upzoningisgood

On the multifamily development side, we wouldn't care until this leads to more jobs. But if the economic development team can spin this into a few hundred or thousand jobs, yeah that would get our attention.

I was referring to the Dominion property. I don’t know enough about the exact by-laws of B4 to know if Dominion’s project would be allowed by-right and won’t speak out of my ass.

@I miss RVA I’m not familiar enough with the exact particulars of RVA zoning to be confident in my take on this issue

It’s interesting and disappointing that 2 of the major block-size parking lots along Canal Street will be turned into quasi-surface lots (this and the transfer station) This project is probably the best example of the utility of a land value tax that I’ve ever seen.

I think if you look at the black door next to the white structure it shows people below grade. So maybe there are steps to a basement level?

@I miss RVA Rent growth stopped but construction cost didn't

The fact that this is in Addison’s district is huge.

https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/09/12/apartments-next-to-kinsale-headquarters-sell-for-91m/ This would be a solid price even by Nashville standards. Knox at Metrocenter, probably the best comp for this, sold for $372k a door. This sold for $350k a door, which is pretty close. It would be the 6th-highest per-SF price in Nashville for wood-frame. This is good news. This will help out the underwriting a lot.

I guess the silver lining here is if Legends ever sells, the development opportunity will be much better because of the expanded view. That also means complaining at the local meeting will earn Legends a lot of work-free land profit, which is obviously an asinine incentive built into the community review process.

@I miss RVA Let me see RVA land the plane on CoStar before I give a verdict. I have no inside knowledge to indicate they won’t, but nothing matters until they start construction. 4400 jobs is a lot in any market.

I see it as a win-win for them. The property only appreciated 5% yearly from when the seller bought it. So unless the seller grossly overplayed, it’s not a huge premium. If they hold, they probably end up fine. But that parcel would be 15M$ in Nashville if you could rezone it (snowballs chance and all I know) so there’s lane appreciation upside.

Great for me!

@ancientcarpenterThanks for the context

Out of curiosity, how was it a bait and switch? Don’t know the history here.

Reread the article. Definitely see that with Trammel. Guess I didn’t register her quote the first time. I think Jones is more ambiguous. Here’s Jones: “It would have been great for this to be the third major economic development deal to happen in this city,” Jones said. “I’m just one to remind us of that, of what we allowed to slip through this council’s control. We could have dramatically changed the upward mobility of this entire region. But we missed that opportunity, and we can’t let that go unheralded.” I think this quote hinges on what he means by “unheralded”.

Plus, the issue with the casino was that it failed the public referendum. The only issue be brought up that was actually on council was Navy Hill. Personally, I think axing it was the right choice but no need to relitigate that.

@eandsleeI read the article too and had the opposite impression. It sounded more like “we missed our shot twice and can’t miss it again” when I read it.

Worst case scenario they’ve already been approved for the original twin tower design so there should be some decent density in that site regardless.

Challenge here is that land will be filthy and will probably have to be entirely dig up and replaced. That adds a lot of costs.l and limits the buyer pool to be sure.

I think the first and third are for the locks. I don’t recognize where the second one would be.

@Downtowner is it an eco building because of new materials, new technology, or new building techniques?

@I miss RVA anecdote on growth bringing more growth. This is from the guy whose job it is to bring in business to Nashville.

It would be awesome if they move and I hope they do. Also, they are currently located in a suburb of Hartford. They very well may locate to Chesterfield or Hopewell instead of Richmond proper. Still a win!

I do think RVA needs to get Richmond Real (lmao) about attracting new business. Luckily, I think macro trends do pretty decently for us. Suburbanization will continue to be a concern but moving from DC to Richmond is sort of like Suburbanization from their perspective. Introducing more residential to the CBD is a must. Nashville has it and it's a huge boon. Basically every deal we there do that's within telescope distance of Downtown talks about how far it is from it because Downtown is The Thing That Drives Everything out here. Richmond doesn't really have something like that on the business front. It does on the amenity front--JRPS is actually sick even by national standards--but there isn't a business locus in the city. (If anywhere it would probably be West Creek. I guarantee you every deal west of 95 talks about how easy it is to get to Capital One.)

@I miss RVARichmond has two things going against it on the financial side relative to Raleigh. My data source won't let me give numerical figures, but Richmond's rents are decently but not overwhelmingly behind Raleigh's. The big thing is Richmond's cap rate* is way higher than Raleigh's, meaning the market is less bullish on future rent growth. A lot of that is for good reason--quite a bit of units are under construction for a city of its size. *Cap rate is the amount of the purchase price of a building (sell price from the developer's perspective) that the net operating income (basically, yearly profit you make from running the building) can cover in a year. Because NOI/PP = cap rate, you can do some algebra and get NOI/cap rate = Purchase price. So if your building makes 1M per year and the market cap rate is 5%, then the purchase price is 1M/.05 = 20M. Because cap rate is in the denominator, lower cap rates = higher purchase (sale) prices = more $ = easier to make expensive high-rises pencil out. The cap rate in the market is determined by seeing/finding out what comparable cap rates were on other deals and deciding if you are more or less bullish than the other guys from the previous deals. If you think rents are going to go up a lot, then you might be willing to buy using a lower cap rate than the other guys because you expect to make more money. You can then think of the cap rate is a rough proxy for the market optimism on an area's rent growth.