce-Trevillian, nurses are paid much better, plus benefits, vacation time, and teachers than frontline service industry workers. They also get salary bumps and summers off. She's talking, she had that comment about the 60 to 70 hours a week that people are spending on their feet. This is from Deep Throat. Population shifts are always going on.

Seeley, Montana is a place I know. Biggest industry there was lumber. It got expensive because of remote work. It was not sensible to do lumber processing there. Pyramid lumber closed. Their workers had already moved away. They could not attract workers to replace those who left because pay was too low, but pyramid could not

pay more because you could only charge so much for lumber. The non-working college student thing is a good point. At MSU, all the kids work. At UVA, they don't. UVA kids come from wealthy families. They aren't going to spend their college experience working. Not all of us, but many of us, many of my classmates, absolutely. I remember working at Ruby Tuesdays, doing the day shift at Ruby Tuesdays on a Saturday. And eight or ten of my fraternity brothers from Phi Kappa Psi coming into the bar area, half of them with fake IDs, the other half freshly 21, some of them 22. They would sit at the bar while I was working and get blackout drunk. Blackout drunk. And heckle the fact that I was working the bar on a Saturday

instead of watching college football, or on a Sunday instead of betting on the NFL. Stand-up people. What they didn't realize was they were using their mommy and daddy's credit card to tip 25% so I could pay my student loan debts off, and I was taking their bets on the NFL action, and most of them were losers.

So I got that juice as well. Holly Foster. Parents now don't want to say that their children work at McDonald's or Baskin-Robbins. When I was growing up, teenagers wanted to earn money to save to buy a car. I worked at McDonald's. You learn a lot about yourself and life in general when you're working in the food industry.

When you're bussing tables and you're going to people's, taking people's disregards and scraping them off the plate into a trash can, than taking the trash to a dumpster in the back of the restaurant with half a dozen rats running at your feet. We learn a lot about life when doing things like that. It's 1.35. For the sake of time, I think we need to save some of these topics tomorrow. I think one topic that I'm very excited about for tomorrow is the Lewis Mountain. You're getting closer to potentially winning the bet.

We set the over-under at nine. We made the bet a few weeks ago. The Lewis Mountain neighborhood, I think, is going to be the most dramatically impacted by the new zoning ordinance. And I think it's going to be the most dramatically impacted, Judah, because of what is going to change about Lewis Mountain. From single-family detached, 800,000 to 2 million up homes, the affluent, the tony, the prestigious, the respected, to density townhomes, apartments, and condos. Other neighborhoods will see density apartments, townh apartments, and condos. Other neighborhoods will see density, apartments, townhomes, and condos, but the other neighborhoods impacted

will not have the same historical influence or historical wealth of Lewis Mountain. In the last 24 to 36 hours, two additional homes have come on the market in Lewis Mountain. Those two additional homes are 1916 Thompson Road, four bedroom, four bath, 3,000 square feet, 0.39 acres, asking price $1,995,000. Additionally, a cottage on a post stamp of a lot, $849,000, three bedroom, two bath, 2020 minor road. Currently, there are three homes in the pending slot and two that are active.

Judah now, you now, Judah, have three homes in your column. Yeah. If you eclipse nine by close of business 2024, you win the prop bet. If that stays at eight or under, I win the prop bet. If it's nine even, it's a push and no one wins.

You getting these two in the last 36 hours surprised me. I thought the bet I made was a slam dunk. One of the things, I'll close with this. I used to grow up with a pool table. Played a lot of pool growing up. Nine ball and eight ball. Used pool, poker, running a book to help pay for school and get spending money. I remember after college going to Miller's third floor and playing one of the best shooters in the Charlottesville area. His name was Sam. Bobby Anderson, the best pool player in the area.

Buster Fox, one of the best pool players in the area too. Sam, right in the echelon the area. Buster Fox, one of the best pool players in the area too. Sam, right in the echelon below Bobby and Buster. Sam, a retired military guy who had a cross for a forearm tattoo. We're at Miller's on the third floor. We're gambling. I propose a prop bet. I'm playing a guy that's younger than me that's way better than me. But the terms of the prop bet that I created were advantageous and weighted in my favor. He was a way better pool player than me.

But in the framework of this deal, he wasn't going to win. After I collected his $100, and this was 15 years ago when $100 actually meant something, I said to him, you know what, Sam? You're a way better pool player than me. But I'm a way better better than you. I ran into Sam like five years ago, 10 years after that interaction on the pool table at Miller's on the third floor.

He said, I'll never forget what you said. I will never forget what you said. It's the Thursday edition of the I Love Seville show. Judah Wittkower, Jerry Miller, thank you kindly for joining us Thank you.