Old Ukrop’s building to become classrooms

While Richmonders are buzzing about the potential sale of Richmond grocery chain Ukrop’s, construction is taking place at one of its former locations at 500 N. Harrison St.

VCU has acquired the property behind Club 534 for $9 million, and plans to turn the store into classroom space and extra storage for the James Branch Cabell Library. The newly named 500 Academic Centre will house six 50-80 seat classrooms and 120,000 low-demand volumes from the library. The design was created by the architecture firm Baskervill, and construction is being handled by Kjellstrom & Lee.

The VCU Real Estate Foundation purchased the location from BET Investments, a Pennsylvania group that Ukrop’s leased from. The non-profit foundation is a board completely separate from VCU that can move quicker than the state and purchases property in the university’s interest. VCU then purchases the property from the foundation at a small increase in price to cover the overhead of the foundation.

“Their mission is to support the university through the acquisition and ownership of property,” said Brian Ohlinger, the associate vice president of facilities management. “But they do have their own board of directors, and they act semi-independently, but with the notion that what they buy and sell is supporting us.”

VCU plans to keep the 150-space lot for staff and student parking.

“Probably five to 10 years away it will be a combination of housing, parking, commercial retail,” Ohlinger said. “It will be kind of a mixed use development that will be on the entire block at some point.”