Richmond off-topic postings

[I miss RVA]

6 minutes ago, blopp1234 said:

Unpopular opinion but I think the silos are better looking than the Monroe building by a country mile. Only thing Monroe building has going for it is that it’s tall and this is coming from someone who appreciates brutalist architecture.

 

I do think the silos should have lost to the federal reserve though. The fed is by far my favorite skyscraper along the riverfront and that won’t change even when the Costar building is built. 

100% agree with you on the Silos - far "prettier" in a manner of speaking than the Monroe Tower - though dovetailing into what you said, the Monroe building brings those skyline-needed 449 feet. I'm not a fan of brutalist architecture - but I am a fan of height. 

I love the Fed building, too. Always have. I remember watching it being constructed. Mind you, the CNB building has been my all-time favorite Richmond skyscraper from the time I was little - and it always will be. However - I've always loved the Fed among the more "modern" buildings, though for me it's about to be replaced by the CoStar tower once it's constructed. Mannnn - that is one BAD-A looking building!! It'll easily take the #1 spot among the modern skyscrapers for me. 

[Brent114]

I don’t think either have you have actually seen the silos in awhile lol.

They are fugly.  Always have been, always will be.  There is a nostalgia  attached to them and I can appreciate that. But there is no  design to them.  No artist value. They are boilerplate silos with an attached tower that has  all the charm of a guard tower at a concentration camp.  
 

The Federal Reserve is the finest high rise in all of Virginia.  Its design is flawless and timeless.  

[eandslee]

If you’ve ever wanted to see the inside of Richmond’s new Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints temple, there will be a FREE open house from 25 March - 15 April (except Sundays and Saturday 1 April).  There is a reservation process, but if there isn’t any availability for the day you want to go, just show up…you won’t be turned away.  Dress code is nice causal, but you may see people dressed in more formal church-dress (shirt and ties, slacks for men; dresses and skirts for women).  With a short video and walking tour, it will take about 50 minutes. 
Come and see!
 

Reservation sign ups are here:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/featured/richmond-virginia-open-house
 

Edited March 18, 2023 by eandslee

[I miss RVA]

22 hours ago, Brent114 said:

The Federal Reserve is the finest high rise in all of Virginia.  Its design is flawless and timeless.  

Can't argue with this! The Fed is a gorgeous tower, no question. Iconic on the RVA skyline for a couple of generations now. 

[I miss RVA]

23 hours ago, Brent114 said:

I don’t think either have you have actually seen the silos in awhile lol.

They are fugly.  Always have been, always will be.  There is a nostalgia  attached to them and I can appreciate that. But there is no  design to them.  No artist value. They are boilerplate silos with an attached tower that has  all the charm of a guard tower at a concentration camp.  
 

The Federal Reserve is the finest high rise in all of Virginia.  Its design is flawless and timeless.  

Oh - I get that they're in really bad shape nowadays. Yeah - there really is a certain nostalgia to the Silos - but their time came and went at least a decade or two ago. I'm drooling like Pavlov's dog over what Hourigan has shown us in their renderings. That 20-story tower (20 floors occupied by residences - plus the four-story pedestal underneath will give the building the equivalent height of about 24 stories) is absolutely gorgeous and will be EPIC on the Manchester skyline! I hope and pray Hourigan bucks the trend of what some developers have been doing lately and stays pedal-to-the-metal and goes full speed ahead with this project. I'm hungry for something with the kind of star power this building will have.

Edited March 19, 2023 by I miss RVA

[I miss RVA]

SOOOOOO... you never know where you're gonna find little gems where Richmond shows up in the media regardless of the platform -- but it's pretty cool when you stumble across one of them. So I was watching YouTuber Phil Edwards' historical perspective on why the Oreo cookie beat out Hydrox as the the chocolate cookie w vanilla creme filling champ of the 20th century when LOW AND BEHOLD I almost jumped out of my chair exclaiming: "THAT'S RICHMOND!!!"

And sure enough it is. At the 6:40 mark of his video, he shows off an old building (given the incline of the street, the red-brick sidewalk and the overall age of the building, my guess it's probably in Church Hill - and since there's a bus stop where he's filming, I'd also guess it's north of Broad on maybe something like N. 25th Street - just guessing). Now, on the building is a century-old painted advertisement for "Uneeda Biscuit". I snagged a couple of freeze frames (what first caught my eye was the color/paint scheme of the GRTC bus that pulled away from the bus stop - and you'll notice on the advertising placard on the side of the bus, it's for the new VCU art center at Belvidere & Broad).  The YouTuber himself is running across the street in the fourth still.

Aside from the obvious of he found this building in RVA and used it for his video - how and why he had occasion to be in Richmond is anyone's guess. But it's EXTREMELY COOL to see Richmond featured (even if in this case, without being mentioned by name) in a YouTuber's video.

Here are screen grabs from the video:

 

You can see the entire video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4qaiopZK5U

The Richmond portion begins at about the 6:40 mark.

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by I miss RVA

[Child2021]

Henrico approves 90 acres of housing, high-tech research facilities | WRIC ABC 8News

Great to see this moving forward!

[Child2021]

If I'm reading this correctly, then it seems like the local labor market has basically recovered since the early onset of the COVID Pandemic. 

Have a look: Bureau of Labor Statistics Data (bls.gov)

The only issue is that Unemployment is beginning to slightly increase recently, but that could be from a various factor of reasons.

IMPORTANT: Keep in mind these are Preliminary, and are subject to change as course of time.

 

These may or may not be correct or incorrect given the practices that are used when calculating a Job market. 

 

[I miss RVA]

14 hours ago, I miss RVA said:

SOOOOOO... you never know where you're gonna find little gems where Richmond shows up in the media regardless of the platform -- but it's pretty cool when you stumble across one of them. So I was watching YouTuber Phil Edwards' historical perspective on why the Oreo cookie beat out Hydrox as the the chocolate cookie w vanilla creme filling champ of the 20th century when LOW AND BEHOLD I almost jumped out of my chair exclaiming: "THAT'S RICHMOND!!!"

And sure enough it is. At the 6:40 mark of his video, he shows off an old building (given the incline of the street, the red-brick sidewalk and the overall age of the building, my guess it's probably in Church Hill - and since there's a bus stop where he's filming, I'd also guess it's north of Broad on maybe something like N. 25th Street - just guessing). Now, on the building is a century-old painted advertisement for "Uneeda Biscuit". I snagged a couple of freeze frames (what first caught my eye was the color/paint scheme of the GRTC bus that pulled away from the bus stop - and you'll notice on the advertising placard on the side of the bus, it's for the new VCU art center at Belvidere & Broad).  The YouTuber himself is running across the street in the fourth still.

Aside from the obvious of he found this building in RVA and used it for his video - how and why he had occasion to be in Richmond is anyone's guess. But it's EXTREMELY COOL to see Richmond featured (even if in this case, without being mentioned by name) in a YouTuber's video.

Here are screen grabs from the video:

 

You can see the entire video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4qaiopZK5U

The Richmond portion begins at about the 6:40 mark.

 

WOWZERS -- this is the first Monday that I can remember (including the Holiday seasons) where there wasn't at least ONE new message. This isn't just a "slow" news day - seems more like a "dead" news day! 

Okay - to kick off a little conversation, any takers on where specifically this YouTuber might've filmed this short segment of his video? Without Google-map searching, I'm putting a bet on N. 25th Street, somewhere around E. Marshall, based on inclination of the grade of the street, the red-brick sidewalks, the age/architecture of the building, and the fact that it's a two-way street (if memory serves, 25th is two-way and at least used to be used as a major north-south artery for bus traffic in the East End.)

[wrldcoupe4]

Close - 25th and Broad.

[I miss RVA]

North side of Broad, yes? As in - if a bus were headed east on Broad, they make the left at 25th Street and pull into that bus stop.

[wrldcoupe4]

No, south side of Broad, east side of 25th.

[I miss RVA]

17 minutes ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

No, south side of Broad, east side of 25th.

Oh wow - SOUTH of Broad. Okay!  (I had east side of 25th correct...) But south of Broad. Wow.

So NOW I wanna know how the YouTuber had the occasion to be in Richmond to include this building in his video. 

Edited March 20, 2023 by I miss RVA

[I miss RVA]

18 hours ago, Child2021 said:

Henrico approves 90 acres of housing, high-tech research facilities | WRIC ABC 8News

Great to see this moving forward!

With your permission, I'm moving this over to the suburban development thread and linking it up to previous reporting since the previous reporting was from January and this project hadn't come before the county board of supervisors yet. Just want to link up the development train since it's been approved.

This will be a great project for that part of north-central Henrico!

[I miss RVA]

This story is a couple of days old, but it's a fun little piece about a long-time Richmond problem that's FINALLY -- after alllllllllll these years been fixed. Goshen Street - known for being the tire-busting, pock-marked lunar-surface-like bastion of cobblestones and huge pot holes and horrible asphalt patch jobs has FINALLY been paved over and is drivable! No more axel-breaking, rim-bending, headliner-bashing bouncing around as if riding in the Lunar Rover Vehicle of the final three Apollo Missions.

The fix even caught the attention of the ONLY VCU alum to ever play in the NFL - current Indianapolis Colts tight end Mo Alie-Cox (who starred for the Rams' basketball team nearly a decade ago) who tweeted:

“Nothing worse than Goshen "

Wow... I'm surprised all the preservationists weren't out in force standing in the way of the paving equipment to "save" their belov...  oh wait...    I forgot.   Carver isn't Monument Avenue, is it.  

From WRIC-8 News:

https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/richmond/it-has-finally-happened-goshen-street-has-been-paved/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslocal_richmond&stream=top

IMPORTANT NOTE: the SECOND picture below is a STILL SHOT - it is NOT a video link.

Edited March 26, 2023 by I miss RVA

[I miss RVA]

Friends,

The fine folks at RVA YIMBY have introduced their first initiative as an organization, and it's a good one: they're launching a petition for the city to eliminate parking minimums. This is certainly an initiative that has plenty of merit, to which any of our development and CRE gurus in the RVA/UP community could certainly speak. I know this is a tough nut to crack - prying the steering wheels out of the death-grips of Richmonders' car-obsessed hands. But with the city moving toward greater and greater density, expanding TOD-1 zoning regs, guiding development to take on a much more truly "urban" footprint, etc., it's not hard to see that there is at least SOME impetus toward moving RVA from being so extremely car-centric. 

QUESTION: @upzoningisgood, @wrldcoupe4and any/all of our other gurus who can speak to this: would eliminating parking minimums offer developers ENOUGH of a cost savings to make the difference (if they trimmed the amount of a project that's strictly parking) to make bigger, better projects pencil in Richmond?

That said - let's give this initiative a good kickstart - the old-fashioned, RVA/UP way -- by getting involved and being activists in building a BIGGER - BETTER Richmond! Check out the article and the links therein to resources - and reach out to City Council, the Planning Commission, the city's office of economic development even. FIND someone to whom you can send an email. Speak up in favor of this initiative! And MOST of all - SIGN THE PETITION!!! It takes just a few seconds but could make a WORLD of difference to BIGGER - BETTER RVA developments downt the road.

I echo RVA YIMBY's mantra on this effort for repealing parking minimums: House people, not cars.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/end-parking-minimums/?link_id=0&can_id=152b951abfbf9ef058131d5e80f69376&source=email-house-neighbors-not-cars-repeal-richmonds-parking-minimums&email_referrer=email_1859234&email_subject=support-the-repeal-of-parking-minimums

 

Edited March 27, 2023 by I miss RVA

[wrldcoupe4]

2 hours ago, I miss RVA said:

 

QUESTION: @upzoningisgood, @wrldcoupe4and any/all of our other gurus who can speak to this: would eliminating parking minimums offer developers ENOUGH of a cost savings to make the difference (if they trimmed the amount of a project that's strictly parking) to make bigger, better projects pencil in Richmond?

 

Not exactly. Developers still have to build what the market expects and there are also sometimes lender requirements for minimums. So if the city removed minimums, which I’m pretty sure is the plan, it would remove red tape, but the market will still decide. 

[I miss RVA]

59 minutes ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

Not exactly. Developers still have to build what the market expects and there are also sometimes lender requirements for minimums. So if the city removed minimums, which I’m pretty sure is the plan, it would remove red tape, but the market will still decide. 

Thanks, Coupe! Ahhh - lender requirements for parking minimums. And is it safe to guess that lender minimums would have as much to do with location and location/market TYPE as much as it would market size? For example: a developer building a 1,000-unit residential building in, say, central Houston could possibly have lender-mandated minimums because Houston is a very car-centric city, whereas the same developer building in Philadelphia or Chicago might be able to get through without minimums because both cities are FAR less car centric and have superior mass transit options.

In the ballpark?

Edited March 28, 2023 by I miss RVA

[KJHburg]

Not sure if New Kent County is metro Richmond or not but you are getting  a Bucee's and I am jealous!  Calling this a gas station is like calling a food truck a full service restaurant. 

This Texas based chain of huge stores with 120 gas pumps and great food is coming your way on I-64.  The store restaurant averages 50,000 sq ft the size of a Publix or so.  

https://www.southernliving.com/buc-ees-virginia-7229251

they are all over Texas and spreading all over the south now coming to the I-64 corridor between Richmond and the Tidewater area.

https://buc-ees.com/   I love their brisket and fried chicken sandwiches.  Their jerky is legendary.  All kinds of neat snacks too.  They are currently in KY, TN, SC, GA, FL, AL, TX and hopefully soon to NC too.   Plenty of stuff you never know you needed too!  

Photos from TN Crossville location.   Last 2 photos Florence SC location 

Edited March 29, 2023 by KJHburg

[Hike]

13 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

Not sure if New Kent County is metro Richmond or not but you are getting  a Bucee's and I am jealous!  Calling this a gas station is like calling a food truck a full service restaurant. 

This Texas based chain of huge stores with 120 gas pumps and great food is coming your way on I-64.  The store restaurant averages 50,000 sq ft the size of a Publix or so.  

https://www.southernliving.com/buc-ees-virginia-7229251

they are all over Texas and spreading all over the south now coming to the I-64 corridor between Richmond and the Tidewater area.

https://buc-ees.com/   I love their brisket and fried chicken sandwiches.  Their jerky is legendary.  All kinds of neat snacks too.  They are currently in KY, TN, SC, GA, FL, AL, TX and hopefully soon to NC too.   Plenty of stuff you never know you needed too!  

Photos from TN Crossville location.   Last 2 photos Florence SC location 

Had seen this, look forward to seeing this in 2027, if I’m still alive..other than timing, this is cool and will be great for New Kent and blends well with the adjacent horse racing and gambling right nearby.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Hike

[whw53]

2027? I'll still be fueling but i hope they plan to reduce the fuel stations by a third and put in more ev chargers to meet the market by then

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[eandslee]

26 minutes ago, Hike said:

Had seen this, look forward to seeing this in 2027, if I’m still alive..other than timing, this is cool and will be great for New Kent and blends well with the adjacent horse racing and gambling right nearby.

Yep, this was the talk of the town a few weeks ago. The New Kent store will be one of their largest stores at 74K square feet (largest I saw was 75K sq ft in Texas).  We are excited…as excited as we can for a glorified gas station!  

[I miss RVA]

14 minutes ago, eandslee said:

Yep, this was the talk of the town a few weeks ago. The New Kent store will be one of their largest stores at 74K square feet (largest I saw was 75K sq ft in Texas).  We are excited…as excited as we can for a glorified gas station!  

Well said, sir! 

[metalman]

Hey all,

Me and my fam. Just visited Richmond last weekend for GalaxyCon.  Great time, good AirBB in Monroe Ward, walkable to the con.   Great restaurants we found in Wong Gonzales (killer tacos), Secret Sandwich Society, an ok slice in Valentino’s pizza.  Went to the Poe museum and St. John’s Church (Site Patrick Henry…you know). Great breakfast burritos at Liberty Pub out there.

   I do have one honest question that left me puzzled when I was there.  Why is there so much dog crap on the sidewalks and the landscaping medians around the sidewalks.  Up and around Grace st, Monroe, etc.  I noticed not only the dog crap, some more fresh, some crusty and very old; but people walking there dogs, letting them crap on the side wall or up in the landscaping without picking it up.  Is that a thing?

[Hike]

1 hour ago, metalman said:

Hey all,

Me and my fam. Just visited Richmond last weekend for GalaxyCon.  Great time, good AirBB in Monroe Ward, walkable to the con.   Great restaurants we found in Wong Gonzales (killer tacos), Secret Sandwich Society, an ok slice in Valentino’s pizza.  Went to the Poe museum and St. John’s Church (Site Patrick Henry…you know). Great breakfast burritos at Liberty Pub out there.

   I do have one honest question that left me puzzled when I was there.  Why is there so much dog crap on the sidewalks and the landscaping medians around the sidewalks.  Up and around Grace st, Monroe, etc.  I noticed not only the dog crap, some more fresh, some crusty and very old; but people walking there dogs, letting them crap on the side wall or up in the landscaping without picking it up.  Is that a thing?

That’s too bad, wish it wasn’t as bad as you mentioned but doesn’t surprise me. I haven’t lived downtown in years and even when I did, there is a bit of a messy side to our city. I live in the burbs and many pick up the poo, but, there is a consistent dookie on the street even out here. No sidewalks where we walk, we’re in the neighborhoods and too often there’s “junk” on the street, like very regular. It’s ridiculous and I have hit it every now and then, which is gross. I think it’s just lazy, don’t care, lack of social behavior, bad parenting, etc. I did confront a young 20 something woman, who let her dog go in our yard, and she said she had no bag. I ran to get one and by the time I got back to the door she was across the street and gone.
What is a thing per RVA Reddit is leaving chicken bones.  There are always posts about that, like the one below and the location of them with a photo.  Maybe we should do that, track the poo on Google, call it wayz-do-do?

Edited March 29, 2023 by Hike