VPM Media Corporation employees, community leaders and Monroe Ward neighbors celebrated the official groundbreaking of the organization’s downtown Richmond headquarters with a block party Thursday afternoon amid Tropical Storm Debby.
“Welcome to the home of VPM’s future headquarters,” President and CEO Jayme Swain said. “We are not going to let a little tropical storm hold us back. This is what moving forward [means].”
Swain said the organization chose a celebratory block party over a traditional groundbreaking in order to celebrate and honor VPM’s new neighbors and neighborhood, while moving in with humility. Quoting Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Swain said VPM Media Corp. wants to be “good neighbors.”
The new HQ will feature a five-story, 53,000-square-foot modern media facility that will front on Broad Street. There will be a smaller, 1,500-square-foot building facing East Grace Street. In between, a parking structure will be built.
“Our home will be Historic Monroe Ward. What we imagine here is a vibrant hub of activity that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone in the neighborhood,” Swain told block party attendees. “Where we’re going to amplify the storytelling that we do about the issues, topics … of people that matter across the commonwealth.”
Ahead of the block party, VPM News interviewed Swain about the project’s development.
“Inclusive community storytelling” were the words Swain used to describe the future VPM HQ.
“We want it to feel fun and vibrant, and we want it to feel inspiring, so that people can come in to create stories about themselves, about their neighbors, about the issues that matter most to them,” Swain told VPM News. “We want our community partners to feel inspired to come in and host their own events and activities.”
Swain said the Broad Street-facing building will go up as quickly as possible. The nonprofit plans to build out the site at 15 E. Broad St. from front to back — to mitigate impacts on both the downtown thoroughfare and neighboring businesses that will remain open during construction.
During the scouting process, Swain said she visited 70 locations in the Greater Richmond region before ultimately landing on the site at Broad and Grace streets, between First and Foushee streets.
“It's one of those moments when you stand there and you think ‘This is it,’” Swain told VPM News. She added that the property — which was a surface lot when VPM Media Corp. purchased it in 2023 — reflected the organization’s vision, strategic plan and ongoing mission.
“We are the storyteller for Virginia, and it says a lot about who we are as a community to prioritize that building being downtown, particularly as we represent all of Virginia,” Swain told VPM News. “People come from Charlottesville and Harrisonburg and around the state, and they expect us to be with other Virginia institutions.”
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, who also spoke at Thursday’s event, offered similar sentiments.
“Downtown Richmond is the front stage, the front door to the commonwealth of Virginia,” Stoney said. “If you want to be seen or heard, you come to downtown Richmond.”
Stoney said VPM — which brands itself as “Virginia’s home for public media” — is an institution following the lead of many others that are choosing Richmond.
“It is an amazing moment that the premier news, information hub of the commonwealth has chosen Downtown Richmond,” Stoney said.
The groundbreaking came the same day that the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which has called East Franklin Street home since 1923, announced to staff that it would leave its downtown building — owned by Shamin Hotels since 2020 — in April 2025.
“That was really important to us, I think, for our journalists and our journalism — as we invest more in that — to be proximate to the seat of power, so that our job, which is to hold truth to power, we are there,” Swain told VPM News. “We're keeping our eyes on what's happening and reporting on that.”
Other defining factors motivating the downtown move included Richmond’s arts and culture connection via First Fridays. Swain told VPM News that the surface lot was also already zoned appropriately for the nonprofit’s plans.
The current VPM headquarters at 23 Sesame St. in Chesterfield County will turn 60 years old on Sept. 10. Swain said the organization will remain there until the downtown facility is ready for move-in. Station leadership is exploring selling the land and building with broker JLL. VPM will still need access to the broadcast towers at Sesame Street as it plans to circulate content through them, but the longer-term goal is to implement a more modern fiber connection from Broad Street.
“A big piece of this is the reinvention of the technology needed to do storytelling and distribution, whether that's through augmented reality, whether that's through podcasting, whether that's through social media,” Swain said. “We want to make sure that VPM is thriving and here for the community for decades to come.”
VPM operates public television stations VPM PBS, VPM Plus, VPM PBS KIDS, VPM Create, VPM WORLD, as well as VPM News and VPM Music. VPM Media Corp. also operates Style Weekly, which it purchased in 2021.
It is still unclear how much the new HQ will cost VPM. Swain did offer insights into the project’s financing: The Virginia Foundation for Public Media was created when VPM sold some of its broadcast spectrum in 2017 for $181.9 million. The Broad Street land was purchased under the foundation, which is overseen by VPM Media Corp. (Swain is the president and CEO of both VPM and its foundation, which maintain separate boards of directors.)
A capital fundraising campaign is also underway to finance the project.
Swain told VPM News that modernizing VPM’s infrastructure will help the organization continue to tell stories across several different platforms.
“Storytelling is evolving,” Swain said. “It's everything from audio, television on demand, podcasting, social media, all of these different ways that we tell stories, and we need the infrastructure and the technology to be able to do so.”
Literal transparency is also a big aspect of the new HQ, which will feature open space and glass windows facing Broad Street, as seen in renderings by design firm SMBW approved last year by Richmond’s Commission of Architectural Review.
“We want to be the public square and the convener at a time when the world feels very polarized and separated. Public media is uniquely positioned to be that convener, to be that place that we can go have discussion and dialogue and debate.” Swain told VPM News.
Clark Construction, which was awarded the contract earlier this year, is slated to start construction Aug. 12. Work is estimated to run through 2025; the projected move-in date is scheduled for early 2026.
Disclosure: VPM Media Corp. is the FCC license holder of VPM News, which operates as 88.9 FM in Richmond, 89.1 FM in the Northern Neck (Heathsville) and 90.1 FM in Southside Virginia (Chase City). VPM also produces VPM News Update, which airs on VPM PBS.
As a newsroom, VPM News maintains editorial independence — this article went through our usual fact-checking and editing process. Station leadership did not know interview questions ahead of time, and they did not view this article prior to publication.
Questions about this article and VPM News’ overall editorial policy should be directed to Managing Editor Dawnthea M. Price Lisco and News Director Elliott Robinson.
