A site plan shows the school and commercial building closer to Airport Drive, the apartments in the middle and the townhomes beside the adjacent Fair Oaks Terrace subdivision. (County documents)
The same week its apartment project in South Richmond received approval from City Council, a social services group received a similar reception for a mixed-use housing development in eastern Henrico that involves two more of its nonprofit peers.
YWCA of Richmond is working with the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust and Children’s Home Society of Virginia on a multiuse development in Highland Springs. The development will mix apartments and townhomes for lower-income residents with an early childhood education facility and a commercial building with various services for the adults and children living nearby.
YWCA’s Sprout School is lined up to operate the early childhood facility. The residential portion will consist of 22 townhomes and 44 apartments that would be “deeply affordable,” described as the lowest level of housing affordability.
Those units add to 50 apartments for lower-income families that the YWCA is planning near Richmond’s Bellemeade area, working with housing developer Surber Development and Consulting. That project received city approval Monday.
The following evening, Henrico supervisors approved the Highland Springs project, which Varina Supervisor Tyrone Nelson praised. The county has worked with the nonprofits for two years on that project and donated the 6.7-acre site to the land trust in December, making the land a perpetual site for income-based housing.
Describing the project as unique, Nelson said before the vote: “I can’t remember many, if any (cases) over the course of my decade or so of service, where we’ve had this kind of combination of uses being brought forward.
“I’m honored that this is in our district,” he said. “I just hope that this will be the start and we can have more cases come forward like this.”
Rupa Murthy
Rupa Murthy, CEO of YWCA of Richmond, said the Henrico and Richmond projects are result of a concerted effort by those jurisdictions along with Chesterfield County to be proactive in providing additional affordable housing options across the region. She said discussions among all the parties followed Richmond’s declaration last year of a regional housing crisis.
“All of this came about because those three localities are talking about that,” Murthy said, noting challenges that the nonprofits face in providing housing to the people they serve.
Noting the YWCA’s focus on domestic violence victims and Children’s Home Society’s focus on children coming out of foster care, Murthy said, “These two deeply vulnerable populations, marginalized communities that have just historically not been able to find homes, are even more in crisis than they’ve ever been.”
Located at 599 N. Airport Drive, between a Henrico Health & Rehabilitation Center and a county fire station, the Highland Springs development will consist of apartments for residents served by the YWCA and Children’s Home Society and the 22 for-sale townhomes to be built by the land trust.
The townhomes will be priced around $200,000.
The bulk of the apartments will be one- and two-bedroom units, while five can have three bedrooms. The townhomes will have three bedrooms and be 1,500 square feet in size and priced around $200,000, a price point that land trust CEO Erica Sims said makes them affordable to households earning 55 percent of the area median income.
Sims said the land donation from Henrico was vital for the project, which is estimated to cost $20 million and will be financed through the nonprofits’ fundraising efforts. Murthy said Rep. Jennifer McClellan secured $3.4 million in funding for the project in the recently adopted state budget.
The wooded Highland Springs site is assessed by the county at $143,300. The City of Richmond likewise donated the 4-acre site at 2510 Lynhaven Ave. for the 50-unit apartment building.
Erica Sims
“We have gotten a number of donations from Henrico County, they’ve been really remarkable in that regard, and this is the largest one we’ve received to date,” Sims said. “It’s such an essential thing. We can’t do any of our work without some land to do it on, so it’s been really amazing to see how much they’ve donated to us.”
Murthy said firms working on the project are providing their work pro bono, further lowering the cost to the nonprofits. Firms involved in the Highland Springs development include developer Rebkee Co., Poole & Poole Architecture, engineering firm VHB and law firm Hirschler, whose Jeff Geiger represented the groups in their rezoning application to the county.
The Sprout School building will total 15,000 square feet, and the 10,000-square-foot commercial building will house services from YWCA, Safe Harbor and others such as workforce development, crisis behavior health counseling, and case management, Murthy said.
She said the goal is for the housing portion of the project to be completed and open to residents by 2026.
Murthy described both the Henrico and Richmond projects as adding to a multijurisdictional effort to address housing affordability across the region.
“As we move this story along, the thing that’s going to be most interesting about it is how the municipalities came together to decide this is what they want to do,” she said. “It really is a story about the localities working together to push deeply affordable housing forward.”
A site plan shows the school and commercial building closer to Airport Drive, the apartments in the middle and the townhomes beside the adjacent Fair Oaks Terrace subdivision. (County documents)
The same week its apartment project in South Richmond received approval from City Council, a social services group received a similar reception for a mixed-use housing development in eastern Henrico that involves two more of its nonprofit peers.
YWCA of Richmond is working with the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust and Children’s Home Society of Virginia on a multiuse development in Highland Springs. The development will mix apartments and townhomes for lower-income residents with an early childhood education facility and a commercial building with various services for the adults and children living nearby.
YWCA’s Sprout School is lined up to operate the early childhood facility. The residential portion will consist of 22 townhomes and 44 apartments that would be “deeply affordable,” described as the lowest level of housing affordability.
Those units add to 50 apartments for lower-income families that the YWCA is planning near Richmond’s Bellemeade area, working with housing developer Surber Development and Consulting. That project received city approval Monday.
The following evening, Henrico supervisors approved the Highland Springs project, which Varina Supervisor Tyrone Nelson praised. The county has worked with the nonprofits for two years on that project and donated the 6.7-acre site to the land trust in December, making the land a perpetual site for income-based housing.
Describing the project as unique, Nelson said before the vote: “I can’t remember many, if any (cases) over the course of my decade or so of service, where we’ve had this kind of combination of uses being brought forward.
“I’m honored that this is in our district,” he said. “I just hope that this will be the start and we can have more cases come forward like this.”
Rupa Murthy
Rupa Murthy, CEO of YWCA of Richmond, said the Henrico and Richmond projects are result of a concerted effort by those jurisdictions along with Chesterfield County to be proactive in providing additional affordable housing options across the region. She said discussions among all the parties followed Richmond’s declaration last year of a regional housing crisis.
“All of this came about because those three localities are talking about that,” Murthy said, noting challenges that the nonprofits face in providing housing to the people they serve.
Noting the YWCA’s focus on domestic violence victims and Children’s Home Society’s focus on children coming out of foster care, Murthy said, “These two deeply vulnerable populations, marginalized communities that have just historically not been able to find homes, are even more in crisis than they’ve ever been.”
Located at 599 N. Airport Drive, between a Henrico Health & Rehabilitation Center and a county fire station, the Highland Springs development will consist of apartments for residents served by the YWCA and Children’s Home Society and the 22 for-sale townhomes to be built by the land trust.
The townhomes will be priced around $200,000.
The bulk of the apartments will be one- and two-bedroom units, while five can have three bedrooms. The townhomes will have three bedrooms and be 1,500 square feet in size and priced around $200,000, a price point that land trust CEO Erica Sims said makes them affordable to households earning 55 percent of the area median income.
Sims said the land donation from Henrico was vital for the project, which is estimated to cost $20 million and will be financed through the nonprofits’ fundraising efforts. Murthy said Rep. Jennifer McClellan secured $3.4 million in funding for the project in the recently adopted state budget.
The wooded Highland Springs site is assessed by the county at $143,300. The City of Richmond likewise donated the 4-acre site at 2510 Lynhaven Ave. for the 50-unit apartment building.
Erica Sims
“We have gotten a number of donations from Henrico County, they’ve been really remarkable in that regard, and this is the largest one we’ve received to date,” Sims said. “It’s such an essential thing. We can’t do any of our work without some land to do it on, so it’s been really amazing to see how much they’ve donated to us.”
Murthy said firms working on the project are providing their work pro bono, further lowering the cost to the nonprofits. Firms involved in the Highland Springs development include developer Rebkee Co., Poole & Poole Architecture, engineering firm VHB and law firm Hirschler, whose Jeff Geiger represented the groups in their rezoning application to the county.
The Sprout School building will total 15,000 square feet, and the 10,000-square-foot commercial building will house services from YWCA, Safe Harbor and others such as workforce development, crisis behavior health counseling, and case management, Murthy said.
She said the goal is for the housing portion of the project to be completed and open to residents by 2026.
Murthy described both the Henrico and Richmond projects as adding to a multijurisdictional effort to address housing affordability across the region.
“As we move this story along, the thing that’s going to be most interesting about it is how the municipalities came together to decide this is what they want to do,” she said. “It really is a story about the localities working together to push deeply affordable housing forward.”
This is great stuff for eastern Henrico County. I love seeing the collaboration of multiple parties to build affordable housing. Kudos to all involved.
Amen, Mike. Same here. Very happy to see this being developed.
This is a wonderful project that is sorely needed. We can never have enough affordable housing all across metro Richmond. I love all the components of this project, and including a school that focuses on early childhood education is a fantastic touch. Really well thought out plan here that looks very good. It’s so heartening to see new developments such as these beginning to pop up throughout the region, and we can hope that this project is just the first of many that will be constructed in the coming years. Heartfelt kudos, congratulations and best wishes for success to everyone… Read more »
Great project but Jenn is a Congresswoman not a state delegate anymore; she secured funding in the state budget recently adopted; the state budget that is still on Gov’s desk? Did you mean she got a Congressional earmark in say the recently adopted federal budget? Federal FY24 earmarks just came out March 3/4.
That is correct, The funding was in the recently adopted federal budget, Good catch.