BizSense Beat is a weekly collaboration between VPM News and Richmond BizSense that brings you the top business stories during NPR's Morning Edition on Fridays.
Here’s a recap of the top stories for the week of September 27, 2024:
Sizable income-based Southside apartment project gets council go-ahead
Reported by Richmond Bizsense’s Mike Platania
A sizable housing development for lower-income renters in South Richmond has received the city’s approval.
City Council gave the green light Monday night to a planned 266-unit apartment project at 2201 McDonough St. in the Swansboro area.
The new apartments, from Tennessee-based developer Elmington, would rise on a nearly 7-acre grassy area to the west of the Belle Heights neighborhood. The units would be available only to those earning up to 60 percent of the area median income. Elmington unveiled its plans in the spring and applied for a special-use permit needed for the development.
The apartments would be spread across three buildings ranging in height from three to five stories. Since the project site is downhill of Semmes Avenue, the five-story buildings would appear closer to three stories when seen from street level.
New-to-market grocery store to open near Courthouse and Hull Street intersection in Chesterfield
Reported by Richmond Bizsense’s Jack Jacobs
An out-of-town grocery store chain has claimed a former gym near the Courthouse Road and Hull Street Road intersection in Chesterfield for its first location in the Richmond region.
Grocery Outlet, a discount supermarket brand with more than 500 locations nationally, is planning to open a store at 9923 Hull Street Road in the Oxbridge Square Shopping Center, according to a building permit recently filed with the county.
The store would open in what’s currently a vacant, 16,000-square-foot space previously occupied by gym chain YouFit.
Grocery Outlet calls itself one of the country’s largest opportunistic buyers of grocery products. It buys up other companies’ excess inventory created by production overruns or changed packaging and sells those products at a discount in its stores.
Homebuilder’s long-planned Hopewell brewery is ‘full-speed-ahead’
Reported by Richmond Bizsense’s Mike Platania
Nearly five years after it was first announced, work on Hopewell’s first brewery is underway.
Earlier this year construction kicked off on Good Ship Brewing and Eatery at 204-208 E. Cawson St. in downtown Hopewell.
Behind the concept is Donnie Barber, a Tri-Cities local known for his homebuilding company, Barber Construction Co. When Barber first began planning Good Ship in late 2019, he was hoping for it to open in the fall of 2020.
Those plans were promptly put on hold by the pandemic, and Barber said he spent the ensuing years focusing on his construction business. But he said he never fully scrapped the idea of Good Ship, especially since opening it was a dream he shared with his late father.
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