CoStar Group breaks ground on $460M Richmond expansion

Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group Inc., a commercial real estate data and analytics provider, broke ground on its $460 million downtown Richmond expansion Tuesday.

Announced in December 2021, the campus will include a LEED platinum certified 21-story, 425-foot tower, 750,000 square feet of office and retail space and another five-story building with an auditorium, mixed-use retail, restaurants and other amenities. The project is expected to be complete in early 2026. Once that happens, CoStar will have 1 million square feet of office space in downtown Richmond, including its current nine-story, 250,000-square-foot building at 501 S. 5th St.

Not included in that square footage is a 117,448-square-foot building across the James River that CoStar is renovating. CoStar in May paid $20 million for the former SunTrust office at 901 Semmes Ave. Once that work is complete, the building will house up to 400 employees and will be “visually connected” to CoStar’s downtown campus.

CoStar’s expansion is expected to create 2,000 jobs. The company currently has about 1,500 employees in its Richmond office, said CoStar founder and CEO Andrew Florance, and all 5,300 of CoStar’s current employees work in its offices.

“Breaking ground today is sort of special because it is a commitment to building back together, working together in person [in] this amazing facility. … We are more productive as we come back together,” Florance said.

Florance also hinted at further Richmond expansion. As CoStar acquires companies, it will continue to attempt consolidating its operations and research in the city to benefit from more investments in training and collaboration, he said.

“I do have a map of the city on the wall,” he added, “and I’m looking at things that are parking lots that could be something else.”

Although supply chain issues for raw construction materials concern him, Florance said he thinks they will be less of a problem in the next two to three years, and CoStar has been preparing. “We’ve been getting in line for key material, like the skin of the building is a major element — we’re in line with that,” he said.

CoStar Group owns Homes.com, Apartments.com and STR Inc., which provides market data on the U.S. hospitality industry. The company has 80 offices in 15 countries. CoStar Group had a market capitalization of more than $30 billion on Tuesday.

Editor’s note: This story has been amended to correct the proper height and number of stories of the planned CoStar tower.