Winston Salem, NC

Just read in the Winston Salem journal.

Disappointing news for baseball fans.............

Work on the stadium is at a standstill, stopped cold by ownership negotiations between team co-owners Billy Prim and Andrew "Flip" Filipowski.

Prim is trying to buy out Filipowski's share of the team. The two, business partners and brothers-in-law, have owned the team together since 2002. They have been negotiating the buyout since at least November.

Prim has said that construction will resume when the ownership negotiation is complete and that the negotiations were almost finished.

The team will play the rest of its home games at Wake Forest Baseball Park,where the Single-A Dash has been playing since its April home opener. The team, which was formerly known as the Winston-Salem Warthogs, is an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.

Team officials had held out hope that the team would play part of the season at the new stadium, until this week committing only to games at Wake Forest's field through June.

Team officials sent a letter to people who had paid a deposit for season tickets to the new stadium with the following message: "We have now made the necessary decision to not try and play games in the new stadium in 2009 ... instead concentrating on opening in 2010 with no question or concern about the process."

People who have paid toward season tickets in the new stadium can roll those payments over to pay for tickets in the 2010 season. They can also apply the payments toward tickets to games at Wake Forest Baseball Park, formerly Ernie Shore Field.

Homes sales are down from year ago, the following are the percentages for April Sales - 2009 vs 2008

Source - Triad MLS

County	%
Guilford	-41%
Forsyth	-50%
Davidson	-42%
Randolph	-19%
Davie	-45%
Stokes	-46%
Surry	-31%
Yadkin	-40%
Alamance	-53%
Rockingham	-26%

The following numbers are the New Listings/Current Actives for March 2009

Source - Triad MLS

County	New Listings	Current Actives
Guilford	785	4254
Forsyth	680	3414
Davidson	185	1217
Randolph	108	686
Davie	59	429
Stokes	46	282
Surry	65	395
Yadkin	20	102
Alamance	58	315
Rockingham	76	564

The following numbers are the sold homes in each county for March - 2008 vs 2009

Source - Triad MLS

County	SOLDS Mar 2008	SOLDS Mar 2009
Guilford	470	292
Forsyth	352	225
Davidson	110	62
Randolph	90	60
Davie	28	16
Stokes	24	13
Surry	30	21
Yadkin	12	7
Alamance	41	22
Rockingham	44	30

Enjoy nature, get some exercise, visit these mountain state parks in the Piedmont Triad, lots of hiking and gorgeous views, just north of Winston Salem.

Hanging Rock - Less than an hour from Greensboro and Winston-Salem, Hanging Rock is the triad's best nearby hiking getaway. Within its 6000 acres are more than 18 miles of maintained hiking trails that lead to vistas, waterfalls, caves and ridges.

Pilot Mountain - Pilot Mountain is capped by two prominent pinnacles. Big Pinnacle, with walls of bare rock and a rounded top covered by vegetation, rises 1,400 feet above the valley floor, the knob jutting skyward more than 200 feet from its base. Big Pinnacle is connected to Little Pinnacle by a narrow saddle. Visitors have easy access to the top of Little Pinnacle where the view encompasses hundreds of square miles of the Piedmont and the nearby mountains of North Carolina and Virginia.

Home sales in Winston-Salem increased by 13 percent in February 2009 compared to January 2009, the Winston-Salem Regional Association of Realtors said yesterday.

The number of sales last month rose to 128 from 113 in January. The average sales price increased 2 percent to $163,694, up from $160,255.

However, sales were down 30 percent in February 2009 compared to February 2008, when there were 184 sales. The average sales price declined 4 percent, down from $170,739 last February 2008.