StyleCraft Homes opens doors on bigger Lakeside homebase

StyleCraft has expanded its Lakeside headquarters with a new 10,000-square-foot building connected by a breezeway. (Photos courtesy StyleCraft Homes)

As it adds to an already busy local workload, Henrico-based builder StyleCraft Homes has wrapped up a sizable addition to its Lakeside HQ that’s consolidating operations and taking the 25-year-old company into its next quarter-century.

StyleCraft cut the ribbon on its expanded headquarters at 6225 Lakeside Ave., where it recently finished a 10,000-square-foot addition that triples the footprint of its original building.

The larger digs include a design studio, replacing an off-site studio it had on Shrader Road. The expansion also coincides with StyleCraft’s 25th anniversary, which company President Richard Kuhn said was unintentional.

“It wasn’t pre-planned. It just so happened that the buildings were being finished up and we got the C.O. in the same week we were celebrating our 25th anniversary, so we used the opportunity to tie the two together,” Kuhn said.

President Richard Kuhn wields the scissors during last week’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The company held a ribbon-cutting and reception last week that drew dignitaries including County Manager John Vithoulkas, who recently announced a public-private venture to redevelop the blighted Glenwood Farms apartments in eastern Henrico with nearly 800 new homes to be built by StyleCraft.

Kuhn said the company is about to start work on the 160-unit townhome development it has been planning along Chamberlayne Road near the Azalea-area post office. And this week, it got a nod from the Chesterfield Planning Commission for Rockwood Grove, around a 250-unit townhome development planned near Chesterfield’s Rockwood Park.

Richard Kuhn

Such projects are contributing to a sizable workload that Kuhn said has become the biggest in the company’s history. After his father, Dale Kuhn, founded StyleCraft in 1999, the company expanded to Virginia Beach, North Carolina and Florida before pulling back in the wake of the Great Recession and focusing its efforts solely on metro Richmond.

“We’re now doing more volume here in Richmond than we were in all of those markets combined,” said Kuhn, who projects that StyleCraft will finish this year with more than 300 homes built and more than $150 million in revenue.

Noting that StyleCraft develops about 75 percent of its lots and also includes a property management arm, Kuhn added, “With that growth from the homebuilding side, coupled with our land development arm and the property management, we just needed more space.”

The new building houses the company’s corporate offices, its land development and property management teams, and the new 3,000-square-foot design studio, which Kuhn said allows customers to make their design selections and conduct business all in one place. The older building, totaling 5,200 square feet and connected by a breezeway, will continue housing the homebuilding team.

The design studio fills 3,000 square feet of the new building.

The new studio includes a showroom with multiple kitchenettes, bathrooms and other design options for homebuyers. Two employees who had staffed the Shrader Road studio are now based at Lakeside, bringing the company’s 80 or so employees under one roof.

“What I’m really going to enjoy is being able to go over and say hi to our customers and see them,” Kuhn said. “This is where a good percentage of them will come to do their design selections. It just gives us an opportunity to stay in tune with our customers a little bit closer and have a little bit more oversight on that.”

To make room for the new building, the company bought three neighboring parcels since 2016 and razed two bungalows that had been there. Its Dominion Property Group LLC, which still owns the old design studio at 7810 Shrader Road, paid just under $300,000 for the three parcels at 6229, 6231 and 6233 Lakeside Ave., property records show.

The three Lakeside parcels were assessed the years they were purchased at $226,400 combined. They are now valued at nearly $680,000, based on the county’s latest assessment.

Kuhn said construction lasted about a year. The project’s cost was not provided.

The larger building triples StyleCraft’s office footprint.

Kuhn joined StyleCraft in 2002 and has led the company since his father died in 2006. Since pulling back and refocusing on Richmond after the Great Recession in subsequent years, the company launched its StyleCraft Communities development arm and two years ago added its RiverDale Properties management arm. StyleCraft also plans to launch a “joint venture bank” called Southern Trust Elite later this year.

StyleCraft has built nearly 3,500 homes in its first 25 years, officials said at last week’s ceremony. Among area builders, StyleCraft ranked fifth in production and seventh in dollar volume in the Home Building Association of Richmond’s latest annual rankings.

Adding to the Lakeside Avenue corridor, the expanded headquarters is between the Lakeside Volunteer Rescue Squad and Revel Market and Bar, which opened last year.