The 3-acre Public Safety Building property at 500 N. 10th St. (BizSense file photo)
After the demise of its previous plan for the property, VCU appears to be moving forward with a larger and more expensive development project for the former Public Safety Building site downtown.
VCU’s Board of Visitors is slated to approve a $415 million capital project for its planned VCU Dentistry Center, which would replace the School of Dentistry’s Lyons Dental Building and Dental Building 1 on the nearby MCV Campus.
VCU has said the new 314,000-square-foot facility is envisioned for the 3-acre site at 500 N. 10th St., which until recently had been planned for a private development with VCU Health signed on as a master tenant.
That project, valued at $325 million, effectively died last month, when the City of Richmond took back the property after finding the private developer, Capital City Partners, in default of the terms of the development agreement.
That 2021 agreement had called for a 20-story tower and three-building complex totaling 240,000 square feet of office space, 150,000 of which was to be used by VCU Health to support its nearby Children’s Hospital Pavilion and Adult Outpatient Pavilion.
A rendering of the previously proposed office tower and complex that had been planned to replace the Public Safety Building. (Courtesy of Capital City Partners)
The board is scheduled to vote at its meeting today (Friday) to initiate the project and amend VCU’s six-year capital plan to reflect the Dentistry Center project’s revised cost estimate. VCU has previously requested funding approval from the General Assembly for pre-planning of the project.
The amendment and project authorization are included in the board’s consent agenda, consisting of items typically voted on as a group and with minimal discussion.
A memo to the board describes the Lyons Dental Building, at 520 N. 12th St., and Dental Building 1, at 521 N. 11th St., as “beyond their useful life” with more than $90 million in deferred maintenance needs. The buildings were built in 1975 and 1954, respectively, and “do not meet current educational or patient care needs” and “present accessibility concerns,” the memo states.
The new facility would serve more than 500 students and include various classrooms, simulation and practice labs with manikin stations, academic labs, practice clinics with operating rooms, and support spaces. The memo states that the size and scope of the facility would be refined through the planning phase.
Architecture firm Hanbury is the pre-planning consultant on the project.
The memo does not provide more details about the project, such as whether VCU would buy the Public Safety Building property from the city. University ownership would take the 3-acre property off the city’s tax rolls, as VCU is exempt from paying city real estate taxes.
The previous Capital City Partners project called for VCU to lease that building, which as a privately owned property would have remained taxable. As the master tenant, VCU Health had agreed to contribute to real estate tax obligation payments tied to the project. In a statement last month, VCU said the university and health system “will uphold our obligations as they relate to prior real estate tax commitments.”
The same statement described the Public Safety Building property as “designed to be a signature development for VCU and Richmond” and said its “desired centerpiece” is a new facility for the School of Dentistry and potentially a new research building to replace the aging Sanger Hall, a 486,000-square-foot building at 1101 E. Marshall St., a block away. Sanger Hall is not mentioned in the latest memo about the Dentistry Center project.
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