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moved their staff down to Commonwealth's Shockoe Slip offices. Both Delmar Dayton & Fred
Thompson were regularly seen at the early meetings of the Chapter, while Commonwealth's Bob
Mills was our President in '99-2000, with the firm's Domenic Venuti continuing to be active today.
Another merger of architectural firms to note as Moseley, where we had a big joint meeting with
IIDA in April of '08 at their Scott's Addition offices, is acquiring Baltimore based Marks, Thomas
who had recently set up a nearby branch office in some coworking space. That Marks, Thomas
group will move into Moseley's offices, while their Baltimore offices will become one of Moseley's
10 locations, adding to their 6 in VA, two in NC, & one in South Carolina, and bringing their total
staff to about 280.
CoStar Group, the real estate research and analytics firm from D.C. that came down here about a
year ago and took the top two floors of the WestRock building (where we met on that super-hot
August day in 2010, when it was still WestVaco) has now taken two more floors as their explosive
growth continues, with their head count in Richmond up around 600 and their total space around
133,000 sq.ft.
While WVS, the D.C. based developer of Rocketts Landing, who hasn't slowed down their growth
since we met with them in the un-finished Boathouse Restaurant in July of '09, now is moving up-stream
to the Canal Walk, where they are planning a 12 story, 737 unit apartment tower, with a
pool on the roof. Walter Parks are the architects, and KBS the GC, as the tower will be strictly
high dollar apartments, with no office or retail space on the lower floors. Since that project will be
right next door to Casa del Barco (Spanish for Boathouse) , I have to note that the Hopewell
Boathouse Restaurant is now open, proving to be quite popular, and a big hit down in that area.
A little out of my normal sphere of travel, but it’s getting so much buzz I'm going to have to take a
trip down there to check it out.
Another project we got an inkling about some time ago as long time competitive swimming coach
Dudley Duncan is finalizing the plans for his SwimQuest Aquatic Center on a 6.4 acre parcel in
the Waterford business park off Hull Street Road. Duncan was involved heavily as an investor in
Steve Burton's ambitious Sports Quest athletic complex where we met in July of '11. He lost all of
his $300,000 investment when the project got totally over-extended and couldn't repay Shaw In-dustries
any of the $15 million they had loaned to it. After the project folded, he continued to
coach his Quest Swimming club using two Chesterfield area pools and now has reached the
point where he is able to build his own aquatic center, which will cost in the vicinity of $5 million.
Another project going forward at an even faster pace is the million sq. ft. Facebook data center in
the White Oak Technology Park. Facebook has named DPR Construction, who had been the GC
when the nearby White Oak Semiconductor (later to become QTS, where we met in Feb. of '12)
was built as their GC. Not a surprise since Facebook has used them for several other similar fa-cilities,
and I note that DPR has so far selected locals Liesfeld for site work and Colonial Webb for
3
mechanical among their list of subs.
Still getting news from the Craft Brewing sector on a monthly basis, as Lickinghole Creek (where
we met in July) opened their outpost at 1717 E. Franklin in Shockoe Bottom on Black Friday with
a travel trailer housing a small kitchen attached to the building's rear wall. Chesterfield's Steam
Bell is planning an outpost in the Fan, and Tabol (pronounced “table”) is readying one for a
Spring opening on Dawn St. near Battery Park in the Northside.
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