Fountainhead Properties and The WVS Cos. have signed a contract to buy the former Reynolds Metals properties for an undisclosed price. The two Richmond-based companies created a joint venture, Fall Line Capital LLC, to develop the former aluminum foil manufacturing plant into a mixed-use project of apartments and commercial space.
The deal is expected to close by year-end. The six-acre site along the banks of the Haxall Canal is a prime piece of downtown real estate, providing the missing piece to complete the city’s development of the Canal Walk.
“We will be transforming what had been industrial and abandoned properties into contemporary rental apartments, combined with diverse and creative commercial space,” said Rick Gregory, a principal of Fountainhead Properties.
The developers plan to break ground in January on the project’s first phase — rehabilitation of the existing historic warehouses into 150 apartments.
Both companies have been active in the revitalization of Richmond’s River District. Fountainhead Properties developed the Plant Zero Art Center and New Manchester Flats while The WVS Cos. was the force behind Rocketts Landing, a 45-acre mixed use development along the banks of the James River.
This is a great time to link the Haxall Canal into the lower Kanawha Canal by diging out a link from the new freed up land from the end of the Haxall Canal to the top of abaondoned Tidewater locks which would allow them to add new lock gates to the canal and allow boats to start heading back up to Maymount for the first time in over a 160 years. It would make Richmond’s Canal competive in that it will be one of a only a few places where you can ride though a working canal lock.
If we don’t restore the missing canal link and restore the canal lock now we will lose this once in a 200 year chance to get our canal back.
--The Kanawha Canal Missing link of Downtown Richmond
Feb. 25, 2010 at 03:16 PM