Build RVA

Downtown: Foundry Park

Foundry Park will be developed on a first class basis and the exterior design of any future buildings within Foundry Park shall be complimentary to the exterior design of the MWV Building. The office Building Site (north side of entrance drive) while limited to 315,000 net rentable square feet, Other square footage and needs are welcome for development opportunities.

Jackson Ward: Modern Row House

SMBW Architects has designed a decidedly modernist urban Row House in Richmond’s historic Jackson Ward neighborhood for a client from Georgia. It is a place of tall narrow houses with front porches, cast iron balustrades, bay windows, and intricate brick cornices. The design is born of this context but extends a lineage of tradition reinterpreted for this time and the client’s lifestyle. The result is a taut 20′x48′ rectangular box on three levels with a centrally located sky lit light-well inside that bathes the heart of the house with light. The light well bisects the plan and cross section front to back nearly symmetrically. Black steel plate bridges span across the vertical shaft of light and white walls. A projecting glass and metal window bay on the front facade was inspired by the bay windows that punctuate many of the historic houses on the street. Ground floor wood shutters, black steel and iron porch details, white brick, and a solid mahogany entry door complete the expression with a nod to its place in the city, but also its place in time.

Manchester: Affordable Apartments, Market Rate Quality

Work should begin this summer on the Miller Manufacturing building.

Fountainhead Properties will convert the Miller Manufacturing property into so-called low-income housing, meaning that there will be income-based restrictions on who can live in the planned $26 million development.

“What this will be is workforce housing,” said Fountainhead principal Tom Papa. “The phrase ‘low income’ is unfortunate, because these people have jobs. A lot of people confuse low income with Section 8, and that’s not what we’re doing.”

The Miller Manufacturing complex is 180,000 square feet and takes up two city blocks between Fifth and Sixth streets and Everett and Decatur streets in Manchester.

“When Fountainhead builds a LIHTC project, we do everything exactly the same as we’d do in a market rate project,” he said. “We can just charge less because we have this infusion of equity from the low-income tax credits, meaning we have to borrow less money.”

Construction is set to kick off at the site at 500 Stockton and 510 Decatur streets in July.

Shockoe Bottom: A new downtown hotel

The site of a planned six-story, 210-room hotel at Cary and 14th streets. (Photo by David Larter)

The joint venture between Apple REIT and the nonprofit First Freedom Center will build a six-story, 210-room hotel at Cary and 14th streets. The project will cost $30 million to develop, according to a recent Apple REIT filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The development is set to be U-shaped and split between two Marriott brand hotels. Seventy-five rooms will be extended-stay Residence Inn rooms, and 135 will be Courtyard by Marriott rooms.

The First Freedom Center, a nonprofit that promotes religious freedom, will have an exhibit space and offices in the development.

Fan of the Fan: VCU has big plans for Grace Street

fanrva:

Richmond BizSense has a look at VCU’s $83,000,000 plans for Grace between Belvidere and Ryland.

In addition to the private development at Grace and Shafer, VCU has a project underway on the 900 block of Grace Street and few others planned for the near future:

The school is also…

CHPN: Nolde condos back on the market

chpn:

A press release sent out last week:

On May 11, 2013, Church Hill neighborhood will welcome new home owners, thanks to historic Nolde Bakery Condominiums opening their doors and selling luxury property.

Seven years ago, the building was converted into condominium residences – 23 of the…

VCU: The Square

A strip center at 900 W. Grace St. was demolished last week to make room for the 154,000-square-foot development. The project will add 156 apartments to the VCU campus and 3,400 square feet of retail on the ground floor.

The asking price for the tower’s ground floor retail space is $24 per square foot per year, according to a Loopnet flyer.

Sean Eichert, a broker with Plus Management, said he’s had a lot of interest in the space.

“It’s actually been fairly overwhelming,” he said. “We’ve had about six serious proposals for the space. … We’re not having to make concessions – all of the proposals are coming in at full rent.”

Manchester: Apartments to be built, small

Developers Sam McDonald and Mark Scordo of Property Results have something a little different in mind for their planned $10 million project on the site of a long-vacant Burger King at Fifth and Hull streets.

“At some point, the market is going to turn, and apartments are going to be more difficult to develop,” McDonald said. “When we looked at all our properties, we noticed that the units that had the least vacancy and were the easiest to lease up were all the smaller units.”

With that in mind, units at the new project – dubbed Port RVA – will be between 400 and 600 square feet, McDonald said.

McDonald said the apartments would lease for between $700 to under $1,000 per month.

Southside: New Apartments to break ground

Belle Summit Apartments, a 50-unit, 72,000-square-foot development on the south side of the Lee Bridge is getting ready to break ground.

“It’s a 12-month construction window, and we want to have it open by the end of April, early May of 2014,” said Garry Hammond, principal at Bridgeland Development, the Atlanta-based developer of the property.

Eligible potential residents will earn $26,000 to $38,000 per year for a family of up to four people.

The $8.8 million project at the intersection Cowardin and Springhill avenues is financed by Virginia Housing Development Authority and will target low-income tenants for the low-income tax credits. Bridgeland applied for its special-use permit on the project in September.

Monroe Ward: Rejuvenating The Jefferson

The Jefferson Hotel has closed 40 of its 262 rooms for remodeling.

“This is part of our enhancements program, and it’s an annual thing,” said Joe Longo, president and managing director of the 118-year-old hotel. “What we’ve done is take out a number of rooms to make a continual improvement of our product.”

That means 40 west wing rooms will be completely redesigned, with new bathrooms, bedding, fixtures, lighting and windows.

Longo wouldn’t discuss what the hotel was spending on construction, but, according to building permits filed by general contractor RVA Construction, it’s at least $181,000.

Smith McClane Architects did the design work.