From Factory to Lofts

In 2020, you can live in one of these  luxury lofts  inside of one of the most iconic buildings in Richmond, Virginia. The Lucky Strike smoke stack rising from Shockoe Bottom is visible from the top of Libby Hill in Church Hill. By following the career of one Tobacco Row building, a story of urban industrialization, the power of tobacco, deindustrialization, and gentrification can be traced through time in the city of Richmond.

In 1890, before James B. Duke created the American Tobacco Company, the parent company of Lucky Strike, the Hardgrove Company, housed its workers, almost entirely enslaved Black people, along the same block. These workers were hired out by their owners, most of whom were rural plantation owners.

In 1908, after a fire burned down the existing warehouses, Lucky Strike commissioned a state-of-the-art warehouse at 2700 E. Cary Street in Richmond, Virginia. In 1930, 20 years after the completion, the American Tobacco Company remodeled and added the power plant. It went from a mere 1,800 square feet when it first opened in 1871 to 421,600 square feet 40 years later. This warehouse came as the American Tobacco Company created the iconic brand "Lucky Strike."

In the 1940s, Richmond, Virginia,   produce d the most cigarettes of any city worldwide. The six factories along the James River, known as Tobacco Row, were main contributors in the production, with over 100 billion annually. The Lucky Strike Factory alone had the capacity to make 100 million cigarettes per day. The workers at the factory often walked to work or took the streetcar that stopped directly in front of the factories.

One by one, these factories began to close in the 1960s. Many headed to the suburbs following real estate redlining, new advances in transportation, such as the construction of the highway and the white flight that followed. The companies also needed to regionally consolidate due to the drop in the sales of cigarettes over health concerns.

• 1962: P. Lorillard left Richmond
• 1969: Consolidated Cigar relocated
• 1970: Allen & Ginter plant was closed
• 1974: Phillip Morris moved out of the city center
• 1981: Lucky Strike plant closed

In the 1970s, the abandoned warehouses fell into disrepair. The rooves caved in; the rooms were now inhabited by pigeons; and graffiti artists used the walls as canvases.

As businesses and jobs left Richmond’s inner city, the people followed. After a decade of disinvestment, developers, spurred on by new federal tax breaks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, began the process of turning the abandoned warehouses and factories into residential, commercial, and office spaces. The federal government offered tax credits to projects revitalizing properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

"This is absolutely the next phase in downtown living" -Calvin D. Jamison, City Manager

"I hate to use the word, but it is kind of a yuppie crowd. You have to have a decent job, or rich parents because the rent can be ridiculous." -Robert Hope, Anesthesiology Resident at VCU

Shockoe Bottom and neighboring Church Hill are becoming gentrified.

Since 2003, developers have been pushing for a  baseball stadium  to be built in Shockoe Bottom with retail and apartments surrounding the stadium. Most community members remain deeply skeptical of the venture, concerned about the increased car traffic as well as the breaking up of a historic community that the ballpark would bring. Most importantly, the larger community opposed the proposed ballpark’s footprint would disrupt one of the most  important places  in the nation for remembering and telling the story of American slavery.

In 2017, the  plans for "One Shiplock ," a new luxury high-rise to be built opposite the Lucky Strike building, were pulled for lack of prospective buyers. Had this plan come to fruition, it would have dwarfed the Lucky Strike building, its 11-story tower of 15 luxury apartments embodying the aspirations of some for a newly gentrified city.. Ultimately, developers found that this location was not yet developed enough for the high-end buyers that the project required.