(Continued from page 2) Broad St. and the Pulse starts beating, which is currently scheduled to happen in Novem-ber. 3 And more recently yet, in February of '13, when we met at Uptown Alley, little did we ex-pect that Uppy's concept of upscale bowling facilities would get the traction they seem to have generated. Now it turns out that the Sunoco gas station on the corner of Grace & Belvidere, next door to VCU's Institute for Contemporary Art (we'll have to stop calling it that, as I understand Markel has made a major contribution for which it will receive nam-ing rights) is owned by Steve Uphoff. Work is already underway to demolish that struc-ture and remove the tanks in order to clear the site for an 18 story 209,000 sq. ft. tower which would contain a pharmacy and other retail on the ground floor with an Uptown Alley and 129 upscale apartments above. Since this project is about the only one in the area not being done by VCU, they must be wondering a little whether the new tower (which looks quite striking from the renderings, and will be one of tallest buildings in town) might be going to overshadow the unusual looking ICA in appearance as well as in height. We won't know for a while, since the tower isn't scheduled to start construction with Taylor & Parrish as GC until October, about the time the ICA opens. Although they don't control the gas station property, VCU did just purchase the nearby former New York Pizza site at 501 W. Broad, as they have been moving to upgrade the area around Broad & Belvidere, which they have been referring to as the “Gateway” to their Academic Campus. Another good sized hotel in the works, this one in the Innsbrook area, as an 8 story Drury Plaza Hotel with 217 rooms is proposed for the parking lot of the WestMark Office Park. This site is familiar to those of us on the Chapter Board, since we have been holding our monthly Board meetings there in the #2 building, courtesy of Andrea Neidhammer and her Magellan Healthcare employer. Continuing on the topic of hotels, my interest in jazz finally got me up to the Kabana roof-top on the 20th floor of the Homewood Suites & Hampton Inn at 700 E. Main St. as they are now offering music on Tuesday evenings between 7 & 9. On a nice weather evening, its very pleasant and the view is great, looking over at OJRP where our members at Do-minion work and following the progress of their new tower being built by Hourigan, with a beautiful sunset to cap it off. Not hard to see why Shamin won Hilton's 2016 Development Award in the Adaptive Reuse category for this $40 million project. I give it my strong rec-ommendation to any of you jazz lovers who might have a Tuesday evening free and catch good weather on it. Now that the Cookie Factory Lofts in the former Interbake building are up and going nice-ly, the developers are proposing to raze the former bakery's next door warehouse and re-place it with a 63,800 sq. ft., three story office building. They state that construction will begin as soon as it is 70% pre-leased, which I wouldn't think would take that long as in-terest in Scott's Addition space has gotten white hot with this building having the added attraction of a great view of the Redskins training site as well as the Children's & Science Museums. Lots of interest, as the State Dept. of General Services puts out an RFP on behalf of the ABC for 375,000 sq. ft. of distribution space and 80-90 thousand sq. ft. of office to replace their existing complex on Hermitage Rd. behind The Diamond. Big crowd of almost 150 potential bidders from more than 50 firms shows up on 6/20 for the pre-bid presentation (Continued on page 8)
IFMA_July_17_Newsletter 2017
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