Officials tour the recently completed Highland Terrace Apartments, which features part of an old church that had been on the site along Brookland Park Boulevard. (Jonathan Spiers photos)
Where it’s just wrapped up one apartment building for lower-income renters, a Baltimore-based developer familiar with Richmond’s Six Points area is kicking off another across the street.
City and state officials joined Enterprise Community Development in recent days for a dual-purpose ceremony to celebrate the opening of its Highland Terrace Apartments and break ground on its planned Green Park Apartments on the opposite side of Brookland Park Boulevard.
A rear view of the Highland Terrace building along Brookland Park Boulevard. Another apartment building is planned for the grassy lot across the street, shown at right. (Image courtesy Enterprise Residential)
Highland Terrace, previously called Brookland Park Apartments, is a $22 million development of the former Mizpah Presbyterian Church and Nehemiah House Community Center sites at 1224 E. Brookland Park Blvd. The four-story building consists of 66 units and incorporates a section of the church building as its entrance.
The apartments feature green building and energy-efficiency technologies. (Image courtesy Enterprise Residential)
The one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments have rents for household incomes between 40 percent and 60 percent of the area median income. The units feature green building and energy-efficiency technologies expected to offset most of their annual energy use.
Construction got underway last year, nearly a decade after EDC purchased the site. Torti Gallas + Partners designed the building, and UrbanCore Construction was the general contractor. Enterprise Residential is managing the community.
Financing for the project included 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit equity from Enterprise Community Investment Inc., construction financing from Truist Bank, and additional funding from Virginia Housing Innovations in Energy Efficiency, Virginia Housing Trust Fund, Virginia HOME, and the Richmond Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
The groundbreaking ceremony was held on the Green Park site, across from the Highland Terrace building visible in the distance.
Across the street, ECD is starting work on Green Park Apartments, a four-story building with 43 apartments and 3,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space on a roughly half-acre grassy lot at 1203 E. Brookland Park Blvd.
The site is next door to the old Highland Park Public School, which Enterprise converted nearly a decade ago into 77 apartments for low-income seniors.
That project was the first in a trio that ECD – previously known as Community Preservation and Development Corp. – completed to provide replacement housing for residents of Gilpin Court’s Fay Towers, including a mixed-use development in Jackson Ward and a conversion of the former Baker Public School at Gilpin.
A newer rendering of the Green Park building as it would appear facing east along Brookland Park Boulevard. (Image courtesy ECD)
Like Highland Terrace, the Green Park building will consist of income-based apartments, with at least half of them rented to households at or below 50 percent of the area median income. The rest of the primarily one- and two-bedroom units would range in rent from 40 to 80 percent AMI.
Seven of the units, through an arrangement with the Richmond Behavioral Health Authority, will be dedicated for residents with permanent supportive housing needs. The building will include a community room and business center and feature energy efficiencies including solar panels on the roof.
Architecture firm Quinn Evans is designing Green Park, and UrbanCore is the GC. Timmons Group is the civil engineer on the project, which involves 9% housing tax credits from Virginia Housing.
Other firms involved in the projects include Sadler & Whitehead, which provided historic preservation consulting; permitting consultant Baker Development Resources; and Roth Jackson and Klein Hornig, which handled legal services. Gradiant and Pando Alliance provided energy consulting, and Omni Partners is the construction manager.
Construction on Green Park is scheduled to take 15 months.