// mls zone 10
As you move east down Cary Street from VCU, you begin to notice a gradual increase in the size of the buildings that surround you. They get taller, more massive and modern and it begins to feel more and more like you are in a ‘Downtown.’
Then something happens……you notice cobblestone below your feet with restaurants and coffee shops and boutiques. You have just entered Shockoe Slip….and if you keep going, you enter The Slip’s sometimes troubled cousin, Shockoe Bottom.
Beginning around 12th Street and ending somewhere in the 25th Street area, the greater Shockoe area, much like Jackson Ward, has swung from integral to forgotten back to integral to the success of RVA. The Slip, due to its location adjacent to Downtown, has experienced a more consistent growth pattern beginning with its reemergence in the late 1970’s. The Slip’s retailers are some of the longest running in the City (Tobacco Company, Sam Miller’s) and vacancy in the area is almost nil.
Shockoe Bottom should be so lucky.
The Bottom, which has a decidedly more trendy and boom-bust reputation, may have finally found its stride. With the emergence of the Tobacco Row section of The Bottom (17th to 27th St and south of Main Street,) the warehouse apartments added in the 1980’s and 1990’s provided the base for the reminder of the are to be built out in the later 2000’s. There are currently another 1000+ apartments set to come on line in 2011-12 from 17th to 23rd that now provide a compliment to the 2000+ that existed along Tobacco Row. Forest City and Shockoe Properties provided a large number of the available apartments from 1980 to 2000. Currently, Monument Construction, Genesis Properties, Main Street Realty/Louis Salamonsky and developer George Emerson all have large scale (60-200 unit projects) that are all being built/already built/leased (pick one) as this is being written.
This development finally solidifies the path of development east of 95 and towards Broad Street. It has changed the traffic patterns of the Medical School (MCV) residents, interns, students and staff and will go a long way towards finally establishing the residential base that will create a vibrant and stable area of the City where it is badly needed.
