Dormant shopping center to become condos

A unanimous vote by the Suffolk City Council authorizes Coastal Virginia Partners, LLC. to proceed with plans to construct a new 78-unit condominium complex at 1226 white Marsh Rd.

During their Wednesday, July 17 meeting held at City Hall, council voted seven to 0 to approve RZN2023-007 (Conditional) to rezone and amend property on 1226 white Marsh Rd from B-2, General Commercial zoning district to RU-12 (Conditional), Residential Urban 12 and B-2 (Conditional), General Commercial zoning district. Submitted by Bob Arnette of Coastal Virginia Partners, LLC, the included proffers detail the project having a limit of 78 condominium units max, a minimum square footage of 1,000 square feet, and raised/elevated slab foundation, among others. Due to personal interests, Vice Mayor Lue Ward disqualified himself from the vote.

Director of Planning and Community Development Kevin Wyne provided more details on the former shopping center during his presentation.

“The property right now does feed into Booker T. Washington Elementary School, JFK Middle School and Lakeland High School. These schools, at this time, all have adequate capacity to absorb the students that would be generated by this project,” Wyne said. “ … This has been a shopping center that has seen [a] multitude of tenants for quite some time, but has largely not operated as a thriving shopping center for quite some time.”

Along with planning staff recommending the approval of the request, the Planning Commission also voted five to two during their June 18 meeting for a recommendation of approval of the application with the proffers. Speaking in support and representing the applicant, Norfolk Real Estate Lawyer Grady Palmer thanked Wyne, staff and the commission for their recommendation.

“As Kevin noted, this is a unique project. We’re seeing revitalization projects like this all over Hampton Roads. And it’s not just in Suffolk, but in all of Hampton Roads, we’re dealing with vacant commercial buildings … But, this shopping center is in desperate need of revitalization,” Palmer said during the meeting.

When describing the image of the shopping center, Palmer detailed that a “complete tear down” of the shopping center property will occur.

“We are reserving about an acre for the corner there … for more of a community scale retail,” Palmer said. “We had a lot of discussion at the Planning Commission about whether the entire parcel should be commercial, whether the corner piece was sufficient, but we think given the surrounding property being residential, that a more of a community scale commercial site makes a lot more sense, and certainly, tearing down the old shopping center building and replacing it with some moderately priced, well designed housing makes a lot of sense and certainly something that should be encouraged in the city.”

Palmer told council demolition will take place “one year from tonight.” According to Palmer, once complete the condos will have a sale price of approximately $300,000.

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