A $50 million industrial park is planned for Varina, where Commonwealth plans to build two warehouses totaling 405,000 square feet on a 55-acre site near the airport. The project, known as Airport South Commerce Center, is targeting a completion date of September 2027, according to the firm.
Commonwealth, the Innsbrook-based real estate firm formerly known as Commonwealth Commercial, bought the land for $4 million, as reported by e-a-a.com. The development will include one 335,000-square-foot warehouse and one 70,000-square-foot warehouse, per the same outlet, which first detailed the scope of the project. Commonwealth president and CEO Ken Strickler said the firm sees strong demand for smaller industrial spaces, and the company has previously built industrial buildings smaller than 100,000 square feet.
Strickler has also said different building sizes were required to avoid affecting nearby wetlands, and that the location offers convenient access to infrastructure. He pointed to limited availability of entitled sites in Richmond and strong market fundamentals as factors supporting the project, as detailed by Richmond BizSense.
Design, Construction and Leasing Teams Lined Up
Triad Design Group and Samet Corporation are spearheading the design and construction phases, respectively, according to the e-a-a.com report. Leasing for the project is being handled actively by Commonwealth brokers Ben Bruni and Colton Konvicka, the same report notes.
A Commonwealth property listing describes the project as offering 415,920± square feet of industrial space and as a two-building, 403,920±-square-foot park, with Building A at 334,800± square feet and Building C at 69,120± square feet, according to Commonwealth Commercial Properties.
A Tightening Richmond Industrial Market
The Varina project arrives as Richmond's industrial market shows signs of tightening. Net absorption totaled 668,000 square feet in the third quarter of 2026, while vacancy fell 20 basis points to 5.2%, according to CBRE.
Leasing activity reached 2.6 million square feet in the same quarter, a sharp jump from the 1.0 million square feet recorded a year earlier, CBRE reports. The average asking rent climbed to $9.02 per square foot, up 1.8% from the prior quarter and 11.6% year over year, per the same CBRE figures. Richmond had 12.2 million square feet of industrial space under construction across 25 properties as of the third quarter, the firm's data shows.
Other Industrial Projects in the Pipeline
Airport South Commerce Center isn't the only industrial proposal circulating in eastern Henrico. Wagner Urban Logistics has proposed the Airport West Industrial Campus on a 195-acre site, with seven buildings totaling more than 1.82 million square feet, the largest at 635,400 square feet, according to Virginia Business. That outlet reports the developer appeared to pivot to the industrial park plan after resistance to an earlier data center campus proposal, and that Darbytown Road LLC purchased the site from Fareva Richmond for $13.5 million.
Industrial expansion in the area isn't new either. Back in 2015, plans called for expanding the Airport Distribution Center at South Laburnum Avenue and Darbytown Road with a 216,000-square-foot building, adding a second structure to the existing 48-acre property, according to Richmond BizSense's earlier reporting. An existing 115,000-square-foot structure built in 2008 already stood on that site, and longer-term plans at the time called for two more buildings of roughly 200,000 and 142,000 square feet.
Commonwealth's Recent Dominion Commerce Center Deal
The Varina plan follows Commonwealth's work on the Dominion Commerce Center, a 70,000-square-foot property near Henrico's Laurel area that was initially planned to serve as headquarters for Dominion Construction Partners, the firm's general-contracting arm, which is no longer in business. Commonwealth leased that property to tenants including BBG Granite and Curtis Power Solutions before selling it to multinational REIT Invesco for $17.5 million earlier in November 2026.
Commonwealth operates brokerage, development, property management, forestry, hotel and asset management divisions. With the Varina project, the firm is betting that its track record with smaller industrial buildings, paired with a market posting tighter vacancy and rising rents, will keep demand strong through the 2027 target completion date.
