Central Va. Big Deal: Renaissance times

Henrico County’s near West End is seeing a renaissance.

For decades, the area bordering Richmond around the Willow Lawn neighborhood has been home to mostly defunct commercial projects and old homes. But a $450 million project announced in December 2023 to renovate an old Elevance Health (formerly Anthem) campus promises to bring a “transformation” to the area by way of more housing, retail, hospitality and office space, says Anthony Romanello, executive director of the Henrico Economic Development Authority.

The Henrico County Board of Supervisors greenlit Kinsale Center, a massive redevelopment project in the Willow Lawn area from insurance company Kinsale Capital Group and Richmond-based Marchetti Development. The mixed-use development is expected to bring nearly 700 residences, an eight-story “high-end” hotel with about 150 rooms, 32,300 square feet of retail and 345,000 square feet of new office space to the 29-acre area at the northeast intersection of West Broad Street and Staples Mill Road. 

“The Kinsale Center is part of the renaissance of the Willow Lawn/ Westwood area of Henrico, which is seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment with the redevelopment of [the] Willow Lawn, Libbie Mill, Westwood and Broad Street corridor,” Dan Schmitt, Henrico County supervisor for the Brookland District, said in a statement.

During the past few years, Libbie Mill, a newer retail and residential development in near western Henrico, has come to life, and the surrounding Willow Lawn and Westwood areas have also seen an uptick in multiuse development. 

“They can’t build enough housing units fast enough” in Libbie Mill, Romanello says. “I think we’re going to see exactly the same thing with what Kinsale is doing.”

The area at the intersection of Staples Mill and Broad is positioned on the Henrico County-Richmond border. 

“Our perception is the project will be the gateway to the county,” says Joe Marchetti Jr., co-founder of Marchetti Development. “We think the key advantage to it is its location, which is centrally located with great access to Interstate 64.”

Kinsale Capital will own the project, with Marchetti as developer, Baskervill as design architect and Kimley-Horn performing civil engineering. 

The Kinsale Center project will be completed in phases, with the first including construction of 261 apartments, followed by office, hotel and retail space, Marchetti says. Two office buildings are already on the site, and the older of the two will be completely renovated with a glass facade and new interior. Zoning regulations will allow Kinsale to construct up to 350,000 square feet of new office space that could come in the form of one to three buildings of various sizes, Marchetti says.

The second phase would include a residential building with 258 units at the intersection of Maywill and Thalbro streets. The residential buildings would be five to seven stories each. The retail space, intended for upscale boutiques, would be incorporated into the office, multifamily and hotel buildings.

Phase 3 would include two new six-story office buildings and a parking garage with nearly 1,400 spaces along Thalbro Street and at its intersection with Staples Mill. Phase 4 would include another new office building at the intersection of Staples Mill and West Broad and a mixed-use building for office, hospitality and retail with 173 units along Staples Mill. This phase would be five to seven years from now, so it’s “too early to predict exactly what the uses might be in this phase,” Marchetti says. 

The project “will really offer an exciting opportunity for business and residential right in the heart of the Richmond region,” Romanello says.

Construction started Jan. 9, Marchetti says. The priority will be getting Kinsale into the building first and then to start marketing other sites moving forward. The building that will include Kinsale’s new headquarters is about 254,000 square feet, and the insurance company will take about 215,000 square feet of it. Elevance will occupy the 35,000-square-foot basement. It should be ready by fall 2025, with the rest of the projects scheduled to reach completion starting in 2026.

“The full redevelopment, I’m sure it’s going to take several years,” Romanello says. “But [Marchetti Development is] locked and loaded” to start on the project.