The lately controversial signs on the Fan side of Broad Street banning parking after 11 p.m, in a district featuring performance venues that didn’t exist there when the ban went into effect about a dozen years ago, may be going away. The effort then was to curb prostitution and loitering cruisers. Now the street’s too busy for such activity. I learned this last night while strolling to the Listening Room music event at the Firehouse Theater. (Full disclosure: I helped found the place.) Rand Burgess of the Camel hailed me, saying the signs were coming down. He was then circumspect as he was in the Times-Dispatch interview, taking a wait and see attitude to city officials' claims that the signs will be down in a week.

Sometime ago, I meditated on the importance of the old Hall of Justice, er, I mean the former Putney Shoe Factory building. Today, Richmond BizSense posted a thorough story on the possibility that Whole Foods might choose to go there. Maybe.

The comments following the article are interesting, including South Siders wondering when they’re going to get a Whole Foods, and another commenter who muses, “The proximity of 'consumers' to the retailer is not important to the site selection, instead they must only look at where consumption is already occurring in an established market and only consider sites in that area. The outcome is grocery retail sprawl in one area, food deserts in many other areas.”

Still, this might explain the hard-hatted men working on the adjacent parking lot.

If Whole Foods doesn’t move in, maybe the Super Friends will take up residence. What a boon to the local food-truck economy that would be.