Winery foreclosures are hitting California’s Napa Valley.

SFChron:

As many as 10 wineries and vineyards in Napa, where the most expensive U.S. wines are produced, will change hands in distressed sales or foreclosures this year and next, up from none in 2008..

“We have 250 vintner clients saying this downturn is the worst in 20 years,” said Bill Stevens, manager of the bank’s wine division in St. Helena.

Land values in Napa Valley, home to about 400 producers, have fallen 15 percent from the 2007 peak, driven in part by slumping demand for high-end wine…

Loudoun’s wineries total around 20 and are a keystone of the county’s agricultural economy effort for the last 10 years.

The effort seeks to use rural lands in a form that prevents use as suburban housing and has been moderately successful.

Typically, economic development efforts are fully formed in a 20+ year timeframe.

Virginia wines have recently found favor and are on the upswing in local consumption.

Wineries generate revenue by not only selling wine but using their often scenic facilities as settings for catering venues.

Loudoun wineries have established partnerships with restaurants and growers in the farm to fork fresh food movement which has a lot of interest in the DC area.

Area wineries also generate tasting business from tour groups.

Virginia vintners compete with the more established wine region in New York’s Finger Lakes for east coast wine tourists.

Some of you are trying to sell your house without having paid your property taxes.

So who pays when a real estate transaction is finalized?

Unpaid liabilities are usually paid from proceeds to the seller at closing.

Yet increasing cash transactions and cash ownerships make it all the more important for buyers to check and double check items like tax status.

A good title search will reveal the unpaid tax status as well as any liens on the property.  These items get first dibs on potential profits to the seller and are paid upon transfer of the property.

Are unpaid property taxes an indicator the seller is getting ready for foreclosure?  Possibly.

Are unpaid property taxes an indicator the seller is an investor/speculator?  Probably as most mortgage companies pay taxes.

If a deal is too slick, too fire sale, too urgent–check the tax status.

When buyers become deed holders, they are then responsible for any liabilities the property may incur or has incurred and has not yet been resolved.

sfgate.com highlights a recent tech art show:

Blending two of the Bay Area’s biggest strengths – information technology and artistic creativity – Gray Area has pushed San Francisco to the front of the digital art movement, showcasing new ways to visualize the enormous amount of data now available on the Internet.

The web 2.0 economy promises jobs for fine arts foundational skillsets.

“We don’t think of ourselves as artists,” said 27-year-old founder Josette Melchor, who opened the space in October. “We are technologists, researchers, designers, coders and hackers. We exist in that gray area between art and information.”

“Data as a medium has never been accepted before as part of the artistic mind-set, and we want to be a space for experimenting with this new model,” Melchor said.

Their annual $240,000 budget is supported by private donations; 600 memberships, which range from $50 to $10,000; and class fees. The syllabus includes coding as well as soft circuitry sewing – a combination of fashion design and electronics where students learn such skills as sewing LED lights into backpacks and programming them to flash when their cell phones ring.

A new artsStudio, ArtSquare, recently opened in Leesburg as a traditional visual art studio.  Classes there teach fundamental visual art skills.

The Washington Institute of Arts also recently opened an arts academy at Dulles Town Center in Sterling.

Loudoun already has a foothold in digitally based imagery with technical skills drawn to the county’s Orbital Sciences which manipulates satellite imagery.

Closer to DC, jess3 is an Arlington based web 2.0 start up using visual art combined with digital marketing/SEO campaigns to service its customers.

Visual communication has been defined as a top trend by the Megatrends Institute.

A new art studio, similar to TorpedoWorks in Old Town Alexandria, is open in Leesburg’s bypass industrial zone thanks to a rewriting of Leesburg zoning rules.

New Rules For Bypass Warehouses
Leesburg recently revamped business use rules for its newer, bypass industrial warehouse district across Route 7 from the Leesburg Outlet mall.

New uses include indoor game/sport facilities and art studios.

The area currently hosts a dog kennel, storage units, auto body repair, Salvation Army drop off, auto dealerships, VDOT and the MidAtlantic FAA air traffic control facility as well as new industrial space (concrete buildings).

The former Shenandoah University buildings were recently sold and approved for use by a non-profit.

Classes in painting, drawing, sculpture, watercolor, pastel and photography are offered at the new ArtSquare facility.

• 14 studios are available for rent to local artists.
• 20′ ceilings are featured in a preexisting warehouse space.
• 2 art galleries will feature the work of artists at the academy.

The ArtSquare director looks forward to the extension of Trailview Drive to connect with Russell Branch Parkway to the new Leesburg Wegmans according to Leesburg Today 2/26/10.

Battlefield Parkway and Russell Branch has a proposed Lowe’s Home Improvement store at the NE corner.  This completes Russell Branch west to the newly opened Battlefield parkway link between south Leesburg and the Outlets commercial zone.

Battlefield has had interest in a possible town center site called Lee Gate.  Trailview would connect east to join Russell Branch to this site.

ArtSquare’s first exhibit will be held from 6-9pm March 12 at 12 Cardinal Park (behind Leesburg Honda which fronts Rt. 7).

Old Town Expanding?

Of Leesburg’s two industrial zones, the older area of lumberyards and junkyards serviced trains on what is now the W&OD hike/bike trail.

The “Crescent District”  is adjacent to the old town area and is slated for mixed use redevelopment.  Some buildings are decrepit and candidates for teardown.

Happy Monday homegamers!
Make it a good week!

Are businesses suddenly flooding NoVa’s residential areas?

From the looks of Google’s new geotagging effort of businesses it sure looks like it.

The maps feature now pinpoints satellite photos of individual homes who’s addresses are linked with a business filing.

Quite a few home based businesses in the area from the looks of it.

The kitchen triangle is drawn between the stove, refrigerator and sink.

Running in and out of houses may cause home buyers to forget which house had which.  Often a mistake looking at kitchens is they are only remembered as “big” or too “small”.

Some remarkably cozy kitchens have all three work stations within easy reach while larger, spacey kitchens have one point missing–usually the fridge which is located far away from the sink or stove.

When looking at kitchens the popular open layout is important.  Yet even more important for daily use is the kitchen triangle.

Walk the triangle and get a feel for the ease or awkwardness of the kitchen layout.

A poor layout will aggravate in future years while countertops, wall paint or flooring are easily changed.

Best to evaluate kitchens starting with their triangle layout of stove, fridge and sink.

Your feet will thank you.

Cake Love is making its Fairfax debut at Fair Oaks this spring.

One of the most successful food retail entrepreneurs in DC is expanding to Fairfax County.

Cupcakes are the latest mania in DC and throughout the US.

Shops like Red Velvet and others that sell only cupcakes have been ringing up increasing sales.

Cupcakerys are the latest manifestation of the traditional pastry/bakery shop.  Stores like Panera have the bakery down but not the sweets.

The stores are also a part of DC’s expanding club food scene:  solo sized, eat with your hands, open all night.  Jumbo Slice pizza (Adams Morgan-U Street) is the most famous in DC.  Falafels also fall into the category.

Cupcake shops stay open late into the night for the wandering hordes and are similar to conversation coffee houses in other cities.  Starbucks and Caribou close before midnight.

While $7 cupcakes themselves aren’t worth the dinero according to a friend, the experience dining is.  Not all shops charge this much though and do quite nicely on the volumes.

Even Martha Stewart has redeemed her post-prison checkbook balance with a Cupcake Cookbook selling several million copies in 2009.

Cupcake and pastry shops are mostly missing in Dulles area food retail.

One of DC’s recently successful entrepreneurs is scheduled to speak at the upcoming TEDx conference in DC.

Warren Brown is founder of the CakeLove pastry shops which are a local focal point of the ongoing American cupcake mania.

Mr. Brown is also an alum of George Washington University Law School.

15 speakers and other panelists will participate in the TEDx debut in DC on May 2oth.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist is another speaker and will explore and address his ideas and efforts regarding Government 2.0, a subject Mr. Newmark has often expressed as a topic of interest.

While the popular Tedx conferences exclude all but the idea elite and have  generated buzz and jostling for the limited $400 tickets, the free videos of the speakers have proven very popular online.

A more grass roots idea event follows the May Tedx conference.

DCWEEK-Digital Capital Week

The week of June 11th-20th brings DCWEEK (Digital Capital Week) to DC.

Billed as a grass roots 10 day festival in Washington D.C., DCWEEK is focused on technology, innovation and all things digital.

The event is organized by iStrategyLabs, an idea foundry bringing new ideas to life in the digital and physical world and Shiny Heart Ventures which is a technology company focused on creating community powered products and services that remind us of the joys of life.

An upgrade of the bar camp idea, organizers still seek event space and idea discussions/leaders while sponsorships have sold out.

The first 2000 tickets were recently made available for free for online registrants.

Discussions and participation is open to all yet those who seek to use such formats for self promotion or narrow advocacy are easily ignored as the fluid format offers multiple, concurrent discussions enabling easy exits.

Aggressive or domineering argument styles and performances are given the Web 2.0 treatment:  permanent recording in social media as thumbs down thus reputation damaging the propigated idea and/or actor.

Bar camps and open forums are resistant to DC style spin which has generated federal government and corporate interest in these two events.

BusinessWeek profiles trends seen in the Dulles area:  cash rich home builders jostling for land for new housing projects.

“…land is the main factor in real estate’s roller-coaster cycle.

When housing prices boomed in the middle of the last decade, it wasn’t the structures that were suddenly deemed more valuable but the land.

…the price of U.S. land used for houses and apartments nearly tripled from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2005. Prices more than tripled over the period in Washington, Miami, Tampa, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Phoenix…”

Dulles area residential developers began selling off expensive parcels in 2006 when it was evident the bloom was off the housing boom.

The Route 50 corridor in Loudoun County is especially noteworthy for declines in land values and stands poised for future land transactions for new home developments.

Key is the December 2009 7000 acre foreclosure purchase of the defunct Greenvest property by Rockpoint, a Dallas based REIT.

Purchased for $105 million, or about half of Loudoun County’s current annual deficit of $192 million, some projections have developed land values at $1 billion.

REITS typically demand similar returns for their cash investments.

Building homes requires few or no loans from banks to construct eliminating the tightfisted bank decisions commercial developers face.

Numerous shopping centers are in a holding pattern in the Dulles area while home building is ramping up.