For its latest project, a local general contractor is building a new home and then some.
Dominion Construction Partners has broken ground on Dominion Exchange, a 70,000-square-foot office and industrial project at 9003 Old Staples Mill Road in Henrico County.
Once completed, Dominion Exchange will serve as the new headquarters for DCP, which is planning to occupy about 12,000 square feet of the project. The remaining space would be leased out.
Founded in 2007, DCP is one of the many divisions of Commonwealth Commercial Partners. In addition to a sizable commercial real estate brokerage operation, CCP also has property management, development, forestry consulting, and hospitality management services.
DCP builds for all types of sectors, including office, restaurant, multifamily, industrial, and retail projects. Some recent work includes Silver Hills Development’s 263-unit apartment building off Monument Avenue, the YWCA’s office renovation, and the West Coast Provisions restaurant in GreenGate.
“We pretty much do a little bit of everything. We like to try to be diversified,” said DCP Executive Vice President Will Bynum. “If you look at (our) job list, it’s got a $60,000 ATM kiosk and a $40 million apartment (building), and a lot of stuff in between.”
DCP and its staff of about 30 are currently based out of an office in Innsbrook that it shares with CCP. Bynum said DCP realized last year that it was running out of space and needed to find its own home.
He said the group set out to find both office and warehouse storage space for DCP, but couldn’t find anything that suited its needs. It opted to lean on CCP and its various divisions to develop something new.
“There’s not a lot of product (like that) on the market,” Bynum said. “It was the first time that we’ve really been able to showcase all of (CCP’s) service lines in one central project. It’s exciting and we want to do more of this going forward.”
DCP declined to disclose the project cost.
Dominion Exchange’s 11-acre site was secured by CCP’s land sales division last summer for $1.2 million. DCP will be the general contractor on its new home, and CCP brokers are handling the marketing of the remaining 58,000 square feet in the project that’s available for lease. Cornerstone, an architecture firm not owned by CCP, is designing the project.
The brokers are talking to a couple of different folks now, Bynum said. “It seems like there’s some pretty decent interest because there’s not a lot of product like that. We want it to look cool, like something that’d be in Scott’s Addition or downtown, but we also have the functionality of having the warehouse attached to it.”
Site work began earlier this month and Bynum said DCP is hoping to get moved in by the second quarter of 2024.
A handful of other general contractors have relocated within the region in recent years. Last fall Riverstone left Chesterfield for a new office in Innsbrook, and Fortitude Commercial Contracting bought and built out its new headquarters in the Westwood area. Daniel & Co., a longtime local general contractor and developer, is also planning to leave its current office in Scott’s Addition to head to a building near The Diamond on Hermitage Road.
About Commonwealth Commercial Partners, LLC
Commonwealth Commercial Partners (CCP) is a leading full-service commercial real estate firm headquartered in Richmond, Virginia with offices in Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbus, Greenville, Hampton Roads, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Nashville, Norfolk, Raleigh/Durham, San Antonio, St. Louis, and Tampa. CCP has expertise in Commercial Sales & Leasing, Property & Asset Management, Construction Management, Hospitality Management, Project Management, Land Sales, and Forestry Consulting.
