The former corporate campus was vacated in recent years. (Mike Platania photo)
The future plans for the long-dormant Genworth Financial campus along West Broad Street are coming into focus.
Baltimore-based developer Greenberg Gibbons recently submitted documents to Henrico County and confirmed with BizSense its strategy to transform the Fortune 500 insurer’s 45-acre former headquarters site at 6620 W. Broad St.
Greenberg Gibbons envisions 975 apartments, 200 for-sale residences, more than 500,000 square feet of commercial space, and 425 hotel rooms across the campus.
“These plans will likely evolve, and we will share more information at key milestones,” a Greenberg Gibbons spokesperson said in an email.
Preliminary plans filed with the county show the development would span 10 buildings. At least two hotels are on the drawing board, and the commercial space would include 130,000 square feet of retail space and around 400,000 square feet of office space.
A preliminary site plan of the development. (County documents)
Greenberg Gibbons is working with Kimley-Horn on the engineering and planning of the new development.
Greenberg Gibbons has developed more than 8 million square feet of retail, mixed-use, residential and commercial properties, most of which are in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Locally, it owns Westchester Commons in Chesterfield County, and a decade ago it vied for the chance to redevelop Cary Street Station in the Fan.
The firm has been under contract to purchase the campus for more than a year, after winning a request for proposals issued by Genworth.
Genworth had previously planned to build a new headquarters on the Broad Street site as part of any redevelopment, but scrapped those plans a few years ago and opted to move west near Innsbrook.
The Genworth campus is one of many sizable mixed-use redevelopments in the pipeline along that stretch of Broad Street.
Reynolds Crossing, another office park right across the street, is also being lined up for a major transformation, as are the Willow Lawn shopping center and Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods complex to the east.
And across from Willow Lawn, the first leg of Kinsale Center, a mixed-use redevelopment of the old Anthem office center at Broad Street and Staples Mill, is under construction.
The march west on Broad Street continues as the corridor is reborn as a mixed use community. That stretch between I-195 and I-64 will look completely different in 10 years.
It will be interesting see how it pivots again when development actually starts, seems like a LOT of office space and a decent amount of retail in a market and area that has large vacancies. I just don’t see them spec building spaces for lease. Filing plans and schematics mean so little; drove by the Lake off Genito and as you ride down the street you see the rear service doors and blank walls of the back of the retail facing the street. The front facades face into the parking lots; it looks NOTHING like its renderings.
Very few shopping centers have more than 10% vacancy; this corridor vacancy is lower than that. The pad sites are worth millions.
The county is not maintaining the schools it has now! This complex, Regency, and the other planned development coming at Reynolds Crossing will all contribute to school populations. Go ahead and start down voting. Before you do, ask yourself these questions: When was the last time I set foot in a HCPS school? Have I seen the bus stop at Regency? How many “temporary” trailers are sitting outside of schools at present? How many bus drivers are we short? How many teachers do we still need to hire? I will stop there.
This redevelopment is good for the schools in that it is turning empty parking lots and half empty office space into new homes and apartments without having to cut down trees or build more roads. Also single family housing in this area is like a pominizi scheme were they can’t redevelop the land the homes sit on into higher density things with more value that bring in more tax dollars.