Editor's note: This web extra accompanies a feature on "The Revival of Brookland Park" in Richmond magazine's July issue.
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LaMar Dixon (left) and Trey Dash of Dixon/Lee Development Group outside the former bank building they're developing into a co-working/business accelerator space (Photo by Stephen Clatterbuck)
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The former bank building at 201 W. Brookland Park Blvd. has been vacant and boarded up for about three decades. (Photo by Stephen Clatterbuck)
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The former bank vault inside 201 W. Brookland Park Blvd. can be seen at right. (Photo by Stephen Clatterbuck)
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After its use as a bank, the building was home to the Virginia Auto Mutual Insurance Co. (Photo by Stephen Clatterbuck)
Though sunshine floods the exterior, it’s dim inside the imposing structure at the corner of Hanes Avenue and West Brookland Park Boulevard. The tall, arched windows are boarded up, allowing only slivers of light that illuminate traces of blue and green paint on the masonry walls.
After developer LaMar Dixon opens the front door for a photographer and me to take a look, a curious passerby peeks in.
“I haven’t seen the inside of the building since I was a young boy,” says the 60-year-old man, who lives up the street and tells us he goes by the name Greedy. He remembers there used to be a balcony inside. That’s news to Dixon, who had been considering installing a mezzanine. After Greedy walks off, he reflects for a moment. “I didn’t even think about a balcony. That’s a great concept.”
Constructed in 1927, the 2,200-square-foot building housed the American Bank & Trust Co. and later the Virginia Auto Mutual Insurance Co. and Still’s Specialty Shop, signs for which remain at the entrance. For the past three decades or more, though, it’s been an empty shell, Dixon says.
In the space once frequented by customers making deposits or meeting with loan officers, Dixon, a principal with Dixon/Lee Development Group, envisions a new life as a co-working/business accelerator center similar to Gather or 804RVA, offering administrative and technical support to business startups. It might include a juice bar serving healthful fare, and perhaps a commercial kitchen that would offer space to food-truck entrepreneurs. He’s also considering the creation of upstairs apartments during a second phase of the project.
A rendering shows how the inside of the building might look as a co-working/business accelerator space. (Image courtesy Cornerstone Architects)
Dixon is conferring with Virginia Union University’s Center for Small Business Development on an agreement that could involve administrative support and student internships, and offer graduates incentives to work in the community. He says he hopes to have a memorandum of understanding with the university signed by the end of July.
The 41-year-old VUU alumnus wants to help bridge the gap between the North Side corridor’s current status — still showing the effects of decades-long economic decline despite recent residential and commercial investment — and its aspirations for a more prosperous future, one that revives the promise of the up-and-coming community that developed around the streetcar line in the early 1900s.
“I feel compelled to put a product on the street that’s going to bring everybody together,” Dixon says. A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, he recalls that when he was in high school, a summer program helped boost his SAT score, opening new possibilities for his future.
“That set me up,” Dixon says. He hopes to give local entrepreneurs a similar lift. “If we could get that type of resource to people, that’s what changes the neighborhood.”
Dixon bought the building in 2015 from the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority for $20,000. (The RRHA acquired several properties along Brookland Park Boulevard as part of the city's efforts to revitalize the corridor.) He received a $200,000 grant from Richmond’s Economic Development Authority — $75,000 for acquisition and development and $125,000 for construction and business development.
He’s behind on the grant’s timeline for construction, which was supposed to be completed by March 1, but he wants to be sure he has a sustainable job-creation model in place. The grant requires the creation of 30 jobs — 15 full-time and 15 part-time — for a period of five years, Dixon says. According to the current timeline, half of the jobs were to be created by April 1, the rest by Nov. 1.
“When you’re doing a project of any kind, you make a best guess [about] how long is this going to take and give estimates,” he says. “The outcome is what I’m focused on.”
Chris Hilbert, Richmond City Council president and the 3rd District representative, says that he will propose an extension of the dates for construction and job creation.
“I want to get the time frame as locked down as I can before I propose the legislation,” Hilbert says, adding that he’s confident the project is moving forward.
“I appreciate that LaMar took on a difficult task of not only revitalization of this building, which is what we’re certainly looking to do, but the [business] accelerator and job creation proposal is something he has been working on diligently, making sure that that end of the business is going to work,” he says. “We want a sustainable business inside of it … something that’s going to benefit the area in the long run.”
Some neighborhood residents have raised concerns about project delays and questioned the juice bar idea.
Sean Craft, a real estate agent and preservationist who has renovated and lived in a series of houses around Brookland Park Boulevard, says that new residents who have invested in the neighborhood are eager to see commercial development that supports their lifestyle and fulfills basic needs, such as a food market. There's also frustration with property owners letting their lots sit idle, he says.
"People from out of town have seen the possibility of [Brookland Park] being the next Carytown or the next Bellevue," Craft says. But while historic tax credits and other incentives have helped spur business, development is limited by insufficient parking on a corridor that originally catered to streetcar travelers.
He also sees a lack of enforcement of building codes and violations. "There's no impetus for these deadbeat landlords to do anything."
On July 22, Dixon plans to set up an information table at the Brookland Park Community Celebration to explain his plans and address questions. After that event, he says he intends to gather community input during a series of meetings at First African Baptist Church on Hanes Avenue.
