Historic Tobacco Row property in Richmond is for sale

Published May 8, 2013 by Paula C. Squires

One of Richmond’s best-known historic renovations, Tobacco Row, is on the market.

Jeff Linton, a spokesman for the property’s owner, Cleveland-based ForestCity, confirmed Wednesday that the property is for sale.

ForestCity has hired CBRE to handle the listing. CBRE offices in Richmond, Norfolk and Washington, D.C., are involved in marketing the property, whose price is not listed.

The mixed-use project, not far the banks of the James River in downtown Richmond, represents one of the city’s most unique adaptive reuse projects. It included the renovation of six abandoned tobacco warehouses into more than 719 apartments, 12 town homes and a 137,000-square-foot office building, known as the Edgeworth building. The Edgeworth orginally was built in 1923 and operated as a tobacco factory for the Larus and Brothers Co.

According to CBRE in Richmond, the assessed value of the property is $105.7 million, including the residential units and the office building.

ForestCity also owns Short Pump Town Center in Henrico County and is the former owner of White Oak Village, another Henrico shopping center that it sold last year. Linton said he couldn’t comment on why ForestCity is selling Tobacco Row, which would be its second major sale of property in the Richmond market.

Work began on Tobacco Row, at 2301 E. Cary St. in Shockoe Bottom, in 1991 when two warehouse buildings were renovated and opened as loft apartments.

ForestCity got involved in the late 1990s and worked with a public-private partnership to finance and redevelop the warehouses.

CBRE says the occupancy rate for the brick front residential units is 95 percent. The occupancy rate is 97 percent for the office building, which includes such tenants as the Hirschler Fleischer law firm, HKS Inc., an architecture firm, and the accounting firm of Ernst & Young.