Tall & Urban News

Dominion Energy has set a date to implode its vacant One James River Plaza office tower in downtown Richmond.

The Richmond-based energy giant said it plans to demolish the 21-story office tower on 30 May 2020. A backup date, if it rains or is too windy on the initial date, would be the following day on 31 May 2020.

“It will be early morning,” Dominion spokesman Ryan Frazier said. “There will be some street closures that would begin hours before. There will be a cordoned-off area. The city is aware, as are our neighbors.”

The company applied for the implosion in summer 2019 and received approval the following fall from the city to demolish its aging office tower, he said.

The building, completed in 1978, has been vacant for months.

In fall 2019, Dominion moved employees and operations out of that building and into 600 Canal Place, a new 20-floor office tower on East Canal Street in downtown Richmond.

The 84,000-square-meter building houses more than 1,200 employees and overlooks the James River and downtown Richmond.

Dominion hasn’t made a final decision on whether to construct a second office tower to be called 700 Canal Place, as part of a larger Canal Place complex, Frazier said. Plans call for that new building to have 17 floors with a skybridge connecting it to the tower that Dominion just completed.

“We are still assessing our workforce needs for downtown Richmond,” Frazier said, noting that the company’s future downtown workplace needs could include a new office tower for that property.

Besides the new 600 Canal Place office tower, Dominion owns the 20-story Eighth & Main building at 707 East Main Street, where more than 1,000 employees work. The company acquired that building in January 2008, the city’s online property records show.

The company’s corporate offices are housed in three buildings along the James River on Tredegar Street, where more than 500 employees work.

The companies that built 600 Canal Place, Richmond-based Hourigan, and Chicago-based Clayco, along with North Carolina-based D.H. Griffin are handling the demolition of One James River Plaza, Frazier added.

For more on this story, go to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.