Chamberlayne school building site to become city’s third Planned Parenthood clinic

The former Brook Hill School at Chamberlayne and Azalea avenues is planned to be razed to make way for a new Planned Parenthood health center. (Jonathan Spiers photo)

The site of an old school building at Richmond’s northern boundary is planned to become a new clinic for a reproductive healthcare nonprofit.

The Virginia League of Planned Parenthood has struck a deal with the city to acquire the former Brook Hill School site at Chamberlayne and Azalea avenues, where the nonprofit is planning its third Richmond health center.

The school building would be razed to make way for the new facility, which would add to VLPP’s existing health centers in Richmond’s West End and East End. The nonprofit also has health centers in Hampton and Virginia Beach.

The city has declared the 1-acre property at 4929 Chamberlayne Ave. as surplus and plans to sell it to VLPP for $10 through a deal in which VLPP would commit to constructing a $6 million, 10,000-square-foot facility that’s projected to accommodate at least 12,000 visits per year and create at least 20 jobs.

The facility would provide, according to a city memo, “family planning, primary care and gender-affirming care with subsidized fees to make care affordable to city residents who do not have insurance or whose insurance doesn’t cover the care they need or have high deductible plans.”

The project stems from a resolution supported by Mayor Levar Stoney and approved by City Council in 2022 expressing the city’s opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion a protected right under the Constitution.

The resolution called for the Virginia General Assembly to protect and expand abortion access in the state, and Stoney and the city’s human services department extended their support to VLPP, which worked with the city to identify the Chamberlayne site as a suitable location for a new clinic.

Paulette McElwain

CEO Paulette McElwain said the additional location would help VLPP provide its services to more people in Richmond and from across the country. According to the city memo, VLPP provides reproductive healthcare and primary healthcare services to tens of thousands of Virginians annually, as well as “evidence informed, age-appropriate sexuality education programming to youth and young adults.”

“In light of the various bans on reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare in nearly all of Virginia’s surrounding states, Mayor Stoney’s administration worked with us to identify property where we could expand access to critical reproductive and primary healthcare,” McElwain said.

“We plan to use the property to build a new health center that will allow us to provide comprehensive healthcare to approximately 5,000 Richmond-area residents and folks traveling from across the South to access care,” she said.

McElwain said the former school building would need to be replaced to provide the facility, which would be similar to VLPP’s East End Health Center at 1122 N. 25th St. The West End facility is at 201 N. Hamilton St.

The facility will be similar to VLPP’s East End Health Center on 25th Street. (Image courtesy VLPP)

“To provide the healthcare experience the community needs and deserves, we anticipate it will be more cost effective to build from the ground up rather than renovate the current building,” McElwain said.

Once called the REAL School as well as Brook Hill School, the two-story, 6,500-square-foot building was deemed to be in “decent condition” by Richmond Public Schools, which transferred the property to the city in 2022. A 2021 committee report of vacant RPS properties also noted, however, that any renovation “would likely incur significant costs” including a new roof, removal of old wiring and potentially hazardous material.

The building was once used to care and treat children with cerebral palsy and at different times housed a program for pregnant girls and a residential program for “emotionally disturbed” teenagers, according to the RPS report, which indicates its last use was in the late 1970s.

The city has assessed the property’s taxable value at $1.24 million.

An ordinance to allow the property transfer from the city to VLPP is on the agenda for the Planning Commission’s next meeting July 16. It’s scheduled to go before City Council on July 22, with a public hearing to be held prior to a vote.

McElwain said a project timeline has not been established. She said VLPP has not engaged a general contractor, architect or other firms at this point.

The health center would add to other developments in the works for the Chamberlayne corridor.

Across Azalea from the site, StyleCraft Homes is preparing to break ground on its Crossings at Mulberry project, a 160-unit townhome development planned on 16 acres beside and south of the post office on Wilmer Avenue. Farther north, Crescent Development and Spy Rock Real Estate Group are developing Helios Apartments, a 186-unit income-restricted complex.

In recent years, the area at Chamberlayne and Azalea has lost a Walmart Neighborhood Market and a Walgreens pharmacy that likewise closed.

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