Housing nonprofits teaming up on modular apartment project in East End

The apartments as they would appear along Mosby Street. (Images courtesy Project:Homes)

A local housing nonprofit is planning what it believes will be the first modularly constructed apartments in Richmond through a collaboration with an out-of-town builder and a local housing peer.

Project:Homes is working with fellow nonprofit Urban Hope and Module, a manufactured home builder out of Pittsburgh, on a nine-unit apartment building on Mosby Street in the East End that would be built in parts at Module’s production facility, delivered to Richmond and then assembled by Project:Homes.

Urban Hope would own and manage the apartments, with rents targeted to households with incomes well below the area median income. Specific rents have yet to be set, but Urban Hope targets renters below 50% AMI. The units would also be available to public housing voucher holders.

An aerial view of the planned apartments near the corner of Mosby and O streets.

The two nonprofits teamed up to secure a $500,000 innovation grant from Virginia Housing for the project, which is estimated at nearly $2 million. Virginia Housing connected Project:Homes with Module, which designs and builds manufactured homes and apartments with modern styles.

Lee Householder

Lee Householder, Project:Homes’ CEO, said the apartments would be the first he knows of in the region to be modularly constructed.

“I haven’t seen it in Richmond. I know that people in Virginia have experimented at different scales,” Householder said. “I like the scale of this project: mid-size, nine units. We also think it’s a great location, and it will be deeply affordable. It’s a very exciting project.”

The three-story building is planned at 815-821 Mosby St., a quarter-acre lot beside the Va. Mini Mart convenience store at the corner of Mosby and O Street, across from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge.

Project:Homes purchased the three-parcel site for $375,000 in late 2023 from Cava Cos., which had owned the land since 2017.

The vacant lot is between existing buildings catty-corner from the Leigh Street bridge.

Matt Morgan, Project:Homes’ director of neighborhood revitalization who’s heading up the apartments project, said Cava Cos. principal Frank Cava approached the nonprofit about the site.

City property records show Cava paid $87,500 for the parcels six years earlier. The parcels are currently assessed by the city at $234,000 combined.

Matt Morgan

“He knew that we had some other properties in that area and asked if we were interested in purchasing it,” Morgan said. “As prices have gone up in Church Hill, sites like that one on Mosby are a little bit unique in that they’re still attainable for our organization to purchase, and we’re able to manage the transition from some of the hotter development pieces of Richmond to what’s gone to the market rate.”

Morgan said each of the nine apartments planned for the Mosby Street site would be built by Module as individual units and then shipped and put together on site.

Of Module, Morgan said, “We have a lot of similar goals in terms of both affordability and how we approach housing development.”

The collaboration would be the latest between Project:Homes and Urban Hope, which have worked together on several duplexes in the area that Project:Homes built and Urban Hope owns.

Sarah Hale

“They approached us to see if we might be interested, and of course we really are,” said Sarah Hale, Urban Hope’s executive director. She said the Mosby Street apartments would add to the area’s housing supply and help meet the demand for units with lower rents.

“Nine more units is a significant increase in our portfolio, and we are really looking forward to having expanded capacity, because the demand is huge,” Hale said.

The apartments would have two bedrooms and one bathroom and total about 830 square feet with a balcony.

The group is applying for a special-use permit from the city to allow the project, which received design approval this month from Richmond’s Commission of Architectural Review. The request will now go to the Planning Commission and City Council for consideration at upcoming meetings.

The rear of the building as it would appear from O Street.

Meanwhile, Project:Homes is also seeking special-use approval for a warehouse it wants to build at 112 Carnation St., next door to its headquarters at 88 Carnation.

The nonprofit previously sought a similar facility at the site two years ago but was denied approval by City Council following opposition from Michael Jones, the Ninth District councilmember at the time and now a state delegate. Jones argued that the location, just south of Midlothian Turnpike, was unsuitable for a warehouse because it would encroach on existing houses adjacent to the property.

Where that project was focused on manufacturing mobile homes specifically, Householder said the new iteration is a 6,900-square-foot warehouse intended to be used as an innovation facility for testing various kinds of modular building methods, including prefabrication and panelized construction.

A permit request for that project was scheduled to go before City Council this Monday but was continued at the request of current Ninth District Councilmember Nicole Jones.

Project:Homes is currently developing an 83-unit apartment building at 2100 Bainbridge St. in Swansboro. Morgan said that building, which would rent to seniors at 60% AMI, is targeted for completion by the end of this year.

At the same time, Urban Hope is in the process of converting the former Tenth Street Baptist Church at 2300 Fairmount Ave. into its new headquarters and four apartments. Hale said the nonprofit expects to move in this summer and start renting out the apartments after that.

It is currently based in Shockoe Bottom at 2006 E. Franklin St., where it recently moved to make room for other tenants at its former headquarters on North 25th Street. The Franklin Street space previously housed marketing firm Red Orange Studio, which relocated to Northside.

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