The recently renovated Tilt building in Shockoe Slip features arched windows and a white-colored facade. (Image courtesy LoopNet)
After 30 years in offices in Monroe Ward, one of Richmond’s longer-running architecture firms is drawing up plans for a move to Shockoe Slip.
KEI Architects will be moving early next year to the Tilt Creative + Production building at 23 S. 13th St., where it has leased half of the building’s vacant second floor.
KEI (stylized as “KEi”) will be relocating from the 100 W. Franklin St. office building at the corner of Franklin and Adams streets, where it has been based for eight years. For 20 years before that, the firm was housed nearby in The Corner Stone, the former Masonic Temple building at Adams and Broad Street that’s anchored by events venue The Renaissance.
KEI Vice President Monica Flippen said the move will provide the firm’s 11-person team with room to grow, both in staff count and potentially square footage. She said the firm’s lease with Tilt includes an option to expand across the entire second-floor space, which totals 3,500 square feet.
Monica Flippen
Flippen also acknowledged construction that’s in the pipeline around 100 W. Franklin, where KEI has taken up a 2,000-square-foot space. Across Adams Street, an apartment conversion of the downtown YMCA property is slated to continue with new construction planned at Adams and Grace Street, while along Franklin, the owners of The Jefferson Hotel are set to rehab the old Second Baptist Church building as a banquet hall.
“It’s a lot of building that’s going to be going on around us. And, we are growing,” Flippen said. “We needed additional space and felt like we’ve outgrown the space that we’re in right now, and we’re just looking for a new look.”
The firm worked with Alease Washington with Icon Realty Group to locate the Tilt building space and negotiate its lease with the ownership group that includes Tilt CEO Ron Carey. Flippen declined to disclose the length of the lease or other terms.
Flippen said the plan is for KEI to use the space temporarily while it pursues a long-term plan of buying its own building. The Richmond office serves as headquarters for the company, which also has an office in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The second-floor space totals 3,500 square feet and was renovated with the rest of the building last year. (Image courtesy Crexi.com)
KEI is working with Commonwealth Construction Company of Virginia on the upfit for the space, which was created as part of the Tilt building’s multimillion-dollar renovation that wrapped up last year. Animation studio Hue & Cry was previously in the second floor space.
Founded in 1983 as Kelso & Easter by John Kelso and Robert Easter, KEI was initially based in the D.C. area before opening a Richmond office four years later and moving its HQ here in 2001. The firm focuses on commercial, medical, religious, recreational and institutional projects for public and private-sector clients.
Current projects in Richmond include CarMax Park, the new baseball stadium it’s designing with Labella Associates that will anchor the larger Diamond District mixed-use development. KEI is also in the overall Diamond District design along with local firm Baskervill. KEI’s other work includes Virginia Union University’s planned apartment building on Overbrook Road, and in Petersburg, it designed a renovation of the Virginia Hall building at Virginia State University.
KEI team members with Nutzy and Nutasha at the topping-out ceremony for CarMax Park. (Photo courtesy LinkedIn)
In Shockoe Slip, KEI will join other architecture firms in the neighborhood, including Kahler Slater, SMBW and CPL, which last year acquired Commonwealth Architects.
Meanwhile, another design firm with a presence in Monroe Ward has leased space elsewhere in town. Hanbury, whose local office is just doors down from The Renaissance building on Broad Street, leased 12,000 square feet of retail space at 1623 W. Main St., real estate brokerage Thalhimer reported in October.
It wasn’t clear whether the Main Street space is a new office location for Hanbury, which did not respond to requests from BizSense for comment. Thalhimer’s Jeff Cooke and Reilly Marchant handled lease negotiations for the landlord, an entity tied to local developer Tom Papa.
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