A couple mornings ago, the city of Staunton was decorating Downtown with wreaths for the coming holidays. Cranes and man-lifts have always symbolized progress to me, so I find myself taking pictures of them often. When I lived in Berlin, there were cranes everywhere. It is as if that city is under constant construction. Now, there have been several cranes in Staunton, lately. Some involve putting copper tops on the historic houses and churches so that they will gleam in the Virginia sun, some are to insert chimney liners into the tops of buildings like the new Darjeeling Cafe did recently. There are often large machines lining the streets. The city has just redone Chruchville Ave, turning it into a beautiful brick walkway and street, lined with quaint lights and subterranean power lines. It's really quite pretty on Churchville these days; I run down the street every morning on my way to Gypsy Hill Park, another awesome place in Staunton.Next door to the Darjeeling Cafe is the Palmer House, the space pictured above that looks like two buildings and actually is one. The first floor of the Palmer House is the famous Staunton Grocery, where you can eat locally sourced gourmet food and sample wonderful wines, cocktails, and tea. Next to the Staunton Grocery is a giant retail space that's currently vacant, but won't be for too much longer, methinks.
What's really interesting is what's going on above the ground floor. Madison Monroe Properties is doing preliminary work on creating luxury apartments in the Palmer House that are sure to be hot commodities. I seriously want to live in one. Right now, if you want a modern apartment, you pretty much have to go outside of the "urban core" to get it. There, you will find traditional, big apartment blocks with thin walls, balconies, and central air and heat. If you moved to Staunton, though, why would you want to live out there by the Wal-Mart? When there's an option to live in our thriving downtown, people won't want to live out there. The quality of life is leaps and bounds better down town than it out by the Wal-mart, and for a hundred dollars more a month, you can move there soon and still have all the benefits of living out there in new (fast & flimsy) construction land.
I hope you can tell by this post that I'm excited to be a part of the Palmer House upgrade. I've been working on it for a week now, and I'm crazy about the idea. I want to reserve one of the apartments for Mary (my wife) and me right now.
"Stay tuned" for more. Surely, I'll be writing about this one a lot here.
