The 3.3-acre assemblage is on the east side of Arthur Ashe Boulevard. (Images courtesy of Commonwealth Commercial Partners)
One of the largest land deals along Arthur Ashe Boulevard in recent memory is in the works, and a big apartment project is planned for the site.
Five parcels totaling 3.3 acres at 1117-1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. are under contract to be sold, according to a listing on real estate tracking firm CoStar and multiple sources familiar with the deal.
A zoning confirmation letter filed with the city last week for three of those five properties states that the parcels are “set to be demolished to make way for a large-scale apartment community.”
Details regarding the prospective buyer’s identity and exact scale of the project were not included in the letter.
The parcels — 1117, 1119, 1203, 1207 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. — are owned by entities tied to local real estate investor and landlord Ed Lacy.
The northern-most building at 1207 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. is occupied by furniture rental firm Cort and video production studio Tilt Creative, while 1119 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. is leased to Buz and Ned’s Real Barbecue. The others at 1117, 1203 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. are vacant.
The trapezoid-shaped lot was assessed at a combined $8.99 million.
Lacy has owned 1117, 1119 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. for decades, and added 1207 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. in 2004 for $535,000. His most recent deal on the boulevard was in 2015, when he bought the old Car Pool building at 1203 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. for $1 million.
Reached last week, Buz Grossberg, owner of Buz and Ned’s, said he’d need to look for a new location in the area if any deal comes to fruition.
Two other zoning letters were filed for 1207 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd., but those letters don’t include any mention of demolition plans.
The properties are all zoned TOD-1 Transit-Oriented Nodal District and were most recently assessed by the city at a combined $9 million. If the deal closes, it would likely be the largest price tag for land in the Scott’s Addition area in recent years.
Just to the south of Lacy’s land, Maryland-based developer Outlier Realty Capital is planning a six-story co-housing project at 1101 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. Outlier secured a special-use permit for the project last year and purchased the 0.3-acre site for $1.22 million earlier this year, but work is not yet underway.
To the north of Lacy’s land is the Bow Tie Partners-owned acreage at 2700 W. Leigh St. After The Cordish Cos.’ bid to develop it into a resort casino, Bow Tie recently said that they’re still exploring developing the land themselves.
BizSense editor Michael Schwartz contributed to this report.
The 3.3-acre assemblage is on the east side of Arthur Ashe Boulevard. (Images courtesy of Commonwealth Commercial Partners)
One of the largest land deals along Arthur Ashe Boulevard in recent memory is in the works, and a big apartment project is planned for the site.
Five parcels totaling 3.3 acres at 1117-1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. are under contract to be sold, according to a listing on real estate tracking firm CoStar and multiple sources familiar with the deal.
A zoning confirmation letter filed with the city last week for three of those five properties states that the parcels are “set to be demolished to make way for a large-scale apartment community.”
Details regarding the prospective buyer’s identity and exact scale of the project were not included in the letter.
The parcels — 1117, 1119, 1203, 1207 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. — are owned by entities tied to local real estate investor and landlord Ed Lacy.
The northern-most building at 1207 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. is occupied by furniture rental firm Cort and video production studio Tilt Creative, while 1119 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. is leased to Buz and Ned’s Real Barbecue. The others at 1117, 1203 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. are vacant.
The trapezoid-shaped lot was assessed at a combined $8.99 million.
Lacy has owned 1117, 1119 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. for decades, and added 1207 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. in 2004 for $535,000. His most recent deal on the boulevard was in 2015, when he bought the old Car Pool building at 1203 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. for $1 million.
Reached last week, Buz Grossberg, owner of Buz and Ned’s, said he’d need to look for a new location in the area if any deal comes to fruition.
Two other zoning letters were filed for 1207 and 1209 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd., but those letters don’t include any mention of demolition plans.
The properties are all zoned TOD-1 Transit-Oriented Nodal District and were most recently assessed by the city at a combined $9 million. If the deal closes, it would likely be the largest price tag for land in the Scott’s Addition area in recent years.
Just to the south of Lacy’s land, Maryland-based developer Outlier Realty Capital is planning a six-story co-housing project at 1101 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. Outlier secured a special-use permit for the project last year and purchased the 0.3-acre site for $1.22 million earlier this year, but work is not yet underway.
To the north of Lacy’s land is the Bow Tie Partners-owned acreage at 2700 W. Leigh St. After The Cordish Cos.’ bid to develop it into a resort casino, Bow Tie recently said that they’re still exploring developing the land themselves.
BizSense editor Michael Schwartz contributed to this report.
The demise of the City certainly appears to be exaggerated. Everywhere we look real estate is setting new standards for sales volume. I like that the business has now jumped the interstate into the City’s north side. Investors love Richmond and they are coming from every region as well as internationally. Our City is hot property!
To maintain the pace, we need to do something about City Hall though. We cannot afford to let a billion dollars worth of tied-up assessments quickly become two billion. Let’s put that money to work.
yes. City hall is worse than useless. They slow things down for no reason but sheer incompetence and bureaucratic inertia.
I hope they can keep or incorporate the CORT furniture building. It is a retail asset and you can say what you want Buzz and Ned’s is an institution. Replacing with more bland and boring designed, cheaply constructed apartments (notice no mention of retail) that makes millions for developers is not always progress. All the construction hasn’t been a boom for owner residents as tax rates remain high (along with rising assessments), school system still underperforms, Scott Addition still lacks sidewalks (along with missing curbs and poor pavement conditions) along many roads, and affordability never seems to be addressed. At… Read more »
As long as demand exceeds supply, rental rates and sales rates will remain out of the affordable range. The easy solution is to more quickly process building plans so that there’s a better balance in the marketplace. To do that, we need better trained and paid staff and more of them.
That seems to be the case – hit ‘Flyer’ at the link below. New construction only slated for the southern portion of the site.
https://www.thalhimer.com/properties/leigh-addition
How many shootings took place in the city over the Idependence holiday?
4 in the City of Richmond. Total of 12 in the region but don’t worry folks nothing to see here.
Since the police aren’t doing the shooting the false narrative is lost. Nothing but crickets. Laughable how you get negative 20 something when you are only stating the ugly truth.
Just in time as Myers St has been paved fpr the first time in 10+ years.
Exciting to see these projects envisioned. Waiting for the influx of inventory to bring down rental prices. Or will we never see 400sf go for less than $1,000?
This isn’t that much inventory and it’s coming on slowly. So it isn’t likely to bring down rentals, rather it will keep them from climbing as fast. The math thing in real estate is something NIMBYs really struggle with.
If a gallon leaks a quart an hour, and you add a pint, you’ve decreased the rate of leakage, but it’s still leaking
Wow. This set of parcels is central to this stretch of Boulevard and is set to make a huge impact beyond just the Boulevard. I sincerely hope they are able to pull this off well and don’t damage the vibe of the area.
given the vibe of Boulevard currently, I’m not sure how they could damage it…
Great place for this project, it would make for a much better gateway to the city. Currently Ashe Boulevard verges on the embarrassing as an entrance.
I note this is not in Scott’s Addition… Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, the world can go back to calling anything north of Broad Scott’s Addition.
There are plenty of places in SA for Buzz and Ned’s to move to, and I wish them well. But I’m still not going to go there since it’s really mediocre Barbecue… ZZQ and Smohk are orders of magnitude better.
man, your posts on the bizsense articles are just so relentlessly negative
I’m positive you are wrong!
as a “eurogeek”…I can’t think of any city where murders are common place, but yet the citizenry looks to other nuances .