The 12-story apartment building will offer 168 housing units and 80 parking spaces for its residents. (Image courtesy The Opus Group)
Richmond City Council on Monday approved plans for a 12-story apartment tower at the corner of West Broad and North Lombardy streets, despite concerns from community members who called the project a pseudo-college dormitory.
The panel voted 7-2 in favor of a special-use permit request from The Opus Group, a Minneapolis-based developer seeking to build an apartment tower at 1600 and 1606 W. Broad St. It would replace the Sunoco gas station currently on the site.
The tower will offer 168 housing units across studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments, according to Ben Angelo, Opus Group vice president of real estate development. Planned amenities include a gym, lounge areas, and an outdoor terrace with a pool and resident gathering areas. He said rental rates for the apartments haven't yet been set, but could fall between $800 to $1,500, pending shifts in the rental market. The U-shaped building also will feature approximately 3,400 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.
Mark Olinger, the city’s director of planning and development review, said the project closely aligns with the city’s goals to develop mixed-use properties and high-density housing along the GRTC Pulse bus route. The project is approximately three blocks from the Allison Street Pulse station and four blocks from the VCU/VUU station.
Voting against the permit request were 2nd District Councilwoman Kim Gray and 8th District Councilwoman Reva Trammel. Gray said neighborhoods in the Fan weren’t properly engaged during the planning process and cautioned that accelerated growth in the area could lead to traffic and parking issues.
“I think it’s rather dismissive to say that anyone who has concerns about a project that’s coming into their neighborhood with this level of density would be anti-growth,” she said. “What I’m hearing from the residents who have brought concerns forward to me is that they’re tired of the top-down, paternalistic approach to planning.”
Current plans call for 80 underground and ground-level resident parking spaces and six on-street spaces with at least one drop-off and pick-up point for residents using ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, Angelo said.
Members of the Fan District Association and West Grace Street Association criticized those plans during the meeting's public hearing, saying the apartments will spur an influx of transient student residents who are uninterested in improving their neighborhoods, and the low number of parking spaces will create an overflow of apartment residents parking near their homes.
“The high density from this building is very concerning and would add to the congestion and further impede traffic patterns,” said Fan District Association President Jerry Beverage.
Angelo and Opus Group Senior Vice President Dean Newins refuted those claims, saying the project would be partially suited to students but also would appeal to young professionals looking for housing in the city.
“As far as traffic goes, again, decreasing the amount of parking for the project will only decrease the amount of traffic at the intersection,” Angelo said of the 80 parking spaces planned for the apartment building. “You also have to consider that we’re taking out an existing use that creates an enormous amount of traffic at this intersection with the gas station.”
Third District Councilman and Vice President Chris Hilbert, said the project “checks all the boxes” due to its expected appeal for young professionals and proximity to Pulse bus stops.
“This, to me, seems like we’ve set up a runway, we have put some bright lights up [and] we’re saying, ‘This is where we want them to land,’ ” he said. “To say, ‘Well, we want to do something else,’ this seems like to me that we’re just turning off the lights to the runway.”
Angelo said that once the building’s designs are finalized and permits have been granted, the developer expects construction on the tower to begin this spring and would be completed in summer 2021.
