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 November 8, 2024:
VCU Health buys former Pet Dairy facility beside Athletic Village site for $9M
Reported by Richmond Bizsense’s Jonathan Spiers
The day after Virginia Commonwealth University held a groundbreaking ceremony for its long-planned Athletic Village, VCU Health closed on a nearly $10 million purchase of the former Pet Dairy industrial property next door.
The VCU Health System Authority now owns the 6-acre assemblage at 1501-1507 Robin Hood Road, which it purchased for $9.5 million in a deal that closed Oct. 31, according to city land deeds.
The property is adjacent to the 42-acre Athletic Village site, where work has gotten underway in recent weeks.
It’s also beside a VCU Health-owned property at 1500 Sherwood Ave., which the health system purchased in 2013 for $1.3 million. The area is just west of VCU Health’s Brook Road Pavilion, the Northside campus of the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. The sites are on opposite sides of the interstate but connected by Sherwood Avenue via an underpass.
A VCU Health spokesperson said the purchase was made using funds generated from health system operations and said the authority bought it due to the property’s “strategic location and adjacency” to the Athletic Village.
“There are no approved plans or timelines for development at this point,” the spokesperson said.
Project Snapshot: Redevelopment of Saint Gertrude school nears the finish line
Reported by Richmond Bizsense’s Mike Platania
The transformation of a former Museum District prep school into apartments is nearing completion.
SNP Properties recently finished the first phase of The Abby on Stuart, a 39-unit apartment conversion of the old Saint Gertrude High School at 3215 Stuart Ave.
The project’s first 22 units have been completed and recently began welcoming residents. The remaining 17 units are expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Saint Gertrude had called the 2-acre Museum District property home for decades before relocating to Benedictine College Preparatory’s Goochland Campus off River Road in 2021. SNP purchased the site, including its 69,000-square-foot school building, for nearly $11 million in early 2023 and began work.
The average unit in The Abby totals around 2,000 square feet, and rents range from around $1,900 for a one-bedroom to $7,300 for a four-bedroom, three-bath, 3,000-square-foot unit. SNP principal Eric Phipps said they’re targeting retirees, empty nesters and families as opposed to recent graduates and younger folks.
“We didn’t want to cram as many apartments as possible into it,” Phipps said. “These are basically custom home finishes in a new apartment.”
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