Developer Harper Associates adds to its Southside holdings near corner of Semmes and Cowardin

The office building is along Semmes Avenue between the Lee and Manchester bridges. (Courtesy Thalhimer)

A piece of a busy Southside intersection has changed hands as a local developer bolsters its holdings in Richmond. 

Earlier this month Harper Associates bought 1300 Semmes Ave. for $4.8 million, city records show. 

A 17,000-square-foot office building occupied by The Span Center, formerly Senior Connections, stands on the 1-acre site. The seller was Hem + Spire, a North Carolina-based real estate investment firm that bought the property in 2020 for $3.7 million. 

Harper Associates is a local firm that already has a significant presence near the intersection of Semmes and Cowardin avenues. It developed the nearby Belle Heights townhomes and the Fresenius dialysis center at 406 Cowardin Ave. Harper owns an additional 12 acres at the southwestern corner of the two avenues, however that land is being eyed by a pair of out-of-town developers for over 500 apartments. 

Harper’s asset manager, Will Allen, said in an email that the company likes the area and doesn’t have any current redevelopment plans for 1300 Semmes Ave. He said that The Span Center has a long-term lease in place and that Harper “hope(s) they will stay forever.”

The sale closed Feb. 3. Thalhimer’s Reilly Marchant represented Harper in the deal. The city most recently assessed the property at $3.9 million. 

Hem + Spire founding partner Maxwell Joseph declined to comment on the sale. It’s the second Richmond property Hem + Spire has sold in the past year.

Last spring it unloaded downtown’s Branch Building on East Main Street at auction to a local yoga studio owner for $1.3 million. 

Hem + Spire’s last remaining Richmond property is the subject of a long-running legal dispute. In 2021 it bought a mixed-use complex on MacTavish Avenue that includes the MacTavish Flats apartments and the restaurant space now occupied by Scotty’s Taphouse. That deal also included a lease on a parking lot on West Marshall Street that’s become the subject of an ongoing lawsuit in the Court of Appeals of Virginia. 

The lawsuit centers on an attempt the parking lot’s owner, Dalian Development, has made to terminate the Hem + Spire lease. Dalian owns the adjacent former Party Perfect complex and has said in court documents it’s planning a redevelopment project that would include the parking lot.  

Hem + Spire has argued in court that the verbiage of the lease allows it to renew it in perpetuity, and last year a Richmond Circuit judge ruled that Hem + Spire has the right to renew it only until 2040. Dalian is appealing that ruling. 

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