Biz Beat Roundup will not run Feb. 25. It will return March 4.
BUSINESS ACTIVITY
- It looks like a roughly 50,000-square-foot Harris Teeter grocery store will be coming to North Stafford. The Stafford County Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 on Tuesday night to sell the former site of Anne E. Moncure Elementary School to an affiliate of Augusta, Ga.-based Southeastern for $3.3 million. The idea is to build a retail center that would be anchored by Harris Teeter and would make for a $30 million to $40 million investment in the county, Southeastern President Mark Senn told the supervisors. Supervisor Pamela Yeung, whose Garrisonville District is near the Moncure site (corner of Garrisonville Road and Doc Stone Road), cast the sole dissenting vote. Harris Teeter’s next-closest store to the Moncure site is in Manassas. Hat tip to my colleague Jonathan Hunley for this information.
- Rappahannock Goodwill Industries will soon relocate its store at 736 Warrenton Road in Stafford’s England Run development to the significantly larger former Big Lots space in the center.
- Uptown Cheapskate will formally open its Fredericksburg thrift store Feb. 26. The store is at 2293 Carl D. Silver Parkway next to Wegmans. The company has been buying people’s clothes the best couple of months and now is ready to start selling items, too.
- Fred Books recently opened at 8011 Commerce Way in the Ladysmith area. The business also has a store at 2629 Wheatland Woods Drive in Spotsylvania County. The businesses are open for events.
- Centennial Broadcasting, which owns WBQB-FM (B101.5) and WFVA-AM (NewsTalk1230) locally, is expected to complete its acquisition of WGRQ-FM (95.9) and WGRX-FM (104.5) from Telemedia Broadcasting Inc. in the next few weeks. Tom Cooper, the general manager of the stations being acquired, is retiring. Mark Bass will be the general manager of the four Centennial stations, which eventually will all be housed at the current Centennial location at 1914 Mimosa St. in south Stafford (the Telemedia stations are currently on Lafayette Boulevard in Spotsylvania and will remain there in the short-term).
MOVERS & SHAKERS
- The potential for a medical school run by the University of Mary Washington (UMW) and Mary Washington Healthcare (MWHC) is the subject of this week’s edition of the Biz Beat Banter podcast. The guests are UMW President Troy Paino and MWHC President and CEO Chris Newman.
- Silly Goose Imagination Village, a Stafford business “where kids get lost in their imaginations,” is the subject of this week’s Biz Beat Clips video.
- UMW received a grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) earlier this year to support efforts addressing student food insecurity and campus hunger.
- MWHC recently welcomed a new cohort of Reynolds Community College Respiratory Therapy students, who have begun their second semester of training in Mary Washington Hospital’s Simulation Lab.
- Gwyneth’s Gift Foundation — a non-profit dedicated to promoting hands-only CPR and Automated External Defibrillators education, awareness and training — has received a $21,000 grant from the Joe and Mary Wilson Community Benefit Fund of the Mary Washington Hospital Foundation.
REAL ESTATE REVIEW
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This 6,088-square-foot house on Sawhill Boulevard in Spotsylvania sold last week for $1.06 million, the highest tally for the week in the region. The link in the first bullet point of Real Estate Review shows the rest of the homes that sold in the past week (this information appears every week).
There were 68 homes sold last week in the Fredericksburg area, including two for more than $1 million, according to the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors’ weekly sales list. Check back weekly for the new list.
- Fredericksburg City Council last week unanimously approved special-exception and special-use permits for a 1.9-acre, mixed-use development at 2015 and 2105 Princess Anne St. that could include 21 townhouses and a renovation of the existing commercial building on site. The project would also include a pedestrian connection to the Caroline Street river trail. The developers are local real estate professionals Jamie Scully and Fitzhugh Johnson. The next step in the process is a major site plan submission and review by the City of Fredericksburg.
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The Summit Academy of Central Virginia, a classical educational school for students in grades 6-12, is planning a new 30-acre campus overlooking the Ni River Reservoir at Gordon Road and Browns Farm Road in Spotsylvania. The school has already raised more than half of its $8 million capital campaign goal for the project. The Free Press featured the school in 2024.
Biz Beat Roundup runs every Wednesday and includes a roundup of business news from around the Fredericksburg region. Send submissions to: bill.freehling@fredericksburgfreepress.com
