Developer drops $13M for former Feed More HQ near The Diamond

Feed More’s former complex, outlined in yellow, is beside the interstate and across Rhoadmiller Street from The Park at RVA. (BizSense file photos)

A development that’ll bring nearly 200 new residences to The Diamond area has taken a step forward.

The 6-acre former Feed More headquarters at 1415-1603 Rhoadmiller St. sold last week to developer K. Hovnanian for $13 million. 

1. K. Hovnanian, a New Jersey firm that’s a division of publicly traded Hovnanian Enterprises, is planning to raze the now-vacant, 90,000-square-foot former tobacco warehouses to make way for nearly 200 for-rent, two-over-two residences. The complex will be called The Lofts at Durham Park. 

The purchase price amounts to a per-acre rate of about $2.1 million. The city most recently assessed the property at $9 million.

6. 

   A rendering of some of the planned units.

K. Hovnanian had initially sought to develop the project as for-sale condo units when it first filed plans last year. But Martin Rizer, the firm’s vice president of land acquisition for its Mid-Atlantic Division, said they’ll now be rental units.

Rizer said that change occurred a few months ago when Hovnanian was approached by New York private equity firm Mandrake Capital Partners, which made them an offer to purchase all the units.

“They saw this opportunity and they wanted to take it as a rental community,” Rizer said. “We were looking to build it as a for-sale community but this structure seems to make sense as well.”

He said as Hovnanian build units, it will sell them to Mandrake, which will then rent them out. The units will all be two-over-twos, meaning each building will reach four stories, with a pair of two-story residences stacked on top of one another. 

Demolition of the former Feed More buildings is scheduled to begin in the next few months. Rizer said the design and general contracting will be handled by K. Hovnanian in-house. 

He said this is K. Hovnanian’s first development in Richmond city limits, but that the firm has more than 800 single-family lots under contract throughout Henrico and Chesterfield counties. 

The Lofts at Durham Park will be within blocks of two major construction projects: VCU Athletics’ 42-acre athletic village and the ballpark-anchored Diamond District.

Feed More, a nonprofit food bank, had called the Rhoadmiller Street complex home since 2000 until it relocated to a newly built, $40 million facility in Henrico County last year.

Feed More’s President and CEO Doug Pick said in a statement that the Rhoadmiller buildings served the group “well and faithfully.”

“But it is never the structure that determines the goodness of an organization – it is its people and the mission,” Pick said. “The neighbors we serve are at the heart of everything we do, and our focus remains the same as always: nourishing communities and empowering lives across Central Virginia.”

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