Business Notes, 11/9/12

Here are some odds and ends from the world of Fredericksburg-area business over the past week:

• Lloyd Harrison, president and chief operating officer of Virginia Partners Bank, has joined the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance’s board of directors. He replaces BB&T executive Drew Shambarger, who recently moved to Huntsville, Ala., for a new assignment with the bank.
• The National Civil War Life Museum at 829 Caroline St. in downtown Fredericksburg is holding a store-closing sale. The store will close by the end of the month, and the space is now for lease. The broker handling the leasing efforts, Virgil Nelson of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, said there is serious interest in the space but no signed lease yet.
• Greenbrier Music is offering to give away percussion instruments to area high schools and music therapy programs for the elderly and disabled. The instruments are available on a first-come, first-served basis from the company’s warehouse and store at 1117 Tyler St. in Fredericksburg.
• The Cheesecake Factory will open its new restaurant at Potomac Mills on Sunday. The opening was pushed back a few days due to Hurricane Sandy.
• Atlantic Builders last month purchased seven finished lots in Stafford County from Alex McCallister’s Eastern Virginia Land Co. for $854,930. The three-acre lots are in the Belle Haven and Belle Haven Overlook neighborhoods at the eastern end of Courthouse Road.
• Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company, will be the featured speakers at the Fredericksburg Forum on Saturday. The lecture, “An Evening of Entrepreneurial Spirit, Social Responsibility and Radical Business Philosophy,” will be at 8 p.m. in George Washington Hall, Dodd Auditorium on the University of Mary Washington’s Fredericksburg campus.
• A new dance fitness class called Dance Trance Fredericksburg has started at Strictly Ballroom Dance Studio at 125 Olde Greenwich Drive in Fredericksburg.
• Two office condominiums in the Courthouse Square development at 2124 Jefferson Davis Highway in Stafford County’s courthouse area recently sold. Yellow Cat LLC bought the 2,035-square-foot space from R. Dare Clifton for $200,000 as an investment, according to a news release from Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer, which helped broker the sale.
• Arkansas-based Murphy Oil Corp. wants to build a service station near the Walmart at the Washington Square Plaza shopping center along State Route 3 in Stafford County. The company recently submitted a request for a conditional use permit to build a “Murphy Express” service station with six fuel pumps and a 1,200-square-foot convenience store.

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