An urban community designed to appeal to a healthy, creative lifestyle is nearing completion in what some see as the next up-and-coming neighborhood in Richmond.
Artisan Hill — perched atop a hill in Richmond’s East End with panoramic views of the James River and downtown Richmond — features apartments, live/work artist spaces, art studios and a full-size lap pool.
It is in the greater Fulton area about five blocks east of the Rocketts Landing residential and commercial development and a couple of blocks from Williamsburg Road.
The Artisan Hill project is made up of two new six-story apartment buildings overlooking a courtyard with a 75-foot-long pool and the conversion of a four-story historic elementary school (most recently Fulton Hill Studios) into 21 apartments, 12 live/work artist spaces, a market café, an art gallery, offices, a ceramic studio and a 3,000 square-foot gym.
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“For many years, Fulton was a well-kept secret,” said the developer, Margaret Freund, founder and president of Fulton Hill Properties in Richmond.
With the nearby Church Hill housing inventory becoming expensive, Fulton is getting new respect, she said.
“We are really proud of this project, and we love this neighborhood,” said Freund, whose company is named after this once-vibrant part of Richmond.
The neighborhood is diverse, and the residents are forward-looking, she said. “We are happy and honored to be part of the neighborhood growth.”
Apartments in the new buildings, 204 in all, are one- and two-bedrooms ranging from 540 square feet to 1,500 square feet. Rents are $950 to $2,300 a month and include cable, internet, trash pickup and surface parking.
Thirty percent of the apartments will be leased to people who make no more than 80 percent of area median income, including 10 units to people who earn no more than 60 percent of the area median income. The area median income for a household in Richmond is $83,200.
The income caps for these 61 apartments satisfy terms of a $750,000 grant from the city and loans of $26.2 million for the new construction and $6.2 million for the historic renovation from the Virginia Housing Development Authority.
“We’re interested in any deal that underwrites well and fits within our mission,” said Dale Wittie, development director at the VHDA.
“This particular one is a bit pioneering in terms of where it is,” Wittie said. “It is not in Shockoe; it is not in Manchester and it is not in Rocketts Landing,” once outlying areas that have become popular in the past decade for redevelopment.
Artisan Hill is a way to get new housing units into an area to spark revitalization, Wittie said.
Freund incorporated three major principles into the design: the arts, wellness and community involvement.
Ten art studios, ranging from 250 square feet to 350 square feet, strictly for working, not living, are located in an attached section to one of the new apartment buildings near the pool.
The gallery in the school building, the former Robert Fulton Elementary School, will be available for art shows and private events.
The gym will be open not only to residents but also to the public for memberships. In addition to offering access to that and the pool for residents, Artisan Hill will have a yoga studio in the historic building and an aerobic room near the pool with treadmills, stationary bikes and elliptical machines — all focused on wellness.
The development is within bicycling and walking distance — about five blocks — to the Virginia Capital Trail and six blocks from a stop for GRTC Pulse, the 7.6-mile bus rapid transit line between Willow Lawn and Rocketts Landing along Broad and Main streets.
A computer app will be available to residents who want to volunteer, making it easy for them to know about the needs in the community.
The first residents have moved into the first two floors of a 126-unit building. The rest of the building is expected to be certified for occupancy within the next couple of weeks. The second building, with 78 units and a rooftop deck, is expected to be finished by mid-April.
Both buildings have five residential stories and one level of partially underground secure parking.
All but a couple of the 11 live/work artist spaces — big open rooms, each with a kitchen and a bath — in the historic building are rented, even though the restoration won’t be finished until July.
Artisan Hill brings a well-designed urban element into a residential neighborhood, said Fulton resident and sculptor Paul DiPasquale, former president of the Greater Fulton Civic Association.
“Margaret Freund has a good track record of paying attention to details and doing a quality job,” said DiPasquale, who is known for creating the Arthur Ashe statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond; the Native American “Connecticut” statue, also in Richmond; and King Neptune in Virginia Beach.
Freund’s downtown Richmond projects include renovating the Bottoms Up Pizza building in Shockoe Bottom; converting the Lady Byrd Hat factory into a live music venue and nightclub (now home to CarMax Inc.’s digital and technology innovation center); turning the Canal Crossing warehouse and tobacco drying shed into a mixed-use project in Shockoe Bottom; and transforming Haxall View, a former cigar factory, into apartments, office and retail space at East Main and 21st streets.
Artisan Hill — on a 7-acre site bound by Union and Goddin streets and a wooded area to the west — will bring attention to a neglected area of the city, said DiPasquale, who lives three blocks from the development.
Once the gateway to Richmond from Williamsburg in its heyday, Fulton is regarded today as the poor cousin to Church Hill, he said.
“The project will be helpful to the neighborhood in terms of the city paying attention to Fulton,” DiPasquale said. “It will bring a focus to streets, services, individual houses and residents that we don’t have right now.”
The neighborhood is made of mostly lower working class, he said, adding that more than half the properties are rentals owned by people who do not live in the neighborhood. Even so, residents are engaged in the community and they like the project, DiPasquale said. “If anyone objected, they didn’t come to any of at least four meetings.”
He has observed the project while walking his dogs since construction started in August 2017.
Freund used brick and concrete brick for the exterior of the apartment buildings. Each unit has a balcony, granite countertops, maple cabinets and maple flooring in the main living areas. She added soffits, overlapping eaves along the roofline — an architectural detail not commonly used today — as a nod to the deep overhangs on the school building.
She will restore a cobblestone road, Carlisle Avenue, that runs between the new construction and historic building and add street lighting in keeping with the historic character of the neighborhood.
All the huge windows and wood gutters in the old school, a historic tax credit project, are being restored.
“I commend a woman in a male-dominated profession, and Margaret is doing very well and she has a lot of vision,” said Nea Poole, co-principal of Poole & Poole Architecture in Midlothian, the architect on the new construction piece. Poole said she has never done art studios on a new apartment project.
Nor is it usual to put such a large pool in an apartment project, Poole said. “Normally, apartment pools are designed to look like a hotel or resort pool. Margaret wanted it to be functional.”
Freund added a bicycle repair shop that will stock parts in vending machines and a dog grooming station.
The two most popular apartment amenities are dog-related and bike-related, Poole said.
“People are buying lifestyles. Apartments are getting smaller, but amenities are getting bigger.”
Freund is hitting on “fitness, art, a beautiful pool, clubrooms and a place for the dog,” Poole said.
She is appealing to a wide demographic, including nursing students, medical professionals and workforce housing in all age groups. While targeting a market to artists is unusual, it made sense for Freund.
She rented space in the historic Fulton Hill Studios in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a pop music band member.
The school, at 1000 Carlisle Ave., was built in 1917 and closed in 1979. It was later converted into artist studios by Gus Garber. Freund purchased the 50,000-square-foot building from the Gus Garber estate in 1997.
She brought the building up to code and continued to rent studios to artists. This time, she is totally redoing it — reconfiguring, adding space and keeping all the historic features.
