Before the beer taps and condos, before the buzzwords about ‘revitalization,’ Scott’s Addition’s future passed through the hands of a single man: Justin Glynn French. A convicted felon whose empire collapsed in scandal, he set the stage, even if unintentionally, for the neighborhood we know today.
Scott’s Addition is now one of the crown jewels of Richmond, home to breweries, cideries, restaurants, and rooftop apartments that regularly make national ‘best of’ lists. But every success story has a prologue, and there’s a cultural layer that often gets left out. It’s a story largely forgotten, but one that comes back to me every time I drive through the neighborhood.
And before I go any further, plenty of people had their own run-ins with Justin French. This isn’t about re-litigating his past; he has served his sentence and is free. This is simply my story.
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