Shamin Hotels buys Richmond Times-Dispatch building for $14.4M

Chester-based Shamin Hotels has bought the Richmond Times-Dispatch building in downtown Richmond for $14.462 million from a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary, Shamin President and CEO Neil Amin confirmed on Thursday.

Shamin Hotels will be moving its headquarters into the four-story, 172,110-square-foot building at 300 East Grace Street later this year, sharing space with the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other tenants. The building will retain the newspaper’s branding, Amin said.

The deal, which closed on Monday, includes an adjoining 699-space parking deck, but does not include the newspaper’s production facility in Hanover County.

“We’ve been looking for the past few years to find centralized office space,” Amin said. “We have hotels across the region and we needed a location that enabled our associates to come in and have meetings and collaborate. This proved to be a great option for us.”

Shamin’s 70 corporate headquarters employees will work on the building’s 40,000-square-foot third floor and the Times-Dispatch will operate on the fourth floor, which Shamin is currently renovating. Shamin plans to lease out the first and second floors to other tenants.

The family-owned Shamin Hotels owns 60 hotels and serves more than 2 million guests per year, making it the largest hotel owner and operator in Virginia. It owns, operates and develops hotels in six states, including Virginia, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland and New York.

“The whole goal is to have more training in a central location so we’re able to bring people in to our corporate office, train them and send them out into the field,” Amin said. “This provides the best location for that.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch property takes up an entire city block in downtown Richmond enveloped by East Franklin, East Grace, North Third and North Fourth streets.

At the time of the purchase, the building was assessed for $20.29 million.