Local investor Marwaha lands Bryant & Stratton as first big tenant in bid to refill empty office tower

101 Gateway Centre Parkway was once the local office for Northrop Grumman. (BizSense file photo)

The Chesterfield outpost of Bryant & Stratton College is relocating elsewhere in the county, while helping a local real estate investor begin to capitalize on his latest empty-office building gamble.

Bryant & Stratton College recently signed a deal to move its local campus into part of Marwaha Tower, a six-story building at 101 Gateway Centre Parkway. 

The private, nonprofit college will leave its current home in the Cross Pointe Marketplace, where it’s been for decades, and move into about 57,000 square feet across three floors of the 127,000-square-foot Marwaha building. 

Gagan Marwaha, a local real estate investor who specializes in buying empty, distressed office buildings, fixing them up and refilling them with new tenants, bought what was then called Patriot Tower last year for nearly $6 million, spent $2 million more renovating it, and renamed it. Bryant & Stratton is the first tenant to sign on since Marwaha took ownership. 

The Chesterfield campus is one of 16 Bryant & Stratton has nationally, and local market director Beth Murphy said the school has been in Cross Pointe Marketplace for all 26 years she’s been with the college. 

She said the college’s enrollment has more than doubled in the past decade, going from 489 students in 2016 to just over 1,000 this year, rendering its current 47,000-square-foot space too small.  

“Our current location has been wonderful, but we are growing. The Richmond campus has been on a continuous growth pattern, and so it was time for us to move. But we wanted to stay in Chesterfield,” Murphy said. 

Bryant & Stratton has been in a strip center on Hull Street for decades. (Mike Platania photo)

Nursing, medical assistance and business are among Bryant & Stratton’s most popular programs, and Murphy said Marwaha Tower’s proximity to multiple hospitals, such as HCA’s Johnston-Willis and Chippenham hospitals, also sweetened the deal. 

“When you look at the high-demand occupations in Chesterfield, our programs mirror a lot of those,” she said. “This has been in the works for a little bit, trying to find the perfect location to relocate the campus, and we’re really, really fortunate and excited that we found the space that we did.”

Murphy said the school is working with Silvestri Architects, a firm based out of Bryant & Stratton’s hometown of Buffalo, New York, to design the new space into classrooms and offices, which will be across the building’s second, third and fourth floors. 

The college is aiming to be moved in for its winter 2026 semester, which starts next January. 

Now that he’s landed Bryant & Stratton as an anchor tenant, Marwaha said he’s finalizing a lease with an unidentified tenant to take the remaining roughly 70,000 square feet in the building. Commonwealth Commercial’s Tucker Dowdy and Eric Hammond are handling leasing. 

Gagan Marwaha

Marwaha said he has an approach that’s helped him make deals with tenants such as Bryant & Stratton and with Henrico County Public Schools and ColonialWebb in his other previously vacant office buildings. 

“We’re here to make deals. We’re quick decision-makers, flexible on lease terms and well funded to fund their tenant improvements,” Marwaha said. 

He said he anticipates Marwaha Tower will be fully leased by the end of the year. He’s already working on his next project.

Last year, he bought the former Capital City Physicians Building in the West End, snagging the 55,000-square-foot office for just over $4 million in a foreclosure auction. Marwaha said he’s working on renovating that building now. 

He also remains on the lookout for more office opportunities in the Richmond area but said financing such deals is difficult. 

“Right now it’s challenging to finance a spec office or an office deal. All the lending is based on my balance sheet and goodwill,” he said. “We’re getting stuff done, but it’s challenging.”

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