Monticello has changed its mind about purchasing its historic neighbor, Michie Tavern, after the foundation that runs Thomas Jefferson’s estate faced pushback over how the planned acquisition would affect workers across its growing business portfolio.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation bought the right of first refusal on the Michie Tavern property back in 1973. And in January, the foundation made its move, announcing its intention to buy the restaurant that has long fed visitors at the foot of Jefferson’s mountaintop estate.
A sale price was never publicly disclosed. However, the 6.7-acre Michie Tavern site was most recently assessed at $2.63 million, according to Albemarle County records.
Much like the foundation’s acquisition of the neighboring 400-acre Jefferson Vineyards last year for $11.75 million, the acquisition of Michie Tavern was meant to serve a dual purpose: It would bring in additional revenue from a popular tourist attraction on Thomas Jefferson Parkway and prevent land surrounding Monticello from falling into the hands of private developers — though, for the record, no private developer has so far expressed interest in acquiring and tearing down the historic tavern first built miles away in 1784 and moved to its current location in 1927.
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“I think it was one of the last properties that exist along the Route 53 corridor we felt we wanted to preserve to ensure that the approach for generations is what it is today,” Tobias Dengel, chair of the foundation’s board and president of Charlottesville-based app developer WillowTree, told The Daily Progress in January. “That’s our mission: To ensure when people hit the traffic light and come up the mountain, they feel this is a different and special place.”
But on March 7, Michie Tavern announced on its Facebook page that the purchaser had “terminated the contract.”
Monticello later confirmed the news.
“After considerable study, the Foundation determined that this acquisition was not prudent under the current agreement, and we are no longer under contract,” foundation spokeswoman Jenn Lyon said in a statement.
It is not clear what led Monticello to make that determination.
The foundation had received criticism for its decision to put Michie Tavern and the rest of the mountaintop’s food vendors under the management of an out-of-town firm, Philadelphia-based Constellation Culinary Group. That news was announced shortly after the planned acquisition was made public. Frank Jackson, lead cook for the foundation, resigned in protest, saying food workers were told to reapply for their own jobs and given few details about what the move would mean for their future.
“They have not informed us what jobs will be available, exactly when they will be available, what the interview process will consist of or what the pay schedule will be,” Jackson said.
Constellation still has 21 Charlottesville job openings listed on its website for other Monticello-oriented operations.
In its Facebook post announcing the deal had been scrapped, Michie Tavern reassured patrons that current staff would be staying on the rolls and that Greg MacDonald, whose family has owned the restaurant for 55 years, would retain ownership.
In January, Dengel had said that MacDonald had “ran an amazing business for a long time and is at retirement age, and we’ll be looking to expand it.”
The tavern’s Facebook post says that MacDonald “will not be ‘retiring’ anytime soon.”
“You will continue to have a wonderful midday dining experience in The Ordinary (great fried chicken, delicious biscuits and the sides you love),” the post reads.
The Daily Progress could not reach MacDonald for comment.
Monticello has been under new leadership since January of this year, when Harvard professor Jane Kamensky took the reins as president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Shortly before and after her arrival, though, the mountaintop saw an exodus of top brass, including its president of nearly 15 years Leslie Greene Bowman, Pulitzer-winning Jefferson scholar Annette Gordon-Reed, gardener and “Father of Virginia Wine” Gabriele Rausse and the University of Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor Peter Onuf, among others.