Sig’s and Hanna’s were both torn down for the new parking garage behind the Courthouse.  What a shame.  I think I saw Miss Hanna at the Chef Lin Buffet on Jefferson at lunch a week ago and wanted so badly to ask her if she’s planning on opening another restaurant, but I chickened out.

What about you:  What do you miss about Frederick of five, ten or twenty years ago?

Gary Weber, a former journalist, said he “fell in love” with the restaurant business.He was a sports writer for the Martinsburg (W.Va.) Journal, but worked at a restaurant there and found he preferred food to reporting.

With the opening of Buffalo Wild Wings at the Urbana Village Shopping Center, he now has six franchise locations.

“I have to open 15 under the agreement with Buffalo Wild Wings,” he said. Besides the Urbana site, he has eateries in Hagerstown, Westminster, White Marsh, College Park and Bowie. He is working to get one open in Rockville by the end of the year.

The 6,200-square-foot Urbana site seats 349 patrons, including outside dining. Weber has 130 employees.

The restaurant not only serves wings, but wraps, burgers, salads and sandwiches.

The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight Sunday. Guests can dine in or carry out orders.

For information, call 240-699-0311.

If you haven’t been to Urbana recently, you’ll be shocked at how much it has changed in the last year.  Well, last several years actually.

I certainly like the potentials of getting some sort of convention center and hotel associated with downtown proximity, but I think the economics are far off and the evidence points to outlying and auto intensive marketing of rooms – does downtown have the nightlife and attrcations to support it, doubtful today – it takes a lot more than a few fredneck pickup bars to get there and a Weinberg and ballpark games – the smaller market for historical conventions, etc. are pretty well covered by a variety of group event outlets – lots of smoke signals, no fire imo -

Yeah, ’cause Frederick is known for it’s “few fredneck pickup bars” and “a Weinberg and ballpark games”.

Dude, there’s way more to Frederick than that and I think the idea of a small downtown hotel is a good one.  I mentioned a few posts ago that I went to a wedding in Gainesville, Fla. and we (my daughter and I)  had no car.  There wasn’t much in walking distance from the hotel and we were at the mercy of other wedding guests who had cars.  With all the promotion Frederick does of its Clustered Spires and the potential of wedding guests at those churches, I’d think that there could be a big demand for a hotel in walking distance of Church Street.

As CitySide pointed out, something like this would be pretty cool in downtown Frederick.

She apparently asked the front desk at the hotel for a local place to eat and they tried to direct her to Macaroni Grill and the various other chains that are down by Hampton Inn.  She again asked for more referrals to something she couldn’t get at home and the only place they could refer her to was May’s.  May’s for sure would have given her a taste of local flavor, but she drove past the crowded parking lot and kept on going until she found the Hops.

I was stunned.  I asked her if they even thought to direct her to head to downtown Frederick, a very easy drive from the Hampton.  She told me no, they hadn’t mentioned anything about a downtown and when I described to her all the options that she could have had going downtown, she was surprised that the hotel had not even tried to send her there.  Odd, since she specifically asked for recomendations for local food that she couldn’t get at home.

So I’m wondering, why aren’t the local hotels directing out-of-towners downtown?  Do they have a deal with the local chains restaurants to direct their guests to them?  Or is it that the downtown restaurants don’t advertise at the hotels on the outskirts of town?  If you were in town for a few days, wouldn’t you like to be directed to downtown Frederick, just so you could get an idea of the local flavor?

Why don’t the hotels promote the downtown?

Our power went out for several hours, as did the power in the entire region.  The bars and restaurants around FSK Mall were filled with people who had stories to tell about the damage to their properties as they waited for their power to be restored.  Quite frankly, I have to give major kudos to Allegheny Power for getting the power back as quickly as they did.  Jim and I drove around the area today to survey the damage and it is extensive.  The pictures on the FNP link above do not do justice to the amount of property damage, especially on Ball and Mussetter Roads.  We saw whole buildings destroyed, whole tree lines uprooted, evidence of trees that had been cleared off roads and a lot of people out cleaning up their yards.  Thankfully as far as we know, no one was hurt.

Speaking of crazy weather, my friend Eric sent me this picture taken with his cell phone from inside Brewer’s Alley last Thursday, 7/23.  That was the night we got a ton of rain, roughtly 4 inches in a half  hour/45 minute period, about 10:00 at night.  You can tell from the picture that Market Street was completely flooded.  By all accounts, the water was off the street about a half hour after it stopped raining.  Good to know the flood control project at Carroll Creek works.

Most of what we heard was about the horrendous wait along Route 75 and Glissans Mill Road.  One story we heard was from someone who waited four hours sitting in traffic, only to be turned away when the winery had to stop letting people in.  We really wanted to go on Sunday but couldn’t make it (for reasons other than the fear of traffic).  Now I see a little blurb about it in the FNP.  I don’t know what the answer is to the problem, but I do know that the roads to Linganore Winecellars can’t handle that kind of traffic.   From the FNP:

The Frederick County Sheriff’s Office received multiple calls involving the 2009 Reggae Festival at Linganore Winecellars-Berrywine Plantations Saturday and Sunday.The sheriff’s office received complaints when traffic was bumper to bumper on Glissans Mill Road, said Cpl. Jennifer Bailey. Deputies cleared the traffic and only residents were allowed to go through at one point.

“The roads aren’t designed to handle that much traffic,” she said.

While there was security at the festival, a plan to control the large traffic flow was not in place, she said. The sheriff’s office will be working with the county’s permit office to make sure a plan is ready before next year’s festival. Three people were charged with driving under the influence on Sunday and a man was charged with disorderly conducted after he refused to obey a deputy’s commands Saturday, Bailey said. A purse and GPS were also stolen out of a vehicle.

Did anyone go?  I’m really sorry we missed it.

Did I mention it was a brand new stick? And there it floated right by the edge; taunting me. Not wanting to be a litterer I quickly plucked the stick from the stagnant water.

So what would you do: keep it or chuck?

Often sighted on the South side of town

They were busy paving along Costco/Walser Dr. and Market Street. I think this intersection has been under construction for the past 10 years. Does anyone want to start a “baby pool” for when it might finally be done?