Ruff Eyes’ new location is between Great Clips and The Imperial Olive at Courthouse Commons. (Photo by Brittany Voll/WYDaily)
Ruff Eyes will make a move next month from the City of Williamsburg to James City County, seeking a new business home to provide easier patient access and parking.
Ruff Eyes is a “sisterhood” of women who began working together in 2007, when Dr. Jeanne Ruff purchased her optometry practice from a retiring doctor, Michael Sternberg. Since that time, Ruff Eyes has been operating out of a building at 1107 Richmond Road, near the intersection with Monticello Avenue. Ruff will soon take her business down Monticello to Courthouse Commons. The new business address will be 5223 Monticello Ave., Suite C.
“We’ve outgrown this location. We feel that we need to be more centrally located,” Ruff said, explaining Courthouse Commons was the ideal location due to its location and energy.
With the purchase of Sternberg’s practice came a skilled office administrator, Colleen Bartlett. Ruff said she always envisioned owning a great practice with an excellent staff, and now she has that with Bartlett and Debby Bauer-Robertson, the office’s licensed optician who has been working in Williamsburg for 35 years.
“[Colleen] is my right hand, Debby is my left hand,” Ruff said.
After settling into the new location, something that may have the practice’s doors shut for up to a week for moving, Ruff plans to have monthly open house events that will bring together patients, the Ruff Eyes team and local musicians, artists and vendors on a more personal level than would typically occur in a doctor-patient relationship during an eye appointment.
In addition to planning the new open house events, Ruff will bring in an i.Profiler machine to map patients’ eyes in order to provide an accurate prescription that accounts for naturally occurring lens flares and starbursts. The machine can help correct night vision and improve the way patients view colors and contrast.
Not much else is changing with the practice with the move; the same vision services will still be offered. Ruff does hope to bring in some new glasses lines, including some additional “geek chick” frames for the younger generation.
While no date is set for the move, Ruff is planning on mid-December. For more information on the practice, visit its website or Facebook page.