Mayor Levar Stoney walks through a one-bedroom studio apartment available for rent in a former tobacco plant. “We need to ensure that those who live in our city today have choices,” the mayor said at a January ribbon-cutting ceremony. (Photo by Sarah King)
Across the Robert E. Lee Bridge, past a vacant lot where a gas station once stood and opposite South Richmond’s 301 Express Mart is an 11-acre industrial site-turned housing complex at 800 Jefferson Davis Highway. If you aren’t looking for it, you might miss it.
The array of buildings — once home to Model Tobacco’s cigarette manufacturing operations — began housing new tenants in February as the first phase of the Port City workforce development residential complex opened.
“Welcome to the original American Tobacco, Chesterfield County manufacturing plant — well, Chesterfield County back in the day,” project architect Walter Parks said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony in January, pointing out that the 1929 building once housed a tobacco stemming and drying facility. Ninety years later, some of the former tobacco storage sheds have been revamped to include roughly $1 million in solar panels to fuel electricity for the housing development.
The development is reserved for residents who, on average, earn no more than 60 percent of the area median income (AMI) — just under $35,000 per year for an individual and below $50,000 for a family of four. Rents for Port City’s one- and two-bedroom apartments and artist studios will use a sliding scale, costing an individual who makes 40 percent of the area median income (about $23,000), as little as $624 a month for a one-bedroom unit. Rent includes water, sewer, electricity, internet and basic cable service.
The project is financed through $34 million in historic tax credits and low-income housing tax credits, in addition to nearly $40 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds authorized by the Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority for Port City’s first and second phase.
The first phase comprises 135 apartments. The second phase, slated for completion by 2020, will include an additional 156 units and 23 artist studios in the former metal tobacco sheds, as well as green space, activity areas and a swimming pool, says Tom Wilkinson, the project developer and principal at Maramjen Investments, noting that the roofs on some of the warehouses are in poor condition. “As soon as we start construction on phase two, which will be May or June, we hope, the first thing we’ll do is fix those roofs so we don’t have that eyesore.”
