Loop Capital is no longer affiliated with the development partnership working on the mixed-use development component of Richmond’s $2.4 billion Diamond District project, leaving Thalhimer Realty Partners as the development team’s sole principal.
The partnership, a limited liability company named Diamond District Partners, is developing the area surrounding the planned new baseball stadium for the Richmond Flying Squirrels for the first phase of the redevelopment. The entire 67-acre project is expected to include 2,800 residential units, 935,000 square feet of office space and 195,000 square feet of retail and community space.
In a statement issued by Dan Herbst, an attorney with Reed Smith representing Loop, the company said, “Although Loop had discussions with the city, Thalhimer and Republic about participating in the Diamond District development project, Loop never signed onto the project and currently is not involved in any capacity. … Loop engaged in discussions with Thalhimer and the city through April/May 2024 regarding participation in the real estate development project but did not sign onto the development agreement in May 2024.”
In a statement, Thalhimer said, “We can confirm that Loop is not affiliated with Diamond District Partners LLC. While Loop chose not to proceed, we continue to maintain a great relationship with them. The development program is in line with projects our team has completed over the last several years, and we’re excited to build a new, successful Diamond District community with the Squirrels, VCU and the city as our partners.”
Diamond District Partners includes Capstone Development, Pennrose, Maryland-based NixDev and M Cos., “as well as a deep bench of design and construction experts,” according to the Thalhimer statement.
Loop, Thalhimer, Diamond District Partners and four people have been named in a $40 million lawsuit from a former Diamond District development partner.
In May, the city of Richmond, Richmond Economic Development Partners and Diamond District Partners signed a development agreement.
In May 2023, Richmond City Council originally approved a development agreement with RVA Diamond Partners LLC, a joint venture that including Connecticut-based developer Republic Projects, Thalhimer Realty Partners, Loop Capital Holdings and San Diego venue developer JMI Sports. However, Republic Projects filed a lawsuit in July claiming that Thalhimer Realty Partners and Loop Capital cut Republic out of the development deal sometime between June and December 2023.
“Loop never signed onto any partnership agreement that is the subject of Republic’s lawsuit,” Loop said in a statement. “Loop maintains that it is incorrectly named in Republic’s lawsuit and has requested that Republic voluntarily dismiss Loop to avoid the need for further litigation. Republic has not agreed to dismiss Loop to date and, if necessary, Loop intends to file a demurrer to the complaint.”
According to the development agreement between the city, the EDA and Diamond District Partners, the development team must fund the first phase’s development, which now will be without Loop Capital’s involvement.
The three-part first phase of the project, according to the development agreement between the city, the EDA and Diamond District Partners, is 22.5 acres. The minimum capital investment for the total phase 1 is $567.45 million. Thalhimer has not said how much it has raised so far.
Under the agreement, the developer will buy the first section of the phase 1 property from the EDA. The purchase price for the phase 1A properties, which total 11.67 usable acres, is set at approximately $11.4 million. Diamond District Partners will also have “the exclusive option to purchase” the properties for phases 1B and 1C.
Under the development schedule, phase 1A is expected to be completed by 2032, and all of phase 1 is expected to be completed by 2034.
The Richmond Flying Squirrels is working with Texas-based development management consultant Machete Group for the stadium itself. In July, Rhode Island-based Gilbane Building announced it and Chesterfield County-based Prestige Construction Group had won a contract to build the stadium. Having a separate development team chosen by the Squirrels for the stadium was a change from the original development agreement.
In August, the Richmond EDA’s board approved a 30-year lease and a stadium development agreement between the EDA and the Flying Squirrels. The Squirrels will pay $3.2 million in annual rent for the next 10 years, after which the rates will decrease.
The fate of Norfolk’s closed Military Circle Mall has yet to be determined, but city officials are considering how the property could leverage sports tourism and offer retail and housing options.
The city bought the 54-year-old, long-declining mall building and the surrounding 73 acres in 2020 for $11 million. As Norfolk seeks to repurpose the building and property, the city has commissioned a $200,000 study from Washington-based consulting firm Gensler to determine if a mixed-use family sports complex with retail, lodging and residential components would be the best fit, says Sean Washington, Norfolk’s economic development director.
“We want to bring in outside money and these families, when they travel for their competitions, they spend money in restaurants and hotels,” Washington says.
The proposed development’s mixed-use portion, including housing, would provide an economic anchor, he says: “With the current housing shortage, we want to help people to get affordable home ownership. This study will determine if this is the direction we want to go in.”
The study is essentially a reboot for the city’s Military Circle plans, following a prolonged competitive bidding process that saw proposals submitted from three groups of developers, including a team led by music and fashion icon Pharrell Williams, who proposed a development to be known as Wellness Loop that would have included a 15,000-seat arena, 1,100 housing units, office space and a hotel. Despite negotiating with Williams’ team, the city never officially approved that proposal, and in February, the city Economic Development Authority issued a new request for proposals for redeveloping Military Circle Mall.
With Sentara Health occupying the mall’s former JCPenney store, the new development will have a health and wellness emphasis, Norfolk Mayor Kenneth Alexander says, and the sports complex will not just be for tourism, but also for the community. “Everyone keeps telling me to put in pickleball courts,” Washington says.
Another question is what type of housing is needed, Alexander says, adding that the city needs to determine if its schools can handle additional children or if the housing should be for seniors.
The study also will address whether the mall and surrounding outparcels can be repurposed instead of being demolished, as was originally planned.
“The question is how to use the box stores and readapt them,” Washington says. “Nothing is off the table.”
A Connecticut-based developer, Republic Projects, has filed a $40 million lawsuit against its former partners in Richmond’s $2.44 billion Diamond District project, a city-backed mixed-use development that includes a replacement for the 40-year-old Diamond baseball stadium.
Republic Projects, the plaintiff in the lawsuit filed July 19 in Richmond Circuit Court, claims that Richmond-based Thalhimer Realty Partners (a Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer subsidiary) and Chicago-based Loop Capital cut Republic out of the development deal sometime between June and December 2023 and created their own development partnership, Diamond District Partners, behind Republic’s back.
Richmond City Council originally selected RVA Diamond Partners LLC, a joint venture including Republic, Thalhimer Realty Partners, Loop Capital Holdings and San Diego venue developer JMI Sports, as the developer for the Diamond District project.
Republic Projects is suing Thalhimer, Loop Capital, the Richmond-based Diamond District Partners limited liability company and four individuals, including Thalhimer principal Jason Guillot, who is the Diamond District’s lead developer and often deals directly with the City of Richmond on the project. The other defendants are Loop Capital Chairman and CEO James Reynolds Jr., based in Chicago, and Loop advisers Susan Cronin and Gregory Peck, who are based in Sherman Oaks, California.
The lawsuit claims that although the city government initially chose the RVA Diamond Partners joint venture, the defendants later “formed a different partnership between themselves … [and] separately began negotiating with the city for a development agreement.”
Known as Diamond District Partners, the new development team reached an agreement with the city “in or about April 2024,” the complaint says. “The terms of that development agreement are very different, and far more favorable to defendants than the development agreement which was approved by the city council on April 24, 2022.”
The suit also claims that the Diamond District Partners includes “approximately 20 of the 33 members” of the earlier RVA Diamond Partners entity, including Thalhimer, Loop Capital, Pennrose, Capstone Development and multiple Virginia-based partners: KEi Architects, 510 Architects, Poole & Poole Architects, Whiting-Turner Contracting, Breeden Construction, Capital Results, J&G Workforce, Richmond artist Sir James Thornhill, and the Richmond Black Restaurant Experience.
Republic claims in the suit that it paid for the 2022 site plan proposal designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and that Diamond District Partners submitted a plan in 2024 that “copies heavily” from the earlier plan.
The plaintiff argues that all defendants owe Republic “a duty of loyalty. … A partnership continues until it has been dissolved, wound up and then terminated,” and accuses the defendants of improper competition and improper exclusion from the new partnership. “Republic is entitled to receive its share of the net profits realized under the Diamond District Partners’ development agreement with the city,” the lawsuit continues, and requests a judgment of $40 million in damages, the costs of the lawsuit and other relief deemed proper by the court.
Guillot did not respond immediately to a request for comment Wednesday, and according to his email’s auto-reply message is currently out of the office. The other defendants in the lawsuit also were not able to be reached for comment immediately.
The 67-acre, $2.44 billion Diamond District project’s first phase is expected to cost $627.6 million, and includes a 9,000-capacity, $90 million-plus baseball stadium and a hotel with at least 180 rooms from a high-end brand, such as Hilton or Westin. The project also will include more than 3,000 rental and for-sale residential units, 935,000 square feet of office space, 195,000 square feet of retail and community space, and another hotel.
In May, Richmond City Council approved a change in the financing of the development to keep the stadium on deadline, after lengthy delays following the March 2023 approval of the site plan.
Davenport & Co., the city’s financial adviser, recommended issuing $170 million worth of general obligation bonds to finance the Diamond District’s stadium and first-phase infrastructure work, rather than community development authority bonds, as planned.
That would put the city on the hook for paying off the bonds if projected revenue falls short, although the new structure would also have economic benefits, including a lower interest rate that is expected to reduce costs by $215 million over the next 30 years. Also, if the bonds were issued by July 1, the state would have chipped in $24 million through its sales tax incentive program, but Richmond missed that deadline.
Sometimes the best decision a builder can make is not to build.
That’s the conclusion Lucas Thornton, managing partner at Hist:Re Partners in Roanoke, recently reached, although his plans for an office building may happen in the future.
Thornton’s downtown mixed-use development, The Bower, was set to open by late June with 90 one- and two-bedroom apartments atop first-floor retail space at 17 Campbell Ave. SW, the site of the former Campbell Court bus terminal. But he’s put the second phase — an 82,600-square-foot office building on Salem Avenue Southwest — on hold. Instead, Thornton intends to construct a $500,000 park where the office building would have gone. It should be ready later this summer, he says.
“The reality is that COVID has cast a long shadow over the office market. Multitenant office buildings now are difficult” to market, Thornton says, but demand for residential and retail remains solid. About 30% of the apartments in his $25 million project are pre-leased. He also has retail tenants lined up for three out of four spaces, though Thornton says he’s not ready to make those plans public.
As in the rest of the state, the office space market in Roanoke remains uncertain. In its 2023 annual survey, Poe & Cronk Real Estate Group estimated downtown Roanoke’s office occupancy rate at 86%, down a couple points from 2022 and below an ideal rate of 90%.
Poe & Cronk President Matt Huff has seen Roanoke’s occupancy numbers as low as 80% and as high as 94%.
“I think [Thornton] looked at the economic landscape and correctly decided it’s probably not the time,” Huff says, but both are confident offices have a future.
“As corporate America sort of settles on its priorities,” Thornton says, “a site like ours we believe will be very attractive because more traditional formats and footprints might not work as well.”
Making room for The Bower required the demolition of the Campbell Court Transportation Center, which Valley Metro, the Roanoke Valley’s public transportation provider, had operated out of since 1987. Third Street Station, an open-air bus station, opened in June 2023 and serves as Valley Metro’s central transfer hub.
Thornton hopes The Bower’s park will give Roanokers and visitors another place to spend time. “I can imagine everything from an ice rink in the winter … to concerts in the summer.”
Richmond City Council this spring pitched a bit of a curveball on financing of the city’s new baseball stadium.
On May 8, councilors approved a plan that they say would save the city money and get the replacement stadium — part of the proposed Diamond District — completed in time to meet the Richmond Flying Squirrels’ 2026 season deadline.
Davenport & Co., the city’s financial adviser, recommended issuing $170 million worth of general obligation bonds to finance the Diamond District’s stadium and first-phase infrastructure work, rather than community development authority bonds, as planned.
That would put the city on the hook for paying off the bonds if projected revenue falls short, although the new structure would also have economic benefits, including a lower interest rate that is expected to reduce costs by $215 million over the next 30 years. Also, if the bonds were issued by July 1, the state would have chipped in $24 million through its sales tax incentive program, but Richmond missed that deadline.
“When cities take on the role of developer, they are assuming risk for taxpayers,” Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, says. “In this case, there are compelling reasons for the change in financing that recognizes market conditions and a particular state tax incentive.”
However, attorney and activist Paul Goldman filed a lawsuit in May, challenging the city’s plan to issue the bonds without a November ballot referendum.
“It’s the public’s money; it’s not the politicians’ money,” and residents should get a vote, Goldman argues, but his lawsuit was tossed out in June by Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant. The only way to force a referendum without a court order was to have roughly 11,000 Richmond voters’ signatures within 30 days of the city’s notice of the ordinance’s adoption, published May 12.
That’s a “task worthy of Hercules,” Goldman says. “It can’t be done unless you’re going to spend a fortune.” On June 28, Goldman said he wouldn’t appeal the court’s decision.
However, for Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, the Squirrels’ new stadium is on deck.
“We are full speed ahead on delivering a world-class baseball stadium and an exciting new neighborhood for ALL to enjoy,” Stoney said June 10 in a statement. “The Flying Squirrels are here to stay in Richmond!”
After three decades recruiting businesses to Norfolk, Portsmouth and Hampton, Charles E. “Chuck” Rigney is tackling a new challenge: leading Virginia Beach’s economic development.
Rigney was named the Resort City’s permanent economic development director in February. It was one year after he joined the department as a business development administrator and eight months after he became interim director following the departure of the department’s former head, Taylor Adams, for a job in Nevada.
“The opportunity to work with the largest city in Virginia was greatly appealing,” Rigney says. “The future is extremely bright because of all the assets we have here.”
Virginia Beach is awash in major developments. Amazon.com is investing $350 million in the city on a robotics fulfillment center set to open in 2025 and a delivery station slated to start operations for this year’s holiday season. Last year, Zim Integrated Shipping Services said it would invest $30 million to relocate and expand its U.S. headquarters from Norfolk to Virginia Beach, while in November 2023 cloud-based document management company Doma Technologies announced a $4 million expansion that will add more than 300 employees. Also on the horizon: Dominion Energy’s $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, additional digital transatlantic subsea cable landings, new Oceanfront hotels and the long-awaited Atlantic Park surf park development from the city’s most famous native son, the music star and fashion icon Pharrell Williams.
It’s a full agenda, but one that Rigney, a 1979 Old Dominion University graduate who worked in banking and commercial real estate before entering economic development, relishes, especially as the city’s name and reputation grow. “The beach is pretty well known,” he says. “When I [travel] and get in a cab and say I’m from Virginia Beach, they know where I’m talking about. My job is to get it even better known.”
Rigney’s experience and demeanor make him the ideal choice to direct Virginia Beach’s economic development operations, says Doug Smith, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Alliance, the region’s economic development partnership. “He is a good listener, good team builder and understands the importance of getting input from the largest of stakeholders. Nowhere is that more important than Virginia Beach — the largest city in the region.”
Surf park’s up
While other cities where Rigney has worked are more urban and have had more experience with revitalization, Virginia Beach is just now beginning to look at redevelopment strategies. Open parcels of land are becoming fewer and fewer, Rigney notes: “We have to look at strategic growth areas where things can be done differently and transition older properties into new developments.”
That includes aging Oceanfront hotels. Developers are lining up to invest millions of dollars into redevelopment initiatives and asking the city to chip in for necessities like water and sewer and infrastructure improvements. Rigney wants to capitalize on that interest. He notes that 14 million visitors spent a record $2 billion-plus in Virginia Beach last year. “That’s a reflection of successful initiatives of the past,” he says, “but as properties age, more hotels are coming in, and more hotel rooms are needed.”
One prominent proposal comes from former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and Divaris Real Estate Chairman and CEO Gerald Divaris, who are proposing to build a 450-room hotel and parking garage on property the city owns on 17th Street. The city bought the parcel, which includes a public park and a Dairy Queen, for $12.8 million in 2022. McDonnell and Divaris’ plan would keep the park intact.
“That’s one of many proposals,” Rigney says, adding that talks to revamp the site are still in the early stages. “Any deal would have to go through numerous community meetings and refinement. It’s great to have serious guys like Gerald Divaris and Bob McDonnell interested, as well as other folks in our backyard. We’ll work with everybody to see how to take the city to the next level.”
Meanwhile, construction continues on the first phase of Atlantic Park, a $325 million mixed-use project being developed by Williams and Venture Realty Group. First announced more than six years ago, the surf park and music venue is set to open in spring 2025. Anchored by a nearly 3-acre surf lagoon, the project includes a 3,500-seat entertainment venue, retail space, offices and 309 residences on the former Dome music venue site between 18th and 20th streets. The second phase, still in development, will include additional apartments, parking, office and retail space and a boardwalk connecting the site to the Virginia Beach Boardwalk and 17th Street Park. “Atlantic Park is huge for us,” Rigney says. “It has spurred interest in the surrounding area and led to new growth.”
Williams, who last year became men’s creative director for luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton, has been an avid promoter of his hometown, and is in the process of filming a big-budget musical film this summer in Virginia, based on his childhood growing up in Virginia Beach’s Atlantis Apartments. His Something in the Water music festival debuted at the Oceanfront in 2019 and returned in 2023, generating $50 million to $60 million in economic impact for the city over both years.
“He’s done an amazing thing for his hometown,” Rigney says, adding that Something in the Water and Atlantic Park have attracted many developers to Virginia Beach, giving his department the chance to show off the city. “If developers come to see us one time, we always make a short list of anything they need.”
Rigney is also excited about another park, this one at Rudee Loop on the resort area’s southernmost end. The roughly 8-acre site has been used for parking and as a staging area for large Oceanfront events, but last fall the City Council voted to transfer $4 million from the city’s tourism fund to create a public recreation area. “That will be a real showcase and ultimately will be a real selling point for the beach,” Rigney says. “It was exciting once the concept got in front of council to think about reserving an area for tourists and residents alike to enjoy an open space. You don’t need to always put buildings on things to make a thriving economic attractor.”
Conventional development
Redevelopment is also on the drawing board for the area around the Virginia Beach Convention Center. Earlier this year, the city approved a $75,000 study examining the impacts of a mixed-use sports and convention district around the convention center. It will also examine potential uses for the Parks Avenue home of the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, which plans to move to a new site on Virginia Wesleyan University’s Virginia Beach campus in 2025.
Over the years, Virginia Beach City Council has prioritized the development of a convention center hotel, asserting that such a facility would position Virginia Beach to better compete for regional and national events. Maryland-based Capstone Development has proposed building a 300-room convention hotel adjacent to the convention center. Capstone’s project also would include more than 900 apartments and approximately 160,000 square feet of retail, creating an estimated 800 jobs.
Rigney is confident that a hotel eventually will be built on the site. “All of us understand that having a convention center hotel is long overdue and gives our convention center that much more of a draw,” he says. “One way or another we’re going to get a hotel.”
However, he adds, large-scale projects must complement current developments. “It all has to fit. We don’t want anything that will pull away from Atlantic Park and the ViBe [Creative] District.”
Looking to the city’s Central Business District, Rigney is eyeing the expansion of Virginia Beach Town Center. The 20-year-old mixed-use development, which includes corporate office towers, restaurants, shops and hotels, has thrived through economic downturns and the COVID pandemic. Offices there are completely leased, and, Rigney says, Town Center is ripe for growth. “If we don’t double the size of Town Center in the next 20 years, we probably will not have done as much as I would like to.”
Offshore wind, subsea cables
While tourism, defense and maritime/logistics form the pillars of Virginia Beach’s economy, Rigney is eager to add more legs in the form of offshore wind and subsea internet cables.
The city is working to attract manufacturers to Virginia Beach to support installation and maintenance of the 176 massive wind turbines Dominion Energy is installing for its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project 27 miles off the Virginia Beach coast. “Almost everybody in wind energy knows Virginia Beach,” Rigney says. “We want to be able to hear them out and determine if our location is a fit for them.”
Next April, about 2,300 leading industry experts will descend upon Virginia Beach for the International Partnering Forum, the largest offshore wind energy conference in the Americas. Hosting the conference is a coup for Virginia Beach, Rigney says. “That puts us in league with cities like New Orleans, where IPF has been held.”
Meanwhile, the city’s status as one of the few East Coast landing spots for subsea internet transmission cables is starting to reap dividends. Globalinx opened a data center and cable landing station in 2019 and 2020 in the city’s Corporate Landing Business Park. The data center provides colocation space for high-speed subsea telecommunication cables MAREA, BRUSA and DUNANT, which connect Virginia with points in Europe and South America. In May, FiberLight, a fiber infrastructure provider, announced plans to establish high-speed ethernet service from the Globalinx data center.
A joint project from Venture Realty Group and Pharrell Williams, the $325 million Atlantic Park surf park and music venue is slated to open in spring 2025. Rendering courtesy Hanbury
“Quite a few businesses are seriously considering Virginia Beach largely because of our location along the Middle Atlantic coast,” Rigney says. “We work closely with prospects in the data center business to see what their needs are and where we can put them. If we can get high-speed volume data companies to get a few milliseconds faster to market by being closer to the cables coming into Virginia Beach, it’s a big opportunity for us.”
Economic development efforts, however, are careful to align with the U.S. Navy’s footprint in Virginia Beach, especially Naval Air Station Oceana, the East Coast base for the Navy’s strike fighter jet squadrons.
“Because we want to ensure Oceana is here forever, we partner with the Navy to ensure there is no encroachment to make flight operations difficult,” Rigney says, noting that over the years, the city has purchased properties around the base, zoning them for compatible uses such as data centers and subsea cables. “That helps to monetize restrictive areas.”
Rigney also supports regional development efforts throughout Hampton Roads. As Virginia Beach’s interim economic development director, he convinced City Council to join the Eastern Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority (EVRIFA), a mechanism for pooling resources across multiple localities into site development opportunities that benefit the entire region. It wasn’t
a hard sell, he says.
“The city leadership recognizes we can partner with other cities in ways we have never done before,” Rigney says. “If there’s an opportunity to invest in a project that attracts a car manufacturer to Chesapeake, for instance, and we get a return from it, that’s a direct economic benefit on our investment.”
A longtime advocate for regional cooperation, Rigney is pleased to see increased collaboration among Hampton Roads municipalities. “We have a bunch of folks at the beach and in other communities who truly like each other. That cooperation will help raise the profile of the region.”
And he intends to be part of those cooperative efforts for quite a while. Discussing his plans to beef up the city’s economic development team with new business development managers, Rigney says he has no plans to retire any time soon.
“When I leave one of these years, I want to have a multitude of talent on board to take my place,” he says, “but I have no desire to quit. I love what I do and am passionate about doing it well.”
Virginia Beach at a glance
Virginia Beach Town Center
Virginia’s most populous city and the 43rd largest in the United States, Virginia Beach encompasses 310 square miles, with 38 miles of beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay. A major East Coast tourism destination, Virginia Beach features a vibrant resort area on its Oceanfront. Along with tourism, major industries include defense, bio and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, maritime and logistics, IT and offshore wind energy. It’s also home to Naval Air Station Oceana, the East Coast base for the Navy’s strike fighter jet squadrons. Regent University and Virginia Wesleyan University are based in Virginia Beach, along with campuses for Tidewater Community College, Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University.
Population
460,000
Top employers
Naval Air Station Oceana-Dam Neck Annex (10,227)
Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story (5,020)
Sentara Health (4,900)
GEICO (3,600)
Stihl Inc. (3,300)
Major attractions
Virginia Beach’s 3-mile Boardwalk in the city’s Oceanfront area attracts tourists from around the world. Virginia Beach Town Center is a centrally located, major mixed-use development with hotels, restaurants, shopping and offices. Visitors also enjoy the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, which features live animal habitats and the six-story 3D National Geographic Theater. Other attractions include First Landing State Park, Cape Henry Lighthouse and the Military Aviation Museum.
Major convention hotels
The Founders Inn and Spa 40,000 square feet of meeting space,
240 rooms
The Cavalier Resort* 70,875 square feet of meeting space,
547 rooms
Holiday Inn Virginia Beach – Norfolk 22,000 square feet of meeting space,
317 rooms
Wyndham Virginia Beach/Oceanfront 16,247 square feet of meeting space,
244 rooms
The Westin Virginia Beach Town Center 11,266 square feet of event space,
236 rooms
The first wave of commercial tenants is coming to The Lake, a long-planned, 105-acre mixed-use development that’s slated to bring a surf park to western Chesterfield County.
The Lake’s centerpiece will be a 13-acre artificial lake with a tow cable. It’s expected to be ready by summer 2025 for wakeboarding, kayaking, standup paddle boarding and other activities. It’ll be followed by an adjoining 6-acre surf park, one of a handful of such facilities nationwide that can generate waves large enough to surf.
“The anchor for our overall development is entertainment,” says project developer Brett Burkhart, founder of Lake Adventures and Flatwater Ventures. “We wanted to have restaurants and an amphitheater, and around that have some cool activities like surfing and wakeboarding on the lake.”
Burkhart lined up $323 million in financing for the development. Construction began in 2022 and is expected to take around five years to complete. Construction costs have increased, he says, though he declines to give a revised estimate.
In January, construction began on three buildings at The Lake’s entrance off Genito Road near State Route 288. A Chipotle and a Starbucks with a drive-thru will be the first tenants. The development’s initial phase also includes three retail and restaurant buildings by the lake. A Kilwins candy and ice cream shop has leased space in one.
Work should be completed by this fall, Burkhart says.
The Lake is also slated to include 150,000 square feet of retail and entertainment space, 100,000 square feet of office space, a 170-room hotel, an amphitheater, 830 apartments and 360 townhomes.
Chesterfield’s primary interest in the project is its commercial component, which is expected to help retain visitors to the county’s nearby River City Sportsplex who might otherwise head to Richmond for hotels, restaurants and shopping, says H. Garrett Hart III, the county’s economic development director. He also hopes The Lake will attract talent for businesses to Chesterfield.
Supervisors approved an agreement in 2022 to provide Lake Adventures with local tax rebates of up to 80% over the next 20 years for the development’s mixed-use and commercial portions. The funds will help defray the cost of building a parking deck instead of surface parking, leaving more space for commercial offerings.
“That’s the benefit of tourism, keeping those dollars in Chesterfield to be able to put back into our own infrastructure,” says J.C. Poma, Chesterfield’s executive director of sports, visitation and entertainment.
After months of heated debate, Roanoke City Council greenlit a development plan for Evans Spring, the largest piece of undeveloped land in the city. The plan, approved March 4 by a 4-3 vote, opens the door for potential economic development of 75 acres of the roughly 151-acre tract, city officials say.
The recommended development scenario produced for the city by Land Planning & Design Associates of Charlottesville would include more than 570,000 square feet of retail space and at least 600 residences.
The plan places an emphasis on neighborhood integration, according to Chris Chittum, Roanoke’s executive director of community development and placemaking. “We want it to be something that does benefit the neighborhood and has a good relationship to it, but also provides things that the neighborhood needs,” he says.
The city’s economic development director, Marc Nelson, says there’s a misconception that adopting the plan is the final word on the property’s development. “There will be further steps once a developer is chosen,” he says.
For one thing, most of the acreage is currently zoned for single-family residential and residential-agricultural. A developer would still need to go through rezoning.
The future of the land — a collection of privately owned parcels owned by separate parties — has been a point of contention in the city for more than a decade. Critics of developing Evans Spring also galvanized prior to the plan being approved.
“Some really wanted no development at all, just leave it alone, and some of that was based on the lack of trust, which … historically goes all the way back to urban renewal,” says Roanoke resident Virginia Sweet, a member of community group Friends of Evans Spring, which is lobbying for the land to be preserved as green space.
The community surrounding the development includes predominantly Black neighborhoods. Some are descendants of Black Roanokers whose property was seized by eminent domain beginning in the 1950s to make room for Interstate 581 and the Roanoke Civic Center.
Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea Sr., who voted for the plan, stresses the need for ongoing dialogue and collaboration as the project progresses. “We’re going to continue to keep our contact with the community,” Lea says, “and make sure everybody understands there’ll be more community engagement, more community meetings.”
Associate Editor Beth JoJack contributed to this story.
Construction has started on a new master-planned community in Chesterfield County’s Midlothian area that will bring hundreds of single-family homes, town houses, apartments and commercial space.
Glen Allen-based developer HHHunt and real estate investment firm GrayCo are developing The Aire at Westchester. The 334-acre tract is at Route 288 and Midlothian Turnpike on the western edge of the Westchester Commons shopping district.
GrayCo is the landowner and HHHunt is the managing partner for the master-planned community, which has been in the works for years. Construction is underway on the first phase of the project, which will include 196 condos and 204 town houses, said Jonathan Ridout, vice president of real estate development and general manager of HHHunt Communities. The commercial areas are in the preliminary design phase, and HHHunt is working on deals with commercial retailers.
Site development could take 12 to 18 months and vertical construction would start in about 18 months. The town houses and condos could be ready in about two years, Ridout says. The commercial space could come online independently, he said, with around 180,000 square feet of commercial space, including office space and restaurants. There is a lot of flexibility in the zoning, he said, to adapt plans to market conditions.
A greenway will bisect the different parcels of land, and the development will include parks and trails.
In total, the development is expected to have about 2,200 residences, including 330 single-family homes on the back portion of the property, but the timing on that piece of the project is flexible, Ridout said.
“We want to create something that resembles a lifestyle center,” he said.
The zoning also allows a hotel, and there’s a possibility for 50,000 to 60,000 square feet of office space.
“Midlothian is one of the most desirable parts of Chesterfield County,” Ridout said. “This becomes a real hub where you can have higher density, different uses, people — it can be an attractive project.”
The project has been in planning for years, with GrayCo hiring David Smith of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer to identify a development partner. Smith started working with GrayCo in October 2017, HHHunt came on in about 2020, and the land was rezoned in 2021.
Plans for a $550 million mixed-use development in Pittsylvania County’s Axton area include a five-story, 150-room hotel and a 180,000-square-foot shopping center anchored by a grocery store, but it’s the project’s housing component that most interests the county’s economic development director, Matthew Rowe.
“First and foremost,” he says, “it is addressing a major need … for all types of housing in our area.”
Rowe anticipates that the entire Southern Virginia region will see an influx of workers as the Caesars Virginia resort casino makes additional hires before the casino’s planned opening late this year. Meanwhile, Pittsylvania’s Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill is in contention for a lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility that could create another 1,500 jobs.
Plans for the 580-acre development, which does not yet have a name, call for about 1,800 housing units — roughly 1,500 townhouses and single-family homes and 300 apartments — plus two senior living facilities. One will be an independent care campus with 100 units and the other will be an assisted living memory care facility.
The project is being developed by Southside Investing, a limited liability company created for the project with Tony Salah, Todd Curtis, Dale Harris and Tom Gallagher as principals. Three of the four partners have ties to the region. Salah’s family has been in the Pittsylvania County area since the 1760s, and Curtis and Harris, who are also from the area, originally bought 342 acres of the Axton project in April 2022 for hunting and fishing, Salah says. Later, the team bought the remaining 237 acres. The partners became interested after learning about the 4,300 direct jobs and $1.25 billion in economic development investment the Danville region has attracted since 2018.
“We had some jaws-open moments where we’re learning about what is already in Danville and the region and what is potentially coming,” Salah says.
Says Rowe: “We made them disciples and believers.”
Southside Investing gained the necessary rezoning approvals for the project in August 2023 and is conducting pre-construction engineering. Construction could begin in the next 12 months, Salah says.
Developers say the order and speed of delivering the project’s components will depend on the market, but anticipate that the apartments will come first, followed by the rest in phases that could take 10 years to complete.
Associate Editor Robyn Sidersky contributed to this story.
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