Owens & Minor’s Mechanicsville headquarters was built in 2006. (Courtesy Newmark)
With a move to a new headquarters in the works but under wraps, one of the region’s Fortune 500s has unloaded its Mechanicsville home base to a state agency.
Owens & Minor, the publicly traded healthcare supply and logistics company, recently sold its 160,000-square-foot office building at 9120 Lockwood Blvd. for $33.5 million, according to Hanover County property records. The Virginia Department of Transportation was the buyer.
The company, through a spokesperson, said that by the end of the year it will move into a new headquarters, details of which are scant.
“Our headquarters will continue to be in the Richmond area, but we are not able to share specifics about the exact location at this time,” the company said.
The pending move and the Mechanicsville sale were prompted by the company re-evaluating its office footprint “in light of new workplace trends and the preferences of our teammates,” it said.
The sale closed on Feb. 23 and included the office building and its surrounding 75 acres. The Lockwood property has been the nerve center for Owens & Minor since it was built in 2006. It was most recently assessed by the county at $24.2 million
Local brokers Will Bradley and Mark Williford were part of the Newmark team that represented Owens & Minor in the deal.
Owens & Minor does not specify how many employees it has locally, though it says it has more than 20,000 worldwide. In addition to the Mechanicsville office, the company said it has dozens of distribution centers throughout the country and “several large offices around the globe.”
It also recently had a presence in downtown Richmond. In 2017, it leased 90,000 square feet across four floors of Riverfront Plaza downtown, but shuttered that office in late 2020.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear what VDOT’s plans are for the Mechanicsville building. Spokespeople for the agency were not available for comment by press time.
VDOT’s current headquarters at 1401 E. Broad St. is being considered for redevelopment as the state works through a broader master planning process for Capitol Square and its 46 acres in the heart of downtown.
The VDOT office building, along with the 26-story Monroe Building and Ferguson building at 1401 E. Grace St., is part of Capitol Square’s “Eastern Quadrant,” an 8-acre plot that the state is eyeing for a mixed-use transformation.
That’s one heck of a property to remove from Hanovers tax base, aside from the question of why the state tax payers are purchasing such a building on 75 acres of largely open land. It’s a head scratcher for me.
Hey Bruce speaking of headscratchers have you seen the whole thing about the location of Myrna’s boots and bits and their huge jump in their tax assessment I know it’s off-topic but you know a lot about real estate I wondered if you had any thoughts on that issue
No, not on values of retail buildings, but I love western style shirts from Myrna’s. I guess Chesterfield is jacking up its assessments.
Always enjoy reading your comments. You seem very knowledgeable in the real estate market in the Richmond Area but most of the time what the government does make sense?
The state is moving the Dept of Forensic Science across the street from this property. The open land makes sense to me as I am sure as buildings become obsolete in downtown, the state will have the land here to build on. Certainly cheaper to build an office in suburban Hanover than in downtown. Remember the ABC is just one exit south of here on 295 off Pole Green. It seems Mechanicsville is becoming the new home of state agencies.
That is an interesting observation. Hanover is very tight on housing growth so there will be an increase in traffic coming their way.
Abandoning the Capitol for Mechanicsville seems contrary to the public interest considering Richmond is more accessible and the taxpayers have been paying for extensive renovations to the Commonwealth’s current buildings.
There’s nothing keeping the state from selling the excess acreage to private developers, thus putting it back into the tax base.
The Commonwealth is not well known for those kind of smart decisions. One of its limiting factors in setting real estate strategy is the political swings its leadership makes about every four to eight years,Real estate is a long course growth business.
Would really like to see the richmond vdot office on broad moved and for that spot to open up for development.
This building has essentially the same square footage as the VDOT annex at 1401 east broad, but I would think it is more efficient. It was my understanding that those staff would move to a new building near the airport. VDOT just renovated their downtown hq, so what’s up?
I worked for a little over a year in the VDOT annex building at 1401 E. Broad Street in 1994. Did clerical temping while I was between full-time jobs. Definitely enjoyed being downtown.
The Transportation Annex needs replacing. The last “renovation” was skin deep.
I’d like to see the state close its 13 acres and 100k sf state tax building in the Westwood area of Henrico. . It’s barely used at all.
Bruce, that’s not completely accurate because a few hundred people work out of the Westmoreland St office. Youngkin’s effort to reallocate downtown office space might lead to more people moving from downtown to this facility as well.
Assessed at 24 million, Purchased for 33 million
Guess Hanover didn’t need the tax money.
I started my career at O&M and it was a wonderful place to work. That office space in particular was beautiful and convenient. When I was working there over 10 years ago, they were in desperate need of more space… crazy that the work from home trend has changed things so much.
This is going to make a lot of employees commute even longer for VDOT not quite sure if this was the right move for them.
I can tell you there are many employees that are not happy at all. Longer commute for many, separate from other divisions so in-person meetings or even quick drop-ins to discuss something are precluded, distant from other state agencies (again, making in-person meetings more challenging), no transit options, carpool and vanpool options greatly diminished, no ability for walking or biking (for employees that live in the City). All from the state’s transportation agency that is supposed to improve multimodal transportation and reduce vehicle miles travelled (by moving to a totally car-dependent facility). Classic government; fail to lead by example.
Do you mean VDOT employees will have to suffer from the same hell they created that the rest of us common folk do?
Ironically yes. But bear in mind that there are plenty of VDOT employees that don’t share the old school mindset, but the inertia of a large government bureaucracy is hard to change. And also realize that most of that “hell” is created by poor land use planning at the locality level. Disconnected suburban streets that funnel everything onto collectors and arterials, along with euclidian zoning that requires a car to make circuitous trips, even get to what is proximate. The developers opposed the revised connectivity standards years ago and got them watered down. Transportation and land-use go hand-in glove.
The main reason for the move is because the high-rise VDOT building (aka Transportation Annex) is not in good shape. It needs to be replaced-or at least removed. There is a lot going on here.
This is horrible for the Commonwealth. State agencies should stay close to the State Capitol and the state’s transit agency should not have a major office presence located in suburbia where driving is the only option.
VDOT doesn’t deal with transit. That is DRPT. And that is part of the problem; transportation modes are siloed within different state agencies.
Will be very interested to see where and what size O&M decides on but their comments confirm that corporate office space will see sizeable spaces come on line. Maybe they will take over some of SunTrust complex or old Overnight now that those spaces are not fully (or in Overnight at all) used anymore.
Michael – If you’re thinking the SunTrust complex in Manchester, I believe CoStar bought that building in 2022. Not sure how they’ve used the building, but I think the idea was that it was to handle their increase to the Richmond workforce while their downtown tower and campus is under construction.
Bruce – could you give insight on this?
The Overnight building was under contract at one point last Fall. Home.com occupies the SunTrust mortgage building after its sale to The CoStar Group.
Thanks, Bruce!
It seems the Younkin administration is on a mission to move state offices out of the Capitol district and into the surrounding counties, at a tremendous cost, causing upheaval for state workers and providing no discernible benefit to the taxpayers. So cui bono?
The City of Richmond would actually benefit if any of the parcels were sold to developers (which is apparently being considered) since it would put them back on the tax rolls. The City loses out on a lot of revenue due to the huge number of state-owned properties which pay a fee in lieu of taxes well below market rate.
Now, as far as the City making good use of that additional revenue and benefitting the city taxpayers… that’s a different issue.
Next up, a restricted HOV lane directly to the parking lot.
The Transportation Annex is slated for major work, if not demolition.