The parking lot at Monument Avenue and Hamilton Street. Proposed apartments would also replace an existing office building, visible to the right. The Argon Apartments are to the left. (Jonathan Spiers photos)
A global missionary group headquartered in Richmond is looking to get in on the city’s apartment boom.
International Mission Board, along with an out-of-town developer, is planning a 263-unit apartment complex on land it owns across Hamilton Street from its headquarters at 3806 Monument Ave.
The pair of five-story buildings would fill a surface parking lot at 3700 Monument Ave. and replace an existing three-story office building at 1301A N. Hamilton St. Both properties have been under IMB ownership for decades.
The three-story office building on Hamilton was built in the early 1980s.
IMB is working with Silver Hills Development, an Ohio-based firm listed on the plans as both developer and owner.
IMB is applying for a special-use permit for the development, which is allowed by existing zoning but would be restricted by design requirements due to the site’s narrow shape, according to an application filed with the city.
Totaling 2.4 acres, the two-parcel site borders the west side of the Interstate 195 expressway and Hamilton Street on-ramp.
Plans show the two buildings would enclose central courtyards and flank a structured parking deck with access off Hamilton at its intersection with West Grace Street. The deck would total 390 parking spaces.
Renderings of how the apartments would appear from Hamilton Street. (Courtesy City of Richmond)
The buildings would house 236 one-bedroom units and 27 two-bedrooms, with sizes ranging from about 590 to 1,060 square feet. Apartments would be furnished with washer-and-dryer units and include balconies, walk-in closets and open-style floorplans. The plans do not specify rents for the apartments, which are referred to in the documents as Silverhills at Monument Ave.
The courtyard of the building closest to Monument would include a pool, and a lobby and clubhouse for the complex would be accessed via the main entry off Hamilton. The clubhouse would include a fitness center, workspace and business center. The complex also would have 11 short-term and 65 long-term bicycle parking spaces, along with a bike repair station.
Ohio-based DIMIT Architects is designing the apartments, and Timmons Group drew up site plans and is the landscape architect. Plans also list Edwards Communities, an Ohio-based builder that works with property manager Drucker + Falk.
Mark Baker with Richmond-based Baker Development Resources is handling the permit application, which is scheduled to go before the city Planning Commission on June 7.
IMB’s headquarters on Monument Avenue.
IMB, formerly called the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been based in its Monument Avenue building for over a half century. City property records show it’s owned that building since at least the mid-1950s.
It purchased the parking lot at 3700 Monument in 1977 for $255,000. The three-story office building, which was built in 1981 and totals 17,600 square feet, was bought in 1986 for $2.29 million. The city most recently assessed those parcels at $1.04 million and $2.89 million, respectively.
IMB also owns a parking lot behind its headquarters at 3800 W. Grace St., which it picked up in 1965 for $250,000. It’s now assessed at $829,000 and isn’t involved in the apartment project.
Tenants in the office building include refugee services group International Rescue Committee, law firm Berkeley, Curry & Cook, and Gulf Life Insurance Co., among others.
Attempts to reach IMB for comment were unsuccessful. A message left for a vice president listed as a contact on the plans was not returned.
A site plan shows the two apartment buildings flanking a central parking deck. (Courtesy City of Richmond)
The project site is directly across Monument from Georgetown Apartments, a 192-unit townhome community lining Hamilton and the expressway. Also nearby is the 66-unit Argon Apartments, a former office building redeveloped by Chris Harrison’s C.A. Harrison Cos.
Across the expressway, Sarah and Mary Krumbein redeveloped a former office building on Thompson Street into the 26-unit Century Flats apartments. And just west of IMB, Yogi Singh led the development team behind 3900 Monument, a new-construction building totaling 15 apartments.
IMB isn’t the first faith-based group to free up land it owns for residential development.
A few blocks north, United Methodist Family Services is leasing part of its Broad Street campus to Spy Rock Real Estate, which is developing a hotel and two mixed-use buildings there.
And farther north in Ginter Park, Union Presbyterian Seminary sold 15 acres of its Westwood Tract for Canopy at Ginter Park, a 301-unit apartment complex by Bristol Development Group. Earlier this year, local firm Capital Square purchased the apartments for $83.75 million.
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