Richmond BizSense: Demolition underway for 7-story apartment building across from Willow Lawn

Jonathan Spiers

Four years after shelving part of their plan to bring nearly 600 new apartments to the Willow Lawn area, a pair of real estate firms have started work on the other part that will see a 7-story building rise across the street from the shopping center.

Demolition started in recent weeks for Willow Circle, a 228-unit apartment building that will replace three 1960s-era office buildings at 1506-1510 Willow Lawn Drive.

Named for a residential cul-de-sac that preceded the office buildings, Willow Circle is a joint venture between Thalhimer Realty Partners and the Crenshaw family, who own the buildings and manage them through their Crenshaw Realty firm.

Willow Circle was part of a larger plan that would have also replaced two Crenshaw-owned buildings 1904-1910 Byrd Ave., a couple blocks north, with another 7-story building with hundreds more apartments. That part of the project was put on hold in 2022 to allow GRTC and Henrico County to address parking concerns at the time relating to the Pulse bus station at Willow Lawn.

While they still planned to go forward with Willow Circle at the time, it’s taken until now for that project to proceed, a delay that TRP principal Jason Guillot attributed to a two-year process to work through a deed restriction issue involving owners of a dozen neighboring houses.

Guillot said that when the office buildings were built, the developer at the time granted a deed to those homes that prohibited any other type of commercial uses on the Willow Lawn Drive property. The rezoning for Willow Place made it a residential use, but getting all 12 neighbors to sign off on waiving the deed restriction took time.

“It was a challenging process,” Guillot said.

The neighboring homes also factored into the building’s design, which scales back from 7 stories along Willow Lawn Drive to 4 stories closer to the homes. The scaling was required under Henrico’s neighborhood compatibility standards that call for, among other things, shorter building heights adjacent to single-family neighborhoods.

The ratio of parking spaces per apartment was also increased at the request of the planning commission, Guillot said. The approved plan for Willow Circle includes a parking deck with about 360 spaces, or about 1.5 spaces per unit. The apartments will wrap around the deck, shielding it from view from Willow Lawn Drive.

The one- and two-bedroom apartments will be market-rate with rents projected to range from $1,650 to $2,850. The one-bedrooms will average 675 square feet in size, while the two-bedrooms will average 994 square feet.

The ones and twos will be evenly split, which Guillot said is a greater  percentage of two-bedrooms than typical for TRP’s developments but is in response to demand it’s seen at its nearby Westhampton Commons complex.

Guillot put the development cost for Willow Circle at $63 million. TRP and Crenshaw will co-own the apartments, which are targeted for completion in spring 2028. Once demolition is finished, construction is scheduled to start this August.

Guillot said the firms have not selected a lender for financing but are in talks with local banks.

Poole & Poole Architecture is designing Willow Circle, and KBS is the general contractor. Kimley-Horn is the engineer, and SMBW is developing branding and designing the amenities, which will include a pool, sky lounge, library and grilling areas.

Guillot said Poole & Poole’s design nods to the mid-century modern history of the site and the Willow Lawn area, with planned interior accents including vintage furniture and fixtures, wood paneling, and record players and rotary phones.

Both TRP and Crenshaw described the project as a full-circle moment for their firms, noting their respective histories with the area.

“Thalhimer’s previous CEO had a paper route in the neighborhood as a young boy, and so for us this feels like a full circle moment to partner with the Crenshaws on this amazing project,” Guillot said.

Added Hatcher Crenshaw IV, Crenshaw Realty’s property manager and one of its leads on the project: “Our company purchased these buildings back in 1989, and some of my earliest childhood memories are helping with odd jobs at the property. Over the years, we’ve built great relationships with tenants and neighbors.

“While it’s exciting to begin this next chapter and further invest in the future of the Willow Lawn area, it’s also a bit bittersweet. We’ve assembled a strong local team and are looking forward to going vertical later this year,” Crenshaw said. “Knowing my dad, he’ll probably be out there on Day One spinning a ‘Lease Today’ sign.”

Willow Circle adds to other apartment projects in the works around Willow Lawn.

On the opposite side of the mall, New York-based Aurelie Capital is approved to develop an 8-story building with 188 units at 4911 Augusta Ave. And Willow Lawn’s owner has had the 37-acre property rezoned for a major redevelopment that will add thousands of residential units and new commercial space over two decades.

As for the 7-story building they were planning on Byrd Avenue, Guillot said TRP and Crenshaw are keeping that project on hold for the time being, in light of plans to extend the Pulse bus line as far west as Parham Road, where a new western terminus is being planned.