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The Metro on Granby (401 Granby)


vdogg

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Hey Tel,

 

Concerning an arcade, that's exactly the type of business their looking for in the Arts District and you'd probably get a ton of visitors.  If you're still in the area, you should check out Better Block this friday night and saturday during the day.  Most of the building owners will be available to discuss renting out their spaces.  That's really the whole point of it.

 

 

 

Been a while! I drove by Granby and saw the old Manhattans building was gone and was like, "whaaaaat?"

 

Back stories.

401 Granby:

 

I looked into renting the older space that was there for an arcade. Between a few friends I had access to about 100 arcade machines and we thought it would be fun to do an arcade there for a while. But the space had huge mold issues from neglect, non-ADA compliant bathrooms and the entire site was under contract to a hotel.  At the time I didn't know or bother to look up that Gadams owned it, and I didn't really know much about him other than he screwed over a bunch of people on the Tower thing. Couldn't really ever get an answer from anyone, and the realtor I think gave us a hint -- don't do it here, do it in Virginia Beach. We thought about it in more depth and we'd end up with all the issues that MacArthur had.

 

Wainwright:

 

Was a tenant in that building. I knew the owners a little bit. Fascinating watching it all go down.

 

When Buddy Gadams got the Wainwright for $3 million dollars, he pretty much forced us to sign a one year lease - ending on December 31st.

 

Right as October came up, he basically said we're not honoring the lease any more you have 30 days to vacate. That isn't *that* big of a deal other than the part where we were knee deep in driving the Norfolk Mini Maker Faire. The Maker Faire was a huge success (by number of people, over 1300) and definitely a killer addition to the otherwise generally boring scene around town. But we didn't need the headache of trying to move the entire hackerspace right on top of trying to run a killer event, especially when Gaddams was 100% cheating us.

 

All these developers are running after high priced apartments to milk the young people. The proper thing for the young people to do is revolt against them. They're killing their future. It would be funny if the apartments cratered the market and drove rents way down, but unfortunately many of the pompos rich a-holes that own it all will let it sit empty.

 

Meanwhile, LOTS of people are leaving / have left Hampton Roads recently. I've never seen anything like it before.

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Hey Tel,

 

Concerning an arcade, that's exactly the type of business their looking for in the Arts District and you'd probably get a ton of visitors.  If you're still in the area, you should check out Better Block this friday night and saturday during the day.  Most of the building owners will be available to discuss renting out their spaces.  That's really the whole point of it.

 

Howdy! I was at the Better Block, heavily involved in the Texaco building. The lighting stuff was mine, and some of the video game stuff. Some of it ended up over at Alchemy during Galaxy Dynamite's set. We were suposed to have arcade machines there but the proper truck never materialized. I met the consultants of the event and got to see it be built. It was neat.

 

The problem is, arcades don't make enough money. You have to serve alcohol or have some other good to bring in the cash. Barcade is an interesting idea but probably better suited to Town Center or something. The navy crowd and young people are going to be the audience for it.

 

The arcade thing on Granby Street -- the building was 5500 square feet and would have allowed for a large number of machines. We could have gotten about 60-70 off of a friend and "stored" them at our venue inbetween MAGFest events. This is in addition to the 20 or so that we have. The machines would have to go to MAGFest once a year. The problem is the business model isn't so great without alcohol. Want to have a DJ? Need permits. Arcades mean rec hall use permit, need notice in newspaper and 90 day window for the old people to complain at council meetings and all that. Alcohol? Food sales and even more permits and permits for the permits. Then if you're on Granby street - you're going to have people problems with kids that are coming out of the section 8 housing that could care less about ending the lives of people staffing the arcade.

 

Plus for those in the arcade scene, the machines that you love you don't want on the floor with a bunch of drunk people. They're going to treat them badly, puke on them, spill beer on them, etc. I'd imagine places in Vegas don't have these issues because the general crowd, but places like the Barcade in Brooklyn the machines are kind of sticky and have seen some extra miles based on patrons.

 

Got some ideas about some other ventures though, but really need one or two where I can make a ton of money to fund other less profitable (but more community appealing) things.

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  • 2 months later...

We were a tenant in the Wainwright. Gaddams pushed us to sign a new lease with thier company that had us in there until December 2012. This was okay, as we put on the Norfolk Mini Maker Faire event at the Norfolk Scope. That was a very successful event that was free to the public (both makers and visitors) and drew over 1300 people to downtown Norfolk. It brought a ton of interesting people out to show thins being created, be it wood or metal or electronics or software.

 

But hey, It's Buddy Gaddams.

 

So they pulled this garbage on us where they said they didn't think the lease was valid and we had to be out by October 31st. This was right on top of the Makerfaire event. It was a 100% dishonest move. Not worth it to fight it in court (of which we would easily win.)

 

So yea, that guy can rot.

 

I'm sure they've figured out the most money they can try to charge for the smallest amount of space. I think the talk is like $900 per 400 square foot apartment. That means the prices aren't far from the high end class A properties in the city.

 

Also, when I was first looking for an apartment the realtor for 411 Granby told me to follow him into the parking lot through the gate. I asked if it he was sure this was okay, he said yes. The gate came down and did a bunch of damage to my car. 411 Granby immediately said they weren't responsible. I notice later the gate is all covered in foam stuff from it hitting other cars. It was a mess. Once again, dishonest Buddy Gaddams.

 

I understand you all like to see skylines at night, but the guy is cruddy.

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