Henrico County is poised to buy the iconic office complex that was once home to catalog showroom retailer Best Products Inc.
The county will pay more than $6.2 million for the 92-acre Best Plaza property at Interstate 95 and East Parham Road, including the architecturally unique buildings that housed the headquarters of a fabled, homegrown retailer that disappeared in bankruptcy almost 15 years ago. The complex dates to 1980.
With almost 286,000 square feet of buildings and more than 58 acres undeveloped, the purchase of the property at 1400 Best Plaza Drive positions Henrico to begin a master planning process that would encompass the future needs of all county services, from courts to schools.
"You have a very good potential to consolidate your space and reduce your capital expenditure needs," County Manager Virgil R. Hazelett said Tuesday. "A building like this doesn't come along too often at this price."
Hazelett said the county has been negotiating with the owner, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., for more than a year to purchase the property. Bank of America, which began leasing the property in late 1999, moved its employees out of the complex at the end of last year.
The price, approved last week by the Board of Supervisors, is a bargain compared to its assessed value of almost $10 million, much less the $25 million assessment it held last year when still occupied by Bank of America.
"One, it's a good deal," said Bob Pinkerton, deputy county manager for community operations. "Two, we're looking to the future. … The county is growing, and we're going to have a need to expand."
The purchase makes sense to Brian Glass, senior vice president at Grubb & Ellis/Harrison and Bates. "That's foresight," Glass said. "You're looking ahead to see what the future is going to be."
Unlike the current county office complex at Parham and Hungary Spring roads, county officials say the Best property is positioned more at Henrico's geographic center, rather than the center of its population.
"Location, location, location," said Hazelett, who has been county manager since 1992. "You're available by the interstate system to all parts of the county."
The move makes sense to Supervisor Frank J. Thornton, whose Fairfield District includes Best Plaza.
"We just have some options with that piece of land," Thornton said, adding, "It has an illustrious history, too."
The history is rooted in Best Products, founded in Richmond in the mid-1950s on West Marshall Street by Sydney Lewis and his wife, Frances. Their company grew into a nationally renowned catalog showroom retailer, which also was known for its stylish buildings and collections of art.
The complex was designed and constructed in a series of buildings, each with an architecturally distinctive style, and the company's named spelled in red steel letters — ranging from 14 to 20 feet high — that became a visual landmark on I-95.
"That's a tough building to sell because there were design quirks that Best Products did," Glass said. "It's not your typical office building."
At the same time, he added, "That's a nice piece of property."
One of the complex's most distinctive features is a pair of 16-foot-tall art deco stone eagles that Best's architect salvaged from the Airlines Terminal Building built in 1939 in Manhattan.
The headquarters, known as the Eagle Building, was completed in 1980, and two other sections were built in the mid-1980s. That was the complex's heyday, before the decline that led Best to close in early 1997, when 500 people worked at the headquarters, down from a peak of 1,100 in 1988.
Circuit City Stores Inc. took over a portion of the building for its credit-card bank subsidiary from 1996 to 1998.
Once the purchase is completed, the property will undergo a master planning process that Hazelett promised will be rigorous.
"We will virtually look at everything in the master plan," he said.
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