RICHMOND, VA - Virginia Union University’s multimillion-dollar plan to build hundreds of apartments on the edge of its campus now calls for a pair of six-story buildings, preserving part of the old Richmond Community Hospital and adding 100 more units at a mixed-use development underway nearby.
The developers and architects on the two projects presented their latest plans for up to 200 apartments on VUU-owned land at Brook and Overbrook roads, including the old hospital site, and for the mixed-use building at Brook and Lombardy Street that’s now planned to include apartments.
The plans were presented in a community meeting Thursday evening that followed several “listening sessions” with area residents over the summer. The Overbrook plan updates an earlier proposal that appeared to involve razing the 1930s-era hospital building, the first black hospital in Richmond.
The new plan from developer The Steinbridge Group calls for preserving part of the dilapidated structure and incorporating it into one of two six-story apartment buildings. The buildings would fill the hospital site at 1209 Overbrook Road and other university-owned land at 2410-2416 Brook Road, at the corner with Overbrook.
The preserved part of the hospital structure, which would include the 1932 cornerstone and the Richmond Community Hospital sign above the door, would commemorate the hospital’s history, VUU said in an announcement.
“The Virginia Union development intends to adaptively reuse much of the former Richmond Community Hospital and create the City’s largest honor for Black medical professionals — permanently preserving the hospital’s legacy after decades of the building being abandoned,” the announcement said.
Commemorations would include naming structures and greenspaces for black medical professionals including Dr. Sarah Garland Jones, a hospital founder and the first woman to receive a medical license in Virginia, and Dr. Frank Royal, a physician and civic leader who chaired the National Medical Association and led VUU’s board of trustees for three decades.
Oral histories of the hospital and its legacy are also planned, and bricks from the razed part of the hospital structure would be repurposed in the development. The announcement said structural analysis of the building is ongoing.
The commemorative work represents a $5 million investment by Philadelphia-based Steinbridge on top of the development’s $40 million projected cost, VUU said. University President Hakim Lucas said Thursday that honoring the hospital was always a goal.
“We’ve always said from the beginning that we were going to find a way to preserve the legacy,” Lucas said. “We’ve always said that. It’s never been a question. It’s more than just memorialization of the site; it’s a continued legacy moment.”
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