Commercial Real Estate

A local hotelier and financier are teaming up to buy the downtown office tower and carry out a previously proposed plan to turn it into hundreds of apartments. 

“It’s a second home to a lot of racing people. I don’t think the county realized what that place meant to so many people,” said Lin O’Neill of the Save Southside Speedway movement that has advocated for a return of car racing to the venue.

“We’ve been working remotely… and it’s apparent everybody’s excited to work together in a physical location,” Jon Gray said of Page Southerland Page’s new local office.

An unidentified developer is looking to convert the existing former office building and two adjoining warehouses at 2400 Grayland Ave. into 126 dwelling units. 

Imagine Willow Lawn as a dense mixed-use district with 2,200 residential units and 500,000 square feet of commercial space. Its owner is pondering exactly that.

The project – once referred to in planning documents as Leigh Addition – has been in the works since 2021 when the D.C.-based developers bought the 3-acre assemblage for $12.5 million

The coffee company will remain in the building through the end of the year, while the architecture firm plots its move from Manchester and readies for renovations.

The prospective buyer beat out two other finalists – Thalhimer Realty Partners and Hourigan Group – in an RFP process that began in 2021.

Oliver Properties is about halfway through the upgrade and expansion of its Highland Woods Apartments, near the old Highland Springs High School.

The campus will be developed in phases on 120 acres in the Meadowville Technology Park. The first phase will be a 100,000-square-foot vertical farm that’ll be used to grow Driscoll’s strawberries.