Henrico supervisors deny proposed 6-story apartment building on Parham Road

The Henrico Board of Supervisors issued a rare development denial May 14, rejecting a provisional use permit request from Gateway Apartments that would have allowed the construction of a six-story apartment building overlooking Parham Road.  The denial came despite the proposal’s endorsement from the Henrico Planning Commission and the county’s planning staff.

In moving to deny the case, Tuckahoe Supervisor Jody Rogish raised concerns about traffic, density, height, and the fact that Douglas S. Freeman High School, which the apartment complex feeds, is already nearly 5% over capacity. Approval of the case would have set a precedent, Rogish said, and would not be consistent with the character of the area, which doesn't feature any other buildings of the same height.

The site’s existing zoning allows construction of a five-story building at the site, but the applicant, Colony Apartment Homes, sought a sixth floor in order to make the project economically feasible by adding 20 more units, according to Colony President Steven Alexander.

“We have spent an additional six months in delays from our original December hearing date, spent huge sums of money in architectural, engineering and legal fees, and lost revenue,” Alexander told the board. “A vote against this minor modification recommendation – recommended by staff and the planning commission – will leave the development community bewildered and unsettled."

Alexander told supervisors that his company has owned and operated properties in Henrico since 1968 and has only sold one of them in that time.

“We do not build and sell, we do not churn and burn – it is not our business model,” Alexander said. “Unfortunately, this project will not move forward without this approval. It simply does not make financial sense.”

Those arguments did not convince Rogish.

“I understand [the applicant] has a fiscal responsibility to his investors, but I have a responsibility to the students at Freeman to not go over capacity by this much,” Rogish said. “I know it’s only [proposed to generate] 10 students, and that doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s now more than 100 students over capacity.”

The project would have removed 20 existing apartments and added 100 new ones in the new building, as well as commercial uses on the first floor, facing Parham Road.

The primary opposition to the case from a group of homes across Parham Road in a neighborhood that was mostly built after the apartment complex opened.

“So the neighborhood knew what they were getting in the area in which it was being built,” Alexander said.

But Rogish pushed back on that claim, reminding the applicant that while its initial R-6 (residential) zoning classification allowed as many as 20 units per acre, a provisional use permit issued in 2019 more than doubled that to 43 units per acre.

“So while residents maybe moved in knowing it was R-6 [a multi-family zoning district], this is a lot more density in this area,” Rogish said.

A resident of that neighborhood told supervisors that residents there are used to seeing treetops from their yards but would instead of seen the new apartment building towering over them.

– Joseph Maltby contributed to this article.