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Greater Church Hill


whw53

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Here's another great project in the East End that might otherwise have slipped under the radar: work is underway to convert a former nursing home on Cool Lane just east of Mechanicsville Turnpike (and west of N. 20th Street) into low-income apartments. Good to see this! It's VERY greatly needed.

From Richmond BizSense:

https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/06/09/work-starts-on-23m-apartment-conversion-of-former-nursing-home-site/

 

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  • 1 month later...

5 hours ago, Jawless said:

This project is right next to my house and I'm so excited about it. This block is the biggest eyesore in Chimborazo. Having this street be revitalized will do so much for the neighborhood. I do wish it was adding more apartments than it is, but I'll take what I can get.  https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/07/18/gym-membership-led-developers-to-their-next-infill-project-in-chimborazo/

Yeah this is very exciting. I live only a few blocks away myself so I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on it.

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Nice find ! I bet you're right on that last one. Looks like they are carrying over the same architecture to the other side of Glenwood - nice gateway project into the back side of Church Hill. 

Edited by whw53
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7 hours ago, Jawless said:

I was looking at Kleyman's website and noticed a bunch of renderings I hadn't seen for the apartment building on Government Road. I think I had only seen one rendering in the past. I'm really liking the look of this project.

There is also a rendering for a 31 unit apartment building with a retail space on the website. I didn't recognize it. Could this be the corner lot of Glenwood and Government? 

https://evolvedevelopmentinc.com/

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Fantastic! This will bring quite a nice swath of density to that part of the East End. :tw_thumbsup:

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think we had mention of this just the other day on another thread - here's today's RBS reporting. So the rowhouses/condos planned for 21st and Broad will have to be built by another developer - the current developer has put the property up for sale in order to focus on multi-family for-rent developement, rather than for-sale projects. A question for our gurus: the RBS story mentions that the property will come complete with approved entitlements (and the project passed muster with the CAR). Does that mean that a new developer could take the plans (unchanged) and move forward with the project?

Something interesting from the story that may be a silver lining: this is the same developer who is behind the six-story apartment building proposed for the BoA parking lot on W. Broad between Mulberry and Robinson. That he is punting this project in Church Hill MAYBE means that, with shifted focus, we could see the W. Broad Street project get underway sooner, rather than later.

Here's today's RBS reporting:

https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/08/15/church-hill-site-planned-for-condos-goes-back-on-the-market-for-1-8m/

Here's the original RBS story from last December re: the W. Broad Street apartment project:

https://richmondbizsense.com/2021/12/02/6-story-apartment-building-planned-for-broad-street-parking-lot/

Edited by I miss RVA
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Nice story in today's RBS - anyone remember those apartments that were built on that triangle lot bounded by Jefferson Ave, M Street and 24th (with 25th right there)? The owner of a Carytown bar is opening up a location in one of the buildings on the ground floor along the Jefferson Avenue side. Pretty cool!

Now wasn't this set of apartments originally supposed to be either 3 or 4 stories tall and they got truncated for some reason? That's been a while ago, but I seem to recall that happening.

https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/10/04/owners-of-jasper-in-carytown-planning-two-new-spots-in-union-hill/

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It was originally supposed to be 3 stories. The reason it was knocked down to 2 was because 3 wouldn't have "matched the rest of the neighborhood" but given the developments on Venable and on 25th/Fairmount/Nine Mile, they might as well let them keep it at 3 stories smdh

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I was under the impression it was actually approved at 3 but it was a developer led decision to revise that downward - vaguely remember a quote in an article from Kleyman something something about construction costs 

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5 hours ago, Brent114 said:

It was definitely push back from the neighbors.   I was working on a house directly across from this building site when it was first proposed.  That homeowner was a very vocal and pesky critic of the original scale.  He pestered city hall constantly.  His house would have been in the shadow pretty much the entire day (to which I was like “so what?”). 
 

I believe it was 4  floors.  The 4th floor was set back too, so there wasn’t a 4 story high wall.  They definitely  should have kept the original design.  We really need to get serious about packing people into these neighborhoods.  There will never be enough people living in the area to fill in all of the store fronts if all of the infill is small scale.

Well said, @Brent114! I couldn't agree more about packing folks into the neighborhoods.

Thanks, too, for the clarification. :tw_thumbsup:

It's a bloody shame that this NIMBY (and others) caused this to get scaled back. Again, VERY Richmond. This BS doesn't happen in Carolina, Nashville, Austin, Atlanta. I find it completely disgusting and if there is anything that is totally off-putting to me about this city, it's this BS small-minded mentality and uber obsession with "scale" and "character" and "historic" this and that and all the trapping surrounding it. Jesus H. Christ - I wish these clowns would just effing grow up. This is a shining example of exactly what is holding us back - and why I get on my soap box and rant on here and call for us to fight back - to push back hard. This city will go NO WHERE if the NIMBYs get their way. Who was it who coined the term BANANAs? That about sums it up.

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On 10/8/2022 at 2:32 PM, Brent114 said:

To be fair I’m sure it happens in all of those other places too.  The white, affluent neighborhoods of Austin, Nashville and Atlanta I’m sure are every vocal about what gets built.    The problem with Richmond is that people treat a 4 story building like a 40 story tower then wine about bad bus routes and lacking services when the scaled back project doesn’t add the density necessary for those things..

Developers really need to start playing the game better: Always come out with 10 more stories than you actually plan to build. Want a 12 story apartment complex? Offer it to be 22 stories and fight like hell until the end where you "compromise" to 12 stories. That way opposition feels like they won. Who knows, that's probably what they're doing and we just want them to go bigger 

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26 minutes ago, ancientcarpenter said:

Developers really need to start playing the game better: Always come out with 10 more stories than you actually plan to build. Want a 12 story apartment complex? Offer it to be 22 stories and fight like hell until the end where you "compromise" to 12 stories. That way opposition feels like they won. Who knows, that's probably what they're doing and we just want them to go bigger 

Agreed, @ancientcarpenter-- I wish it were so easy, though I think you're right - that might be going on already - only thing is, as you said, we want them to go bigger. 

Mind you, the NIMBYs have a track record of being completely unwilling to compromise in any way, shape or form. They have a hard line that they refuse to cross. A developer could propose building something the size of the Burj Khalifa - and the NIMBYs will still fight light the world's coming to an end to keep the height limit to no more than one or two stories. And their fallback is if the developer won't "compromise" (and the NIMBY version of the developer "compromising" means cutting a 25-story tower down to 2 stories -- and not 10-12) - then they lobby and campaign to get the cowards in the city government to block it or they gum up the works in haggling with and pestering the city and spewing negative BS assertions in the press (witness Legends and friends) to cause SO many delays that it becomes financially untenable and the developer pulls the plug and the project gets killed. I've witnessed this on several occasions over the past 50 years of watching RVA developments.

It just chaps my tuchus to NO END that these folks are happier with leaving a vacant lot completely undeveloped for DECADES than they are with ANYTHING getting built that doesn't fit within their tiny shoebox of what meets their myopic view of "character" and "scale".  image.png.55141a0261b8623d06020ef4102998bf.png

Edited by I miss RVA
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54 minutes ago, whw53 said:

Rehab and infill project on Tulip St in Union Hill on the CAR agenda for 10\25. Pursuing an initial cert of appropriateness

https://richmondva.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5869469&GUID=04FDA698-78F1-4F06-8534-9CDD9AAB80D0&Options=&Search=

 

 

 

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This is a really sweet looking new infill and rehab integration. QUESTION: The filing says four-story building - but all the renderings show a three-story building. Am I missing something?

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