By Someone Who Remembers When Buildings Had Souls
As reported by Richmond Bizsense yesterday, the Feed More building is gone, and in its place will rise another stack of rectangles pretending to be a home. The renderings are in, and boy, they sure did it. They designed a building. Not a good one. Not a bad one. Just a building.
It’s a triumph of the algorithm. Brick-patterned walls. Faux-industrial panels. Enough windows to suggest life, but not enough to let any in. If you stare at it long enough, you can almost hear a leasing agent whisper, “This could be anywhere.” And that’s the problem.
Richmond used to have a look—battered, maybe, but ours. Now we get buildings that feel like they’ve been copy-pasted from a brochure left on the floor of a suburban dentist’s office. I’ve seen more personality in a cinder block.
And they were going to sell these as condos, but then some finance bros with a private equity fund decided renting was the better play. And why not? Why let people own something when they could pay rent forever and still get a letter every year saying the rent’s going up?
The comments on the article said it all. People aren’t just tired—they’re embarrassed. Embarrassed that this is what we get when someone drops $13 million. Embarrassed that we keep trading local character for low-maintenance siding. Embarrassed that the only thing developers seem willing to build anymore is apathy.
We keep telling ourselves Richmond is different. But slowly, project by project, block by block, we’re becoming Northern Virginia. The same brands, the same townhouses, the same flat sameness—just with better tattoos and a few more murals.
But hey—at least it’s housing! That’s the line, right? “We need housing.” Sure. But maybe we also need buildings that don’t look like they were drawn by someone who’s never lived in one.
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