After a half-century of being ignored and left for ruin, Hotel Petersburg has been resurrected as a boutique hotel. The nearly seven-year-long project required gutting the interior, redesigning basic functions and applying a meticulous eye to the smallest details, all while securing funds, getting permit approvals, and communicating and consulting with city officials. The hotel opened Dec. 5, but — as with any large production — only time will tell if the effort pays off.
The story of Hotel Petersburg is like the city itself. After decades of decline, of crumbling buildings and bad statistics, Petersburg is on the road to a comeback.
“We have some beautiful, educated, intellectual people here in Petersburg, and we’re not always displayed that way,” says James C. Davenport, who was peering over fruit stands on a crisp Saturday morning at River Street Market in the city’s historic downtown.
Davenport is nearly a native at this point. He served as president of the Historic Petersburg Foundation in 1986. He also served as the head of the physics department at Virginia State University for 30 years.
“I live up on High Street … in the historic district.
I came here to work at Virginia State University in the mid-’70s,” he says. “And when I came here, I liked what I saw. It was booming, and I don’t like the way people have depicted it [since then].”
‘A Bad Rap’
Twenty miles south of Richmond, the city of Petersburg is bordered by the Appomattox River and the junctions of interstates 85 and 95; both the Norfolk Southern and the CSX railroads run past as well. Virginia State University and Fort Gregg-Adams, formerly known as Fort Lee, are close by.
The city is rich in history. Originally occupied by the Appamattuck tribe, Petersburg was settled by English colonists in 1635 and incorporated in 1748. It was the site of the Battle of Petersburg during the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Men and Boys and the Siege of Petersburg during the Civil War, and the 1960 library sit-in led by groups of students during the Civil Rights Movement, among many other events, and it boasts numerous state and national historic districts.
More than 33,000 people call Petersburg home, with the majority identifying as Black or African American, according to the most recent United States Census. Income levels of the residents are lower than the rest of the commonwealth: While Virginia’s median income level is $89,931, Petersburg’s comes in at $46,930.
The city has a higher crime rate than the rest of Virginia, according to statistics from the FBI, although that has improved over the past five years. Petersburg was recently ranked as one the least healthy cities in the state and nation, according to the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. It’s also a food desert, meaning there’s no major grocery store — another stat that’s about to change.
But those figures are just one side of the story of Petersburg.
“Petersburg gets a bad rap. People think or hear it’s synonymous with crime or whatever,” developer Dave McCormack says. “Every city has these issues. But in my experience, none of that is true. It’s a beautiful, amazing place to be. I haven’t had an issue down here literally in the 25 years I’ve been here. Nothing.”
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(From left) Dr. Nathaniel Cuthbert, owner of Hotel Petersburg, and Paul Cooper, CEO of Retro Hotels, which manages the property (Photo by Ash Daniel)
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The new lobby dresses historic architecture in modern design. (Photo by Laura Visioni courtesy The Hodges Partnership)
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The hotel originally opened on West Tabb Street in 1916. (Photo courtesy Hotel Petersburg)
An Architectural Gem
Petersburg is rife with eye-catching architecture, which is what prompted the artist David LeRoy Ross to move south from Richmond. “I think the architecture here in Petersburg is just to die for. It’s so quaint and some of it’s so old,” he says. LeRoy Ross moved into an area that was once dotted with industrial warehouses but is now home to lofts, coffeehouses and a brewery.
LeRoy Ross says affordability and accessibility — such as a space where he can both live and do his metal artwork — led him to make the move. “I was looking all around in Richmond, and I just couldn’t find what I wanted because I wanted something where I could habitate as well,” he says.
Architecture also inspired Dr. Nathaniel Cuthbert to buy Hotel Petersburg. “There’s this fabulous wealth of architecture spanning centuries. And if you take the time to look at it, I think you’ll find a lot that is appealing. It has a real sense of presence,” Cuthbert says. “I always liked the building. It’s my favorite period of commercial building, the first quarter of the 20th century.”
First opened in 1904 as the 30-room Shirley Hotel in the city’s Courthouse District, which is recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, the building then morphed into a six-story, 125-room hotel. It had a grand reopening in 1916 and took the name Hotel Petersburg.
Over the decades, the hotel hosted dances and parties for Shriners and traveling businessmen, and it had its share of crime — most notably, a narcotics bust in 1916 and some robberies in the 1960s. All these are laid out with photos of newspaper clippings on the hotel’s website.
A series of fires in the late 1960s and early ’70s eventually caused the building to close. The city purchased it in 1975 with the intention of building a new city hall, but that never happened, and the building sat dormant until Cuthbert bought it in 2017.
“I’ve always thought it was handsome, and it got to the point where I thought it was crying out to have something done with it,” Cuthbert says. “It just took me a while to hear those cries and to understand what they were.”
Cuthbert first thought the building would be ideal for apartments. “That would have been far, far easier than a boutique hotel,” he says, “but the city didn’t really want to go in that direction, and the mayor convinced me that a hotel would be a good use.” Cuthbert — whose brother Charlie represents the City Council’s 4th Ward across the street from the site — thought about it, did some market surveys and realized the property could be more than just a hotel.
“This is something that I’ve worked on for five years, to get a boutique hotel here in the city of Petersburg,” Mayor Samuel Parham says. “It took over $23 million to get that old Petersburg hotel renovated and back open, so it’s something that’s long overdue. I’m looking forward to it being a huge hit here in Petersburg.”
Even before its grand opening, the hotel was booking and holding events, Cuthbert says, citing meetings and dinners for pharmaceutical companies. “It’s very gratifying that there has been a lot of interest. I’ve got a stack of business cards this thick,” he says, gesturing with his fingers. “I’ve got to reach out to everybody and make lots of calls.”
Game Changers
The hotel reopening coincides with growth in the area due to new businesses and developments and, even more importantly, a surge in manufacturing jobs thanks to the pharmaceutical industry.
Petersburg was a hub of manufacturing jobs, most notably in tobacco plants, until one major company left in 1986, says Keith Boswell, president of Virginia’s Gateway Region, an economic development organization that has been helping businesses locate to the Tri-Cities area since the 1960s. “Brown & Williamson [Tobacco Corporation] was the big dog in this area,” he says. “They made an ultimatum to the city [demanding permission to expand]. The city said, ‘Well, we don’t think you’re leaving.’ And they left. They went to Macon, Georgia, and set up a brand-new operation down there. They totally devastated this city.”
According to research by former Progress-Index reporter Sarah Vogelsong, Brown & Williamson had begun building the Georgia plant during the 1970s to allow for growth and later decided due to economic factors to combine operations in its newest facility. However the events are interpreted, the company employed as many as 4,000 workers in Petersburg, and its departure helped speed up an economic downturn, according to the Historic Petersburg Foundation, a preservation organization.
Fast-forward to the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.
“It started mainly because the federal government put up some serious money into getting API made back into the United States,” Boswell explains, referring to active pharmaceutical ingredients, the biologically active component of drug products that produces the intended effects. “There are three companies in Petersburg right now making product,” including insulin, he says.
The federal grants incentivized companies to manufacture in the United States, and Petersburg’s designation as a Tech Hub by the federal Economic Development Administration encouraged them to choose the region. Plus, Boswell says, Petersburg has a lot of land for companies to build on.
“Petersburg has always been in [the business of] making things and moving things,” Boswell says. “So we make things, we have manufacturing, and we also move things because we’re at the confluence of so many natural transportation corridors.”
Due to the growth of the pharmaceutical industry, he adds, state and local money have been leveraged to upgrade the water and wastewater infrastructure “that has been sorely needed … so that we can handle the expansions and big-volume users. So that’s been a real game changer.”
Another game changer, both for residents and the city’s image, was the 2022 demolition of the old Ramada Inn just off I-95. “It came to the point where it wasn’t going to be restored and it needed to be taken down,” Boswell says. “That was a huge mental win and a huge physical win for us as a community, because every day you went by that hotel and it said, ‘Don’t stop here, things are broken here.’ And so, by tearing it down, it actually has changed the mood and the vibe around here.”
Boswell says Hotel Petersburg may help the city follow the pattern of other small Virginia cities that have succeeded after a downturn. “One of [their commonalities] is that they’re on a river. So if you can figure out how to access the river, that promotes a quality of life [because] everybody likes water,” Boswell says. “The second is a boutique hotel. If you think about the recovery of Farmville and Danville and Staunton and Harrisonburg, they all recovered around a boutique hotel.”
Partnership for Petersburg
Part of the vibe change and the growth of businesses in the city can also be attributed to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Partnership for Petersburg. Launched in 2022, the initiative seeks to apply what the governor called a “holistic approach” to help reinvigorate the city.
The program encompasses schools, health care, crime reduction, enticing companies to open businesses and more. It seeks to bring state, local and community leaders together to help the city, as well as to attract a variety of grants and private funds.
The program has generated an influx of about $81 million so far, according to the governor’s press secretary. That figure does not include a private commitment of $100 million for Sycamore Grove, a new mixed-use development that will feature a Grant’s Supermarket, the city’s first full-line grocery store, nor does it include a $17 million private commitment for Hotel Petersburg.
“I’ve never seen a governor try to do as much to help Petersburg help itself as this administration has,” says Hotel Petersburg’s Cuthbert. “We were very fortunate to be allowed to participate in their tourism gap financing program, which is kind of a hybrid grant and loan combined.”
Cuthbert says the economic development that’s happening all around the city will also help grow the tax base. “And if we have a bigger tax base, then there’s more money for the city to spend on education and all the functions of government,” he says. “It all adds up. You have more jobs and more people there to spend money. There’s a multiplier effect.”
Nearly 82% of Petersburg residents voted to approve the Live! Gaming & Entertainment District, shown here in a rendering. Construction starts this year. (Image courtesy Joanne Williams, City of Petersburg)
Gambling on Tourism
Another new business is expected to start construction this year and open in 2026. In November, almost 82% of Petersburg voters approved a new casino to be built in the city.
“It’s going to be a game changer for the city of Petersburg,” Mayor Parham says. “It is the largest economic development project to ever come through the city: $1.4 billion.”
Parham says the development will bring jobs to the city, and more importantly, the tax revenue will jumpstart many long-overdue projects. “We are an older city, so we have a tremendous amount of infrastructure needs,” Parham says. “Along with replacing water and sewer lines and improving our overall infrastructure, we haven’t built a school here in over 50 years, so we’re looking at building new schools.” The extra revenue may also finance a new courthouse as well as new police and fire stations and enable the city to pay better wages for teachers, firefighters and police officers, Parham adds.
City officials are hoping that the new casino will boost tourism as well, although Petersburg already sees numerous tourists thanks to its Revolutionary and Civil War history, says Joanne Williams, the city’s director of communications, tourism, marketing and government relations.
“Petersburg was the site of the largest, longest siege on American soil, 9 1/2 months of the Civil War. If Petersburg had not fallen, Richmond would not have gone down, so we consider that the Civil War ended here,” Williams says. “We also have great African American history here, and that story is being told. We have a nonprofit that is working to restore the old McKinney Library into an African American history museum.”
But the key to spreading the wealth is getting gamblers into the historic downtown. “We are talking with the casino about having a small visitor center right in the entranceway so that people will know what else there is to do in the city,” Williams says, “and also the possibility of having one of our trolleys run daily [and] take people back and forth from the casino to downtown.”
In addition, the new Fall Line trail, a 43-mile multiuse path between Petersburg and the town of Ashland, will bring more visitors to the city, Williams says. “Lots of things are happening in Petersburg. This is a turning point for Petersburg.”
Cuthbert agrees that more visitors will help the city overall, and he hopes that they’ll stay in his hotel — the only one in the city. “I think any city needs a nice place for people to stay. You don’t want people just to come in and do their business and turn around and go back,” he says. “You want them to stay here a little bit and learn what’s attractive about the city and perhaps help some of the shops and restaurants and bars and things in the neighborhood.”
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River Street Market in Old Towne Petersburg is open Saturdays year-round. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Trapezium Brewing Co. on North Third Street has served suds and pizza since 2016. (Photo courtesy Joanne Williams, City of Petersburg)
‘Changing for the Better’
As Williams noted, Petersburg is at a turning point. The people moving the city forward are gambling that their efforts to attract businesses, residents and investment to the area will push Petersburg past the negative stereotypes.
McCormack calls the transformation a rebranding. The developer’s fingerprints can be found on multiple buildings in the downtown area dating back to 2003, when he bought a dilapidated warehouse and turned it into market-rate apartments. He also owns Trapezium Brewing Co., Demolition Coffee, and other businesses and buildings in the area. “The brand of Petersburg will start to change, and it’ll stop being that narrative about all the bad things happening,” he says. “Honestly, right now, I feel like we’re probably in the best place we’ve ever been.”
Back at River Street Market, James C. Davenport says developments like the new Hotel Petersburg are a positive sign that things are changing for the better in the city. “The hotel is a beautiful success indicator, and it is catering to ... people that I hope will come to Petersburg and make Petersburg their home,” he says. “We have gone through a lot of things that other cities [have] recently gone through. We should be a champion on telling people how to survive with very little. Because we did it.”
