Despite Richmond’s growth, vacant properties remain
A boarded-up building on Broad Street near campus. Richmond has 546 abandoned buildings, down from 2,000 a few years ago. Photo by Bilan Osman.
Bilan Osman, Contributing Writer
Richmond has grown tremendously — 11% in the past decade, according to Richmond Economic Development. However, boarded-up and vacant buildings still line the streets, especially downtown on Broad, Grace and Hull streets.
The current number of vacant properties listed is 546, less than in previous years. The city’s Property Maintenance Division tracks vacant properties in a database released twice a year, according to Michelle Coward, deputy director of property maintenance code enforcement.
A property can remain vacant as long as the owners meet upkeep standards. The city cannot require owners to occupy it, according to Coward.
If a vacant property and its owners do not meet upkeep standards, the city has three options if all others fail: Board up, demolish or sell the property through the tax sale program, according to Coward.
Coward said in the years she’s been working with the City of Richmond, the number of vacant properties has gone down. A couple of years ago the city had tracked up to 2,000 vacant properties and now there are 546, according to Coward.
“It has absolutely been coming down,” Coward said.
Many cities in the United States have been struggling with the issue of vacant properties, according to The Center for Community Progress. The U.S. Census report in 2024 also shows 6.9% rental vacancy and 1% homeowner vacancy across the nation.
The cause of vacant properties varies depending on the region or city and must be looked at with context, according to Benjamin Teresa, director of the RVA Eviction Lab and associate professor of urban and regional studies at VCU.
Two examples of vacancies are storefront and residential properties. In low-income neighborhoods, the demand might be low because there isn’t a high demand for additional housing or storefronts, according to Teresa.
Neighborhoods that are in high demand or experiencing gentrification might be going through a moment of transition. Owners might leave the property vacant in hopes that an investor such as VCU will buy it, according to Teresa.
He said examples of storefront vacancies can be seen around the VCU campus.
“And a lot of those storefronts on Grace were vacant — and you know, sometimes it’s hard to know, is the rent very high? Is the area in transition? So there can be a complex set of factors,” Teresa said.
VCU is buying and building more properties in Richmond, according to Teresa. The university didn’t always own properties at the intersection between Broad and Belvidere where the Institute for Contemporary Art is.
One of those properties across from the ICA, 535 W. Broad St. used to be a gas station owned by the Morgan Property Group back in 2015, according to The Richmond Dispatch. The property — now demolished — is part of VCU’s plan to build a new 196,000-square-foot Arts and Innovation building, according to Greater Richmond Partnership.
VCU has begun working on properties on West Grace Street this semester and broke ground on the new athletic village in the Diamond District on Oct. 30, according to the VCU website. This is all part of VCU’s ONE VCU Master Plan to transform the campus.
Cities like Richmond have a variety of ways to tackle the issue of vacant properties, according to Teresa. Organizations like the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust build and renovate properties for affordable home ownership, and government welfare programs like Medicaid could be expanded.
Marianne Pitts, the deputy director of planning and policy for the City of Richmond, said the city is establishing a new zoning ordinance — which hasn’t been updated since 1976 — to give property owners more choices of what to develop by relaxing permit requirements.
One project, the Second Street corridor plan in Jackson Ward, works with the community and business owners to bring back life to the neighborhood, according to Pitts.
“So it’s a cool time to be looking at this because there might actually be solutions that a lot of people are looking at from all different sorts of angles in order to get businesses back into some of these vacant buildings, especially in these downtown corridors,” Pitts said.
Reina Xu, a fourth-year marketing student, said Richmond doesn’t feel like a city and that it’s sad to see vacant properties.
“It’s kind of sad to see them rot away because it’s not getting put to use and we have so many people that need the resources for new buildings, new stores, new apartments,” Xu said.
Building housing for students on West Grace Street is a good start, according to Xu.
“But obviously you need to put older unused resources to better use first than to expand to a totally new development area — which is taking away access for other people,” Xu said.
Reed Trouslot, a fourth-year art education student, said they have noticed spaces being built for athletics and humanities and sciences.
Trouslot said the art education department uses the Franklin Terrace building, which was built in 1900, according to city property records.
“It has a crazy amount of mold and students will literally get sick from being in the building,” Trouslot said. “And yet, literally across the street, they built this whole new million-dollar-plus building — I mean it’s discouraging for sure.”
