Papa, Dodson begin construction on ground-up apartments near Maury St. roundabout

Construction on the new building began in recent weeks. (Mike Platania photo)

Biding their time in a bustling part of the city, a pair of local developers are pulling the trigger on an apartment project in Manchester that’s been years in the making.

Construction has begun on a six-story, 162-unit building at 500 Maury St., near the roundabout off the Interstate 95-Maury Street interchange.

Behind the project are Dodson Development Group and Fountainhead Real Estate Development. The pair first filed plans for the development in late 2022, and work got underway in recent weeks. 

Tom Papa

Fountainhead’s Tom Papa said they’re calling this development “The Hub,” due in part to its proximity to the Maury Street roundabout.

“It’s right on the traffic circle, which is the very first entryway coming into (that area),” Papa said. “It’s very convenient to the airport and it’s very convenient to the north and south on 95.”

The units will primarily be rented at market rate, but a percentage of them will be available to renters earning up to 80 percent of the area median income. Papa said that in the two-plus years planning the building, a lot of time has gone into designing the units to be less expensive. 

“We’ve done a very significant value-engineering exercise on these,” Papa said.

“It’s a lot of studio apartments. We have one-to-one parking (spots per unit), but we don’t have as much structured parking. Because we were not in a rush to get this thing started, we were able to take a little extra time and do the value-add.”

In addition to taking extra time to design the building, Papa said the developers wanted to time the construction of The Hub so that when the building is completed there won’t be as many other new units coming available.

“If you go look at the number of units that are coming online, it falls off a cliff. We didn’t want (our units) to come online when everything else is coming online,” Papa said. “It’s a bit of a contrarian view. We should have our first units a little over a year from now, (when) all the other units will have dried up.”

Walter Parks Architects is the designer on The Hub and KBS is the general contractor. 

A rendering of the planned building.

The new building is the first of a handful of planned developments to get underway in that southeastern part of Manchester, with more in the works for the Maury Street area specifically.

Charlottesville-based NewCastle Development Group recently filed for permits to begin work on a 70-unit townhome development at 301 Maury St., and work is underway on a commercial building at 101 Maury. Two other sites in the area also are being eyed for redevelopment. 

Asked about the momentum in the area, Papa said it’s telling that he and Dodson are developing on Maury Street. 

“Look at a map, look at Richmond. What’s left to get developed?” he said. “I think the fact that I’m doing something over there probably speaks volumes.”

Both Dodson and Papa have other projects in the works on the Southside.

Dodson is co-developing a mixed-use building on Forest Hill Avenue with Daniil Kleyman that recently landed EAT Restaurant Partners as a tenant. Papa and Fountainhead have a number of significant projects in the pipeline, including the redevelopment of the Plant Zero site, two more Locks buildings along the canal, and subsequent phases of the South Falls high-rise near the Manchester Floodwall. 

He said all of those developments are still in the works and he’s waiting for the economics of building them, specifically construction costs and interest rates, to pencil out. 

“We’re developers, we want to develop, but we’re not going to just do it. It’s got to make sense,” he said. “We are probably a little more conservative in how we move forward with projects.”