A New Beginning
As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 2019, Tarin Jones reimagined Monument Avenue for a class assignment. Now he works as programs and exhibitions manager at the Branch Museum of Architecture and Design, which sits along the historic thoroughfare, and regards Monument Avenue from a more knowledgeable perspective.
“I look back on that project and would change so many things,” Jones says.
The Newport News native graduated from UVA in May 2020 and found work that fall with a Charlottesville architecture firm. He soon realized that pure building design wasn’t the path he wanted, so he considered his options.
“I wanted something new outside of Charlottesville, and I loved Newport News but didn’t want to go back home,” he says. “I wasn’t really ready to move outside the state, and I knew [Richmond] was a vibrant city.”
It was Jones’ mother who found the Richmond job listing. “Moms know the things you like,” he says. He started at The Branch in March 2021, working remotely and commuting occasionally from Charlottesville until last June, when he moved here. “I wanted to enjoy Richmond in the summer — to be outside and see the city in all its glory,” he says, noting that RVA Bike Share has been key in his exploring.
Jones has college and high school friends here, as well as an older sister, but he’s made an effort to meet new people through social media, including RVA Meetup events and outdoor group exercise. He’s also getting to know the city through art and history walking tours, especially Gary Flowers’ “Walking the Ward” tours through Historic Jackson Ward. “I walk everywhere,” Jones says.
Now living in Oregon Hill — Monument Avenue was too pricey for his budget, he says — Jones acknowledges that it’s too soon to tell if Richmond will be his forever home, but he says this is the right place to be for now. “I feel comfortable here,” he says. “I really enjoy being a part of the city Richmond is becoming. To see [the Robert E.] Lee [statue] come down, that really put things in perspective. I’m new here, and I have the privilege of seeing this change.”
Eric Bachta and Kate Ashby (Photo by Eric Foster)
Suburban Bliss
In 2013, before Kate Ashby and Michael Bachta were married, Ashby purchased a house in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee.
“It was up-and-coming, very transitional, close to downtown,” she says.
When the pair married in May 2016, Michael moved in. They had a son in 2017 and a daughter in 2020. As their family grew, so did the neighborhood … but not in the way they had hoped.
“Development took a different direction than we originally thought,” Ashby says. “Instead of single-family homes, there were tall skinnys with shared walls, and condos and apartment buildings.”
“It was a fun neighborhood,” Bachta notes, “but filled with renters.”
In late 2020, the couple considered their options. As elsewhere, the Nashville housing market was hot — “people were overbidding everywhere, with no appraisals, no inspections, all-cash offers,” Bachta says — so they agreed to cast a wider net.
Ashby, who grew up in Culpeper and graduated from the College of William & Mary, suggested Richmond. She had friends here, and Bachta had visited a few times for work; both were now working remotely. In early 2021, they came to explore. “We didn’t know what area we wanted, but we knew we wanted good public schools,” Ashby says. “And a good family environment,” Bachta adds.
The couple found their home in Henrico County, just steps from a close college friend of Ashby’s who asked on her neighborhood’s Facebook page if anyone was considering selling. “We are living on a safe street where our kids can play in the cul de sac, with a private backyard that backs up to woods, and families all around,” Ashby says.
Bachta, who grew up outside Chicago, has lived in Philadelphia and New York City in addition to Nashville. “[Richmond is] the smallest place I have ever lived by far,” he says, adding that he’s doing fine without the hustle and bustle of city life. “I love how easy it is,” he says. “I haven’t gone into the city or wanted to go in the city as much as I thought I would have. We have plenty of things to do here.”
“We always took family walks,” Ashby adds, “but it wasn’t pleasant [in our old neighborhood] when surrounded by construction. There’s a freedom and ease here that’s been such a gift.”
Danielle Stokes (Photo courtesy Danielle Stokes)
Third Time’s the Charm
Danielle Stokes is seeing Richmond through new eyes.
A native of Martinsville — “known for our NASCAR track,” she jokes — Stokes first came to Richmond as an undergraduate at the University of Richmond. After leaving for law school at the University of Virginia, she returned to Richmond as an associate at the law firm McGuireWoods. She admits the city wasn't her first choice.
“I very much wanted a larger-city feel,” she says, noting that she had initially focused her job search in two cities where she had extended family: Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, North Carolina. “Then I met [a partner] at McGuire Woods and felt a connection with the firm.”
Stokes moved into the Miller & Rhoads Apartments on North Sixth Street and enjoyed walking to work when she wanted, eating at nearby restaurants and taking part in seasonal festivals. “It was a good way for me to experience the city in a different way,” she says.
After three years at McGuire Woods, Stokes decided to shift her career from practicing law to teaching it. That change took her to upstate New York, where she served as a faculty fellow at Syracuse University School of Law from fall 2019 until spring 2021. In August 2021, she joined the faculty at the UR School of Law, coming back to Richmond for a third time.
This return, she says, is intentional.
“I have such a greater appreciation of Richmond,” she says with a laugh. “I can live here comfortably, go to a different restaurant every day if I want to, and there’s no traffic. I can go to the grocery store or meet friends and don’t have to circle the block for 45 minutes looking for parking. The value of being able to do things easily makes life much more manageable. Life is naturally hard, so if it’s easy to live somewhere, it makes things more pleasant.”
Stokes acknowledges that her time in Syracuse was tarnished by the pandemic, which prevented her from engaging fully with that city, but she says Richmond is a better fit overall. “I’m a history nerd,” she says, noting that she’s been visiting the city’s museums. “I’ve appreciated living in Virginia my whole life because there is so much history here: good, bad or indifferent,” she says. “Richmond is a place that is forward-thinking; we’re not afraid to reckon with the challenging aspects of history.”
Emma Johnson (Photo by Ash Daniel)
A New Adventure
For Emma Johnson, the move to Richmond didn’t involve just her. It included her longtime partner and her two kids — and her ex-husband and his new wife — all of whom left New York City for something new.
For years, she says, she and her ex — with whom she shares custody of their two children — talked about relocating in tandem to an easier locale. “The topic had been on the table at various points, but this was the time when everything came together,” Johnson says. “Kids need both of their parents.”
Both Johnson and her former husband have new partners, so there were four adults — and their work — to consider. “Part of the stars aligning was that employment situations facilitated a move,” she says. As for landing in Richmond? Johnson points to a passing familiarity with the city for her, as well as some family connections through her children’s stepmother.
“I was just sort of game for an adventure,” Johnson says. “I was leaving a giant metropolis, so I wanted a real change.”
After living for a few months in the Museum District, Johnson and her family settled near Mary Munford Elementary School in the Near West End and have quickly come to appreciate the larger living space that allows her 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son their own bedrooms, which wasn’t an option in New York, along with a new pace of life.
“[The kids] are in a lot of really cool activities — my son is in [Boy] Scouts, and my daughter has an internship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts — and it’s so much easier to do that stuff here,” Johnson says. “In New York, you can do anything, but it’s so much harder.”
Johnson and her children are also enjoying the ease with which they can navigate their surroundings. “There’s definitely more of a car culture here, but my kids walk or bike to school, and I ride my bike to the [Weinstein] JCC and try to run my errands that way,” she says, adding that she also rides to her workplace on Monument Avenue.
“Riding my bike to my office is my favorite part of the day,” she says.
Roberto Baibich and Leigh Crandall (Photo by Jay Paul)
Porch Life
Leigh Crandall sees similarities between Brooklyn, New York, and the Fan, where she and her family moved in September 2021, but says her new neighborhood has one big advantage: front porches.
“In Brooklyn, there are stoops and steps; you don’t have the public-facing street thing,” she says. “Here, you can sit on the porch swing and just watch the neighborhood go by. In a pandemic, it’s a great way to meet people.”
Crandall’s husband, Roberto Baibich, grew up in Brazil and lived in Montreal before moving to Brooklyn. She grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and went to college in Los Angeles. The pair met in Brooklyn and had their son, Marcelo. About five years ago, the family visited Crandall’s cousin, who lives in Church Hill, and Crandall remembers thinking she’d consider living in Richmond. But both she and her husband were tethered to jobs in New York City.
Over time, that hold loosened. The couple began freelancing — she as a writer and he in advertising — and they moved to Europe, living both in Berlin and Amsterdam. When the pandemic began, they returned to the U.S., landing in northwest Arkansas, where Crandall still has family. From there, they pondered where to settle.
They considered Austin, Texas, but were put off by its growth. They could stay in the Fayetteville-Bentonville area, but the region didn’t have everything they wanted. After talking with Crandall’s cousin — and hearing from former Brooklynite friends who had relocated to Richmond — they came back for another look. And they were sold.
“One of the draws of Virginia was all of the things you can drive to,” Crandall says. “You can jump in the car and be hiking, at the beach or on the river in a relatively short amount of time.”
The family enjoys the walkability of the Fan, which is important to them. They also appreciate the diversity of age and experience all around them.
“There’s a variety of ages in the neighborhood,” Crandall says. “[Near us], we have retirees, a young family with an infant, a family with teens. It feels like a neighborhood that’s working for people in different phases of life.”
The Lee family in Carytown (Photo by Jay Paul)
A Warm Welcome
Serial movers, the Lee family feels at home in Richmond | By Laura Anders Lee
My husband’s health care career has taken us all over the South, to seven cities and five states. The older we get, the heavier the moving boxes become. In early 2021, we moved our two sons 1,100 miles from southern Louisiana to Richmond — in the dead of winter, during a peak of the pandemic, and at the height of a real estate boom. Not the best timing.
But one year later, we’ve experienced new places and met wonderful people. And after offering our first-born child, we finally found a house in this crazy market.
In each new town we make a bucket list — things we want to do in our first year. That first cold weekend in Richmond, we jotted down our list and stuck it to the refrigerator: exploring Belle Isle, visiting Hollywood Cemetery, seeing the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, shopping in Carytown, riding Amtrak. Throughout the year our list, as well as our appetites, grew as we discovered Richmond’s restaurants and watering holes: Hardywood, Bingo, Sub Rosa, Lehja, Yellow Umbrella, ZZQ, Gelati Celesti. If we felt bored, lonely or cramped in our tiny rental, we made a date with the city. We’ve found something to love in every season: sledding at Byrd Park, admiring the tulips at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and tubing down the James River. A Gulf Coast native, I experienced brilliant fall colors for the first time — then all the leaf blowing that comes after.
When we moved here, we were struck by the number of “Be Kind” signs. And people here walk the walk. Parents in my boys’ classes, which started out virtually, invited us to the playground so the kids could meet face to face. When my son rode his bike to Walgreens to buy Pokemon cards, he was 36 cents short, so the cashier paid the difference. When my other son had a meltdown in public, a stranger stepped in to help without judgment. When we walked into our neighborhood pool on opening day and didn’t know a soul, another family saw the look on our faces and made room for us at their table. Even our goldendoodle has found friends. Each morning we join neighbors, young and old, for play dates at the park.
In the past year, we’ve discovered that, just like the signs in shop windows and front yards, Richmond really is kind. The city is redefining the South without taking away what we love about being Southern: the hospitality, good food, a sense of style and, especially, the warm people.
Patrice J. Williams (Photo by Eric Foster)
Time and Money for Fun
A move from Brooklyn to Richmond pays many dividends | By Patrice J. Williams
“Really? Why?”
That tends to be the first response I receive from people when I tell them I moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Richmond in 2020, right before the pandemic began. I honestly just get a chuckle out of it because I practically ran out of New York City. But to answer the question, I moved because I was exhausted. After a decade in the city, I was tired of everything (rent, giant rats, delayed trains), and I needed something new.
No one had to sell me on Richmond. The city pretty much did all the talking, hitting the markers I needed to keep a lifelong East Coast girl like myself happy. While I hear and understand folks who are concerned about the increasing cost of housing, for me, Richmond has provided a level of financial freedom I just couldn’t achieve in the city so expensive they named it twice. I was also clear that I wanted to reside in a diverse city, and with a Black population of more than 40%, Richmond easily met that requirement.
While a lot of creatives like myself move to a city like New York, without the help of a trust fund, it’s hard to live there and truly be able to afford a lifestyle that doesn’t consist of having at least one roommate or taking the train at sketchy hours because a $30 Uber ride just isn’t in your budget.
Richmond has given me the freedom to live comfortably, hit financial goals and have an extensive “fun fund.” That leisure-activity account is easily spent at the tons of small businesses on every corner, from coffee shops like Urban Hang Suite and Sefton Coffee Co. that put the major corporations to shame, to some of the best bath products to ever touch my skin, to weekends that are filled with festivals, markets and pop-up shops at 17th Street Market and Blue Bee Cider. Also, Richmond’s neighborhoods have such different vibes to them that I’ve never really felt bored or like there’s nothing new to explore when I want to venture beyond my Church Hill home.
As a travel writer, I didn't know what to expect when I was invited to Richmond in late 2018 by Richmond Region Tourism. I did the usual press-trip activities such as meeting with a few locals and going to restaurants, but I could never have imagined that, less than two years later, this city would be my home, and some of those same restaurants would become my go-to takeout spots.
I’ve visited some pretty solid restaurants in almost every major U.S. city, but I still find myself surprised at how much I enjoy the food scene here. The craft beer culture is cool, but the variety of dining options feels like a yummy little secret.
With just two years under my belt, I still have a lot to learn and see, but I can sincerely say that my happiness and quality of life changed immensely when I made that decision to pack three carry-on bags and give a new city a try.
