Willow Lawn Is Getting Rebuilt. On Four Different Clocks.

Before anyone could pour a foundation for the 228 apartments now rising across Willow Lawn Drive from Kroger, a real estate developer had to track down twelve homeowners and ask them to sign away a deed restriction written decades before any of them owned their houses. The restriction dated back to whenever the original developer built the three 1960s-era office buildings on the site, and it barred anything but commercial use on that parcel. Once the property was rezoned for residential, getting all twelve neighbors to agree to waive that old language took roughly two years, according to Jason Guillot of Thalhimer Realty Partners, the firm building the project with the Crenshaw family. Nothing about that delay showed up in a press release. It just quietly moved a groundbreaking from one year to the next.

That detail matters more than it sounds like it should, because it's a small preview of the larger problem with how Willow Lawn's transformation gets talked about. Anyone searching the corridor hears one story: a legacy 1956 shopping center is turning into a mixed-use neighborhood with thousands of new homes. That's true, but it flattens four separate projects, four separate owners, and four separate timelines into a single narrative that makes the whole area sound closer to finished than it is. If you're comparing a West End address near this corridor against other Richmond neighborhoods, the useful question isn't whether Willow Lawn is changing. It's which piece of that change is actually funded, permitted, and under construction right now, and which piece is still a rendering attached to a rezoning approval.

One Site, Four Owners, Four Clocks

Here's how the pieces actually break down as of this fall.

Willow Circle is the only one of these that has broken ground. It's a 228-unit building with a $63 million construction cost, an even split of one- and two-bedroom units averaging 675 and 994 square feet, and projected rents between $1,650 and $2,850, according to reporting from Richmond BizSense. If you drive Willow Lawn Drive today, that's the crane you're seeing.

The Byrd Avenue tower was announced alongside Willow Circle as part of the same original plan, on land the Crenshaw family already owns a few blocks north. It's been shelved since 2022 because GRTC and Henrico County still haven't settled parking and access questions tied to extending the Pulse bus line west to a new terminus at Parham Road. Guillot said the team is keeping it on hold for the time being. There's no new timeline attached to it, which means it's currently more of an intention than a project.

Aurelie Capital's 188-unit tower on the opposite side of the mall is approved on paper but moving independently of everything else, with its own financing and its own schedule that hasn't been made public.

And the biggest number in the whole conversation, the 2,200 residential units and 500,000 square feet of commercial space that Federal Realty's rezoning allows for, describes a 20-to-30-year build-out of the shopping center property itself, not a funded construction schedule. Henrico's planning staff described it as guiding Willow Lawn "through its next phase of life," language that's accurate but easy to misread as imminent.

A Different Site, a Similar Story

A few blocks away, on the old Elevance Health (formerly Anthem) campus at West Broad and Staples Mill, a completely separate $450 million project called Kinsale Center is following its own multi-phase schedule. Kinsale Capital Group and Richmond-based Marchetti Development are building out roughly 700 residences, an eight-story hotel, and new office and retail space on 29 acres, with the first phase, an office renovation to serve as Kinsale's new headquarters, targeted for delivery in fall 2025 and the rest of the project rolling out starting in 2026, according to Virginia Business. It shares a ZIP code and a general direction of travel with the Willow Lawn projects, but it has different owners, different financing, and its own separate clock. Treating it as part of "the Willow Lawn redevelopment" overstates how connected these efforts actually are.

What the People Building It Are Saying

The Willow Circle team has framed the project in personal terms as much as financial ones.

"Thalhimer's previous CEO had a paper route in the neighborhood as a young boy, and so for us this feels like a full circle moment to partner with the Crenshaws on this amazing project."

Hatcher Crenshaw IV, whose family has owned the Willow Lawn Drive buildings since 1989, described childhood memories of helping with odd jobs at the property before it becomes 228 apartments. That kind of long-held ownership is common in this corridor and it's part of why some pieces move faster than others. When the landowner is also the builder, as with Willow Circle, a two-year deed dispute is a solvable problem. When the landowner is a national REIT executing a multi-decade master plan, the incentive to move quickly on any single phase is weaker.

Reading a Listing Near This Corridor

If you're looking at a home within walking distance of Willow Lawn this fall, here's what that actually means in practical terms.

The construction noise and traffic disruption on Willow Lawn Drive right now come from one building, not four. Willow Circle's site work has been active since spring, and the building itself is going up on a schedule that points to a spring 2028 finish. That's the near-term reality: an active job site for roughly another eighteen months, not a permanent condition.

The Byrd Avenue site a few blocks north looks the same today as it did in 2022. Three older office buildings, no visible activity, and no announced restart date. Anyone counting on that project as a near-term amenity or a near-term nuisance should treat it as neither until GRTC settles the Pulse extension question.

The Augusta Avenue tower and the shopping center's own long-range rezoning are both real approvals with no construction to point to yet. They're worth knowing about if you're thinking in five- or ten-year terms about what this stretch of West Broad becomes. They're not something a 2026 buyer should weigh the same way as an active build.

None of this means the corridor isn't changing. Twelve homeowners waiving a decades-old deed restriction and a family that's owned this land since 1989 deciding to redevelop it are both signs of a neighborhood that's still being reinvested in rather than left alone. It just means the pace of that reinvestment is set by several different decision-makers working on several different timelines, and a buyer comparing this stretch of the West End against, say, a Short Pump or Glen Allen listing should ask which of these four projects is actually the one nearest to any specific address.

A Few Quick Questions

Does the Willow Circle construction affect home values on the surrounding streets right now? Construction activity near a property line typically shows up as a short-term consideration for showings and daily life rather than a valuation factor by itself. The more relevant question for pricing is what the finished building brings to the immediate area once it delivers in 2028, and that's still two years out.

Is the Byrd Avenue tower likely to move forward soon? There's no public timeline. It depends on decisions GRTC and Henrico haven't finalized around the Pulse bus extension, and the team holding the land has described it as on hold rather than cancelled.

Are Willow Lawn's redevelopment and Kinsale Center the same project? No. They sit a few blocks apart, involve different owners and developers, and are moving on separate schedules. The only thing they share is a general direction for this stretch of West Broad.

When will the shopping center itself start changing? Federal Realty's rezoning gives it up to 20 to 30 years to build out fully. No funded first phase has been announced, so there's no reliable near-term date to plan around yet.

If you're weighing a West End address against this kind of shifting backdrop, Terri Brennan Homes can walk through what's actually under construction near a specific listing versus what's still a rezoning on paper, and put together a current valuation that accounts for both.