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Oct. 17 Newsletter: Skyscrapers and density

Weather: High of 65, a pleasant fall weekend awaits

On this date in 1944, Richmond real estate tax collections cross $3 million for the first time.

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Going Up: Some of America’s biggest skyscrapers start in Chester

A 100,000-square-foot factory in a nondescript building on Ware Bottom Springs Road produces some of the world's most famous architecture.

More specifically, Enclos’ bread and butter is something called curtain wall. Common in high-rise buildings, curtain wall is an exterior façade that doesn’t support the structure it’s attached to.

Curtain wall is often prefabricated at facilities like the one in Chester, then installed on site. Read more here.

Near West End church is under contract to be turned into 72 housing units; developer selected from dozens of bids

Richmond’s Seventh Street Christian Church has reached an agreement to sell the church’s land to developer Charles Macfarlane, who is proposing to build 24 townhomes and a 48-unit, four-story condo building on the site.

  • The church is in the lot directly next to the cathedral that hosts the Greek Festival each year.

The plan is likely to be intensely debated by the Planning Commission and City Council in the coming months, as the city's stated desire to add more housing inventory clashes with neighborhoods seeking to preserve their character.

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As for the church’s famed Schantz organ, it will be disassembled next week and donated to a congregation in North Carolina.

Read more, and see renderings, here.

After budgeting $3.9M to help Richmonders pay for housing, the city has only given out $20,400

Giving out money to help Richmond residents make their rent or mortgage payments is apparently more complicated than city officials thought.

Out of more than 2,300 applications received by the city so far, only 22 have been approved.

The city's new finance department recently hired three part-time staffers to work through a backlog of 975 applications. Read more here.

Golf tourney prepares for new sponsor, course after this weekend's edition

After nearly a decade, Dominion Energy and the Country Club of Virginia are teeing up their final weekend sponsoring and hosting the PGA Tour Champions, ahead of a Monday announcement about the event's future.

Henrico County's EDA, along with Pros Inc., which owns Independence Golf Club in Chesterfield, purchased The Crossings Golf Club in 2024 with the idea of refurbishing it into a championship-caliber course. Read more here.

Also today in The Richmonder

In other news

The editor's desk

Thanks to everybody who dropped by our member-exclusive Zoom yesterday! There were tons of great questions about FOIA and its role in the reporting process.

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Michael Phillips, founding editor
mphillips@richmonder.org

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