New State Office Building at 8th and Broad St

[Brent114]

Nothing is rising out of the hole yet.  The deck is much deeper than I was expecting.
 

is there a tunnel connecting the GA to it?  

[eandslee]

3 minutes ago, Brent114 said:

is there a tunnel connecting the GA to it?  

A definite, Yes.

[Hike]

One up One down.

So, we gained the crane in Scott's Addition, the General Assembly seems to be coming down, nearby crane and piece laying beside the crane..

https://virginiageneralassembly.gov/GABwebcam.html

Edited June 25, 2021 by Hike

[I miss RVA]

Hike - where is the new crane in Scott's? Is it up for the 12-story apartment building? Or another one? Are there any pix available?

Edited June 25, 2021 by I miss RVA

[Hike]

57 minutes ago, I miss RVA said:

Hike - where is the new crane in Scott's? Is it up for the 12-story apartment building? Or another one? Are there any pix available?

it's the one just posted earlier today in the Scott's Addition folder, the project is across the street from Channel 6 on Broad St. I added the renderings of it there.

[I miss RVA]

3 hours ago, Hike said:

it's the one just posted earlier today in the Scott's Addition folder, the project is across the street from Channel 6 on Broad St. I added the renderings of it there.

Cool! Thanks!

[Brent114]

Well this was unexpected! 
 

[I miss RVA]

9 minutes ago, Brent114 said:

Well this was unexpected! 
 

Fantastic! Thanks for taking the picture and posting, Brent!

I might be wrong - but - I think there has been an unbroken "chain" of boom cranes over downtown (and now in other parts of the city) dating back to the construction of Gateway Plaza. By that I mean that a new boom crane or cranes of a different project rose before the old crane of an existing construction project was taken down. Downtown we can track that chain as follows:  Gateway Plaza to Dominion Tower to VCU Outpatient Hospital to Childrens Hospital Expansion (and G.A. Building as well) to G.A. parking garage. Technically not downtown, but the Opus should continue the "chain" of there being at least one boom crane over the city through the rest of the year (depending on how quickly/slowly that building goes up). I'm wondering what projects that might require a boom crane will get underway before the last of the current crop of cranes comes down?

There have been tower cranes in Scott's too - and there are one or two there now, yes?

[blake_p]

This is an interesting read:

http://sfac.virginia.gov/pdf/Capital outlay/2021/01222021_No1_DGS Capital Outlay_January 2021 with slide numbers.pdf

The new parking deck will at least have first floor office space.  The next new building on Capital Square looks to be a replacement of the Pocahontas Building at Bank and 10th.

[I miss RVA]

Blake - thanks for sharing!!

Ummm... guys - have a look at this. Am I somehow misreading the tea leaves - or does it appear that the state is planning to (or at least suggesting that they might) tear down Richmond's tallest building??  It's appearing that the state is downsizing the office space requirements - and the 14 story (or however many floors tall) building at 7th and Main is meant to be a replacement for the Monroe tower? Say it ain't so, Joe... 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by I miss RVA

[I miss RVA]

Apologies for the extra slides - I can't remove the bottom two. Please ignore them -- only the top two are really pertinent.

Why can we not delete photos we have uploaded here if we want to replace them?

[eandslee]

1 hour ago, I miss RVA said:

Blake - thanks for sharing!!

Ummm... guys - have a look at this. Am I somehow misreading the tea leaves - or does it appear that the state is planning to (or at least suggesting that they might) tear down Richmond's tallest building??  It's appearing that the state is downsizing the office space requirements - and the 14 story (or however many floors tall) building at 7th and Main is meant to be a replacement for the Monroe tower? Say it ain't so, Joe... 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting. I wonder what the new building will look like and how tall it will be?  Probably won’t be as tall as Monroe, but it most certainly will look better!  I want to see more details.  This will definitely change the Richmond skyline…hopefully, will make it look more modern!  This could be a good and exciting thing!

[Brent114]

The destruction of the Supreme Court building is the most depressing. Wasn’t this building the first federal a reserve bank of Richmond?   I like the Pocahontas building too.   The area around the Capitol will look horrible when they demolish all of these buildings in 2022.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Brent114

[Icetera]

59 minutes ago, Brent114 said:

The destruction of the Supreme Court building is the most depressing. Wasn’t this building the first federal a reserve bank of Richmond?   I like the Pocahontas building too.   The area around the Capitol will look horrible when they demolish all of these buildings in 2022.

This is all quite concerning and honestly infuriating.  I can understand demolishing the newer low-rise addition of the Pocahontas building, but leveling the 1923 State and City Bank and Trust Company Building after other similar towers on Main have been successfully converted (including a the old state VDEH building in progress) is just crazy.   There are still plenty of surface lots behind the DoT, underutilized usage with the Madison Tower parking structure, and the Monroe parking deck/podium can certainly be reworked if newer, better space is needed.  There is no need to demo the old Federal Reserve and while the Monroe tower is certainly an inefficient design, imploding it is just plain wasteful.

[Downtowner]

7 hours ago, Icetera said:

This is all quite concerning and honestly infuriating.  I can understand demolishing the newer low-rise addition of the Pocahontas building, but leveling the 1923 State and City Bank and Trust Company Building after other similar towers on Main have been successfully converted (including a the old state VDEH building in progress) is just crazy.   There are still plenty of surface lots behind the DoT, underutilized usage with the Madison Tower parking structure, and the Monroe parking deck/podium can certainly be reworked if newer, better space is needed.  There is no need to demo the old Federal Reserve and while the Monroe tower is certainly an inefficient design, imploding it is just plain wasteful.

I’m wondering how they will even implode the Monroe tower. It’s right up against 95 will they have to shut down 95? That’s going to have to be done very carefully especially with Main Street station right across 95. 

[Virginian11]

Is this just a floated proposal that will need to go through more review or this real life?  Hate knocking down our high rises, ugly or not.  

[blopp1234]

Hopefully this isn’t final. I don’t care very much about the Monroe building but the old part of the Pocahontas building and the Supreme Court building shouldn’t be demolished. Don’t know why the state doesn’t just sell off the old Pocahontas building and Supreme Court building as I’m sure developers would love to revitalize them as the views of the capitol could be a big selling point. The state should be focused on developing their acres of undeveloped land to the east of the capitol instead of tearing down buildings that are historic and productive to the urban core.

[DowntownCoruscant]

The SCV building has too many issues to count. Maybe they’ll do a keep the facade type job.

[DowntownCoruscant]

10 hours ago, Brent114 said:

The destruction of the Supreme Court building is the most depressing. Wasn’t this building the first federal a reserve bank of Richmond?   I like the Pocahontas building too.   The area around the Capitol will look horrible when they demolish all of these buildings in 2022.

It was. The vault, with famous bullet hole, is still in the sub-basement.  I love the building. They’ve been looking at ways to renovate it for over a decade, but I can’t blame them if they just threw their hands in the air. It’s a dingy and inefficient building. The courtroom is nice, but the interior is not. I’ll just leave it at that.

[Downtowner]

The sad thing is some of these old historic structures are sometimes beyond repair because of pipes or different types of out of date systems that don’t get it looked at until it’s too late and is beyond repair. I work in hvac and I’ve seen it all. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not up to code and is not worth putting the money into it. It’s like with any type of system rather it be electric or hvac or plumbing. If you let stuff just sit and rot there comes a time where it’s too late to save it and is beyond repair and not worth putting the money into it.  It’s unreal how many times Ive seen stuff that is not up to code and sometimes I see stuff that’s up to code but the way it was put in makes it even more expensive to replace because whoever did the work before made a huge mess out of it putting it in. I saw one place I went to all of the duct work was like a maze and I said what on earth did this person do when they put this in. It was the biggest mess I had ever seen on a really expensive hvac system and I just told them your going to be spending way more money on this mess than what your going to get out of it. I was 100 percent honest with them while I’d love to do this job it’s going to be way less if you get someone else to do it. I just didn’t have the time to do it based on how many other jobs our company had going on and doing that one would of put us way behind schedule. 

[vaceltic]

14 hours ago, I miss RVA said:

and the 14 story (or however many floors tall) building at 7th and Main is meant to be a replacement for the Monroe tower? Say it ain't so, Joe... 

I’m interpreting the slides to mean demolition of the existing building where the new tower is going starting in 2022 before tower construction begins. One slide mentions selling the Monroe Building. 

[I miss RVA]

42 minutes ago, vaceltic said:

I’m interpreting the slides to mean demolition of the existing building where the new tower is going starting in 2022 before tower construction begins. One slide mentions selling the Monroe Building. 

I think the slide mentioning selling the Monroe Building was more to quote what the state is estimating they could get for the building, though I somehow can't see that building being worth only $28M (maybe if it's in that bad of shape, it's value is greatly lowered - idk.)  I'm taking it from the collection of slides as a whole that the state will build a 350K sq ft building at 7th and Main and that it will be the replacement for the 466.6K sq ft of space currently in the Monroe Building.

Honestly, I'm all for building a new tower at 7th and Main - but not at the expense of the demolition of Richmond's tallest building. For whatever reason, we don't seem to be building towers as tall as we did 40-50 years ago - and losing a 449 foot signature tower would be to the skyline like a gorgeous actress losing one of her front teeth. 

And let's face it - the way things are being built here, that kind of height isn't being built in RVA anytime soon, I don't think. Not unless CoStar or Dominion step up and pony up. Dominion's already fired their bullet for now. And we're banking on CoStar to come through with something iconic and tall. 

BTW - I agree wholeheartedly about the Pocahontas Building and the VSC/old Federal Reserve building. Both need to be preserved. If the NIMBYs and their architecture cohorts can yell from the rooftops about "adaptive reuse" and "architectural integrity" about a house on Church Hill or in the Fan, then they need to tune up their Amen Choir and sing loudly about these two gems. I'm not a preservationist by any means, but I cannot even remotely consider the possibility of downtown losing these two oldies-but-goodies. Hopefully at least with the VSC the facade could be saved and integrated into a new structure.

[Icetera]

4 hours ago, vaceltic said:

I’m interpreting the slides to mean demolition of the existing building where the new tower is going starting in 2022 before tower construction begins. One slide mentions selling the Monroe Building. 

I kept wanting demo to reference clearing their space while not entirely demoing the buildings, but the more I read the less likely that seemed.

[rjp212]

I know I am in the minority, but good riddance to Monroe Tower. I’ve always thought it was a scar on the city skyline, regardless of its height. It makes the city look like it’s stuck in the 70s/80s. 

[Virginian11]

28 minutes ago, rjp212 said:

I know I am in the minority, but good riddance to Monroe Tower. I’ve always thought it was a scar on the city skyline, regardless of its height. It makes the city look like it’s stuck in the 70s/80s. 

Height is height  - and we need more or it, not less