The draft plan includes a phasing strategy for transforming Gilpin Court into a mixed-housing, mixed-income community. (City documents)
As a developer selection looms for a planned transformation of Gilpin Court, a draft plan to guide development of the larger Jackson Ward neighborhood is making the rounds for the public to inspect and provide feedback.
The draft Jackson Ward Community Plan was released earlier this year and submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funded the planning effort with a $450,000 grant awarded through its Choice Neighborhoods program.
A public comment period underway for months is scheduled to end Sunday, though feedback will continue to be accepted for several more weeks until after the Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority selects a developer for the Gilpin Court project.
While the RRHA is encouraging comments by Sunday, spokeswoman Angela Fountain said earlier this summer, “We will be doing additional focus groups, reaching out to residents, partners and stakeholders for feedback before the comment period ends.
“We intend to keep the comment period open until after a developer is named,” Fountain said. “We are making every effort to make the final selection in September, but due to staffing challenges that date may slip to early October.”
RRHA is working with the city, Richmond City Health District, Storefront for Community Design and planning consultant LRK on the effort, which has been underway for 18 months. A final plan is due to HUD Nov. 22.
Intended as a supplement to the city’s Richmond 300 master plan, the 190-page Jackson Ward plan would guide development in the neighborhood, including Gilpin Court, and help align various projects that are underway or in the pipeline.
A rendering of the Jackson Ward bridge deck over the interstate, recommended in the Richmond 300 plan.
Other efforts include the Reconnect Jackson Ward study that’s weighing options for improving connections across Interstate 95, which divided the neighborhood once known as Black Wall Street and the Harlem of the South when it was built in the 1950s. Options could include a city-block-sized bridge deck across the highway in the area of First Street, similar to the Kanawha Plaza deck above the Downtown Expressway.
The draft community plan envisions Jackson Ward as “an interconnected neighborhood that celebrates Black history, ownership, and culture while supporting a diverse community of current and future residents with quality housing, healthy spaces, and its community traditions of local art, youth education, and entrepreneurship.”
The plan is structured around five major themes, including growing “a diverse, equitable and inclusive economy,” ensuring inclusive housing options, creating high-quality places, expanding equitable transportation and sustaining a thriving environment.
The public housing complex is at the center of the plan.
A major component of the plan is a phasing strategy for the redevelopment of Gilpin Court, the 781-unit public housing complex that has come to largely define the north side of Jackson Ward. The city started building the complex in the 1940s, before what was then called the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike cut a swath through the center of Jackson Ward.
The phasing strategy in the draft shows Gilpin Court redeveloped over time in 11 phases, starting with the area around Gilpin’s Fay Towers and ultimately totaling about 1,900 residential units between the interstate and the railroad tracks and between Chamberlayne Parkway and Third Street.
Those units would consist of about 450 replacement housing units, 850 mixed-income and market-rate units, and 600 homeownership units. Development phasing would start with Gilpin’s Fay Towers and land directly south of it, followed by the parking lot across Chamberlayne Parkway from the former RRHA headquarters building, which would be the next phase with 200 units.
Subsequent phases would work their way east, with the final two phases adding 150 units near Shockoe Hill Cemetery and 200 units on the northern edge of Gilpin. Buildings would be a mix of sixplex-style apartments, multifamily buildings with elevators, and townhomes and garden-style buildings.
RRHA put out a request for qualifications for prospective developers for Gilpin earlier this year. The phasing strategy and concept plan would be further refined in coordination with that developer once a selection is made this fall.
It isn’t clear which firms or how many responded to the RFQ. RRHA denied a request for that information, citing a state law that allows such information to remain confidential until a contract is awarded.
The 11-story, 200-unit Fay Towers in Gilpin Court. (BizSense file)
In June, the state Board of Historic Resources added Fay Towers to the Virginia Landmarks Register, the state’s list of places of historic, architectural, archaeological and cultural significance. Previously called High-Rise for the Elderly, the 11-story, 200-unit building is recognized in the listing as representing impacts of the Housing Act of 1959.
The building’s nomination form was prepared by Norfolk-based Commonwealth Preservation Group at the request of RRHA. The designation makes the property eligible for historic rehabilitation tax credits.
The draft community plan also calls for adding roads and alleys to the street grid at Gilpin Court, which is defined by long blocks and buildings. In a presentation to the Richmond Planning Commission last month, Maritza Pechin, a deputy director with the city planning office who’s guiding the effort, said the idea is to break up those blocks and concentrate taller buildings along major roads.
An east-west greenway also is planned to connect Gilpin’s Calhoun Community Center to Shockoe Hill Cemetery. An “early action” project required in the plan includes a splash pad and other improvements at the community center that Pechin said are scheduled for completion next spring.
An option in the plan is to restrict Baker Street’s vehicular traffic and turn it into a shared-use path for pedestrians and cyclists. Also planned is a project to preserve Gilpin’s original boiler building and smokestack and highlight them as a historical landmark.
“I’m not really sure what the use of the building would be at this point, but we’re thinking of keeping that one piece in,” Pechin said. She said an expansion of the city’s Jackson Ward Old and Historic District also is being considered.
The draft plan can be viewed and commented on here.
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