Converting Fredericksburg's Medical Arts Building into Apartments?
Plans are likely coming for the project that would require a special use permit from City Council.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
The planning and engineering firm Webb & Associates met with Fredericksburg planning staff earlier this month to discuss the firm’s plans to convert the Medical Arts Building at 2301 Fall Hill Avenue into 30 apartments.
Webb & Associates held a pre-application meeting with staff on May 8 to discuss the project, which will require a special use permit to increase residential density from eight to 15 dwelling units per acre. Special use permits require public hearings before the Planning Commission and City Council, as well as Council approval.
According to information available on the city’s citizen access portal, the project would convert the vacant Medical Arts Building into 30 apartment of 600-square-feet each.
Marne Sherman, senior development administrator, said the next step is for the developer to file a formal application for a Special Use Permit. “None has been submitted to date,” she said in an email to the Advance.
The building is owned by Medical Arts Building, LLC. According to the Virginia State Corporation Commission, MacDoc Realty owner Mark Doherty is the registered agent for this company, as well as for Mary’s Landing, LLC, which until January of this year owned the parcels behind and across Elm Street from the Medical Arts Building where a 63-townhome development is now under construction.
The Mary’s Landing developers initially sought “open space” credits for preserving the 1964 Medical Arts Building, even though that building was not proposed to be developed as part of the Mary's Landing project.
The Medical Arts Building is identified as a “character structure” in the city’s Unified Development Ordinance. City code permits developments that preserve or adaptively reuse character structures to reduce the amount of open space required.
Both the Medical Arts Building property—which encompasses eight underlying parcels—and the Mary’s Landing parcels were purchased by FXBG Opportunity Zone, LLC, in January of 2024 for $6 million, according to Fredericksburg GIS information. The registered agent for FXBG Opportunity Zone, LLC is the Buck Law Firm, which is also the registered agent for MacDoc Realty.
The parcels were immediately transferred to Medical Arts Building, LLC, and Mary’s Landing, LLC. In January of this year, the Mary’s Landing, LLC-owned parcels were sold to DRB Group Mid-Atlantic, LLC, for $9.1 million, according to Fredericksburg GIS.
Doherty is also the registered agent for another company—Ten Lot, LLC—which owns another ten parcels in the vicinity of the old hospital building. Five of these lots are located along Elm Street, and the other five underlie the green space at the corner of Fall Hill Avenue and Bunker Hill Street, according to Fredericksburg GIS.
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I wonder how much a 600 sq. ft. apartment would rent for in that building? Affordable?