A site plan shows the six apartment buildings with access off Snead Road. (City documents)
A Norfolk-based developer is upping its local workload of lower-income housing developments with plans for a new project in South Richmond.
The Lawson Cos. is looking to build 180 income-restricted apartments on a 10-acre site at 5015 Snead Road. The wooded site is northwest of Walmsley and Broad Rock boulevards in the Piney Knolls area.
The apartments would be targeted to renters earning below 80 percent of the area median income.
The units would be grouped in six three-story buildings with surface parking, a clubhouse and access off Snead Road.
Lawson is seeking a special-use permit for the project, which would add to other apartment developments it’s planning in the Southside. It has secured city approval for a 144-unit complex at 700 W. 44th St., northeast of Westover Hills Boulevard and Midlothian Turnpike. It’s also planning a 116-unit building at the southeast corner of Hull Street and Commerce Road in Manchester.
Those projects are in line with two other local developments that Lawson has been behind in recent years: the 200-unit Foundry Apartments along the interstate near Virginia Union University, and the 96-unit Alexander at 1090 Apartments the firm built at 1090 German School Road.
A rendering of the three-story apartment buildings planned for the Snead Road site.
Renderings included in Lawson’s permit application for the Snead Road project show the buildings planned for the 700 W. 44th St. site. Virginia Beach-based TS3 Architects designed those apartments.
Company spokesman Dan Hankin said the Snead Road apartments would be similar in architectural style to the 44th Street project, called 700 West 44. That complex will consist of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments ranging in size from 710 to 1,100 square feet, according to a description on the company’s website.
Hankin said the unit mix, amenity package and rents for the Snead Road apartments remain in flux and would be finalized at a later date.
Lawson is working on the project with engineering firm Timmons Group. Williams Mullen attorney Preston Lloyd is representing Lawson in its permit request, which was submitted last week and is under review by city planning staff.
The Snead Road apartments would be built on three parcels owned by an LLC tied to homebuilder West Homes. The LLC purchased the land in 2020 for $118,000, property records show. The city assessed the parcels at $148,000 collectively at that time and assessed them this year at $173,000.
The project adds to other income-restricted apartments in the works for that area. Southeast of the site, local firms Crescent Development and Spy Rock Real Estate plan to develop more than 200 units, including apartments for seniors, on 10 acres in the 4800 block of Walmsley Boulevard just west of the Broad Rock intersection.
On Cottrell Creek. It is officially outside a 100-year flood plain SFHA but it floods (due to the bend and channelization under Broad Road back into the parking lot of JW property. Maybe I am not seeing in but where is the on-site storm water storage pond??