VCU students living north of the Interstate?
An Indiana-based student housing developer is staking its claim in the Richmond market with a $22.4 million apartment complex on Chamberlayne Avenue, north of Interstate 95.
This story first appeared on RichmondBizSense.com, Richmond’s leading source for business news.
An Indiana-based student housing developer is staking its claim in the Richmond market with a $22.4 million apartment complex.
Trinitas Ventures has begun work on an 11-acre plot on Chamberlayne Avenue just across Interstate 95 from Jackson Ward.
Travis Vencel, head of planning and acquisitions for the firm, said Trinitas had been working on the deal for a year.
“We’ve been looking for some time in Richmond for the right place,” Vencel said.
The project, called the Collegiate, consists of six multifamily buildings with a total of 270 one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom units. The complex will have a clubhouse and a swimming pool. The units will be fully furnished, Vencel said. A shuttle will offer transportation for residents to Virginia Commonwealth University, which is about half a mile away.
Indiana-based construction firm Vizor-Alderson is the general contractor.
Vencel said the project is funded by a combination of traditional bank financing and the firm’s equity partners.
Vencel said his company is opening a leasing office on Broad Street in the next few weeks, during which time they will also finalize the rental rates. The project is slated to be completed in August 2012.
Trinitas isn’t the first group to take a crack at developing the land.
“It had been under contract by another group. They fell away, and we swooped in and redesigned and redefined the project,” Vencel said.
That other group was working with Justin French, who is now serving 16 years in prison for tax credit fraud. French had acquired the property, which was previously a trailer park, and also had planned student housing there.
Trinitas bought the land from an LLC controlled by French for $2.6 million this year, with proceeds being surrendered to the U.S. Attorney for restitution purposes.
Al Harris covers commercial real estate for BizSense. Please send news tips to Al@richmondbizsense.com.
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
This is an exciting development for the northside, and the Chamerlayne Avenue corridor in particular. That site is difficult to access, though and may be a tough sell to students. But if they’re successful, one could see this project as a catalyst for a whole new influx of private development in that corridor.
There are plenty of VCU students in Battery Park now. This should be an easy sell. The developers presented the proposal to our Civic Association over a year ago, and my only concern is that they don’t plan to place a right turn lane from Chamberlayne onto Bacon Street. This will be incredibly dangerous as that is where Chamberlayne converges, and traffic can be hairy there as it is (lots of cars try to do illegal U-turns right after the bridge and cause backup).
Right near Gilpin Ct. ? Like bring the sheep to the wolfs? Were they not going to level it at some point?
i think it’s a stupid idea it around gilpin ct we won’t survive one day