Nearly 100 apartments and townhomes are coming to Danville’s Monument Street and Berryman Avenue area.
City officials, developers and community leaders broke ground on the project during a ceremony Wednesday at the corner of Cabell and Monument streets.
“This project represents a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to address the pressing housing challenges facing our community,” Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones said during his remarks at the event.
The planned-unit development, by CCKW LLC, will include 34 townhomes and 60 apartments at Monument, Shelton, Cabell and Franklin streets in Danville.
The apartments units will be in three two-story buildings.
CCKW’s proposal came after years of work by the city’s blight eradication program. Most of the parcels were acquired by the Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority for the program.
A request for proposals for redevelopment plans for the area was issued in 2022. CCKW’s proposed plans were selected from that process.
The townhomes will be for sale at prices ranging from $250,000 to $299,999.
Most of the apartments will be at market rates, with 20% of those set aside for individuals or families earning between 50% and 80% of the area median income.
Susan McCulloch, housing development division director for the city of Danville, said she hopes this will prompt other developers with projects planned in the city to begin their work.
“It will hopefully inspire other developers to get started on their projects,” McCulloch told reporters after the ceremony. “We have many floating in the pipeline right now.”
CCKW’s development should bring a lot of attention to Danville because they’re starting off with a fairly large project, she said.
“This is starting that process of building new homes to put into the market so that there are more choices,” McCulloch said.
During his remarks at the event, Danville City Manager Ken Larking recalled first seeing the Monument-Berryman neighborhood more than a decade ago when he was a job candidate for deputy city manager.
He also remembered noticing the blight in the area at the time.
“We were able to acquire, with the help of the housing authority, several lots within this Monument-Berryman neighborhood,” Larking said.
With the help of Deputy City Manager Earl Reynolds, who was the city’s community development director at the time, “we created the Monument-Berryman Redevelopment Plan,” Larking said.
“We hoped that one day, we would be able to stand here and start digging the ground and celebrating a new residential development in this community,” he said. “I’m super proud of the work that has been done to get us to this point.”
The development is the plan’s first large-scale project.
CCKW will kick off the $14 million project by building eight of the townhomes at the corner of Cabell and Monument streets. Two of the homes already have contracts, with two more pending, according to a news release from the city.
The initial eight units will be about 1,500 square feet and feature three bedrooms and three bathrooms, a living room, kitchen and back patio. They will also offer designer cabinets, luxury vinyl plank flooring, drywall walls and stainless-steel appliances.
The homes will be priced at around $270,000.
Subsequent phases will include another 10 townhomes built on Monument and Shelton streets, eight more on Monument Street and 60 market-rate apartments on the block bounded by Monument, Cabell, Shelton and Beauregard streets, according to the news release.
The last phase will entail construction of the final eight townhomes on Cabell and Beauregard streets.
As for the apartments, they will come with one, two or three bedrooms and two bathrooms, with rents starting from $1,100 for the market-rate units.
City officials pointed out the neighborhood’s proximity to the River District, as well as the historic Old West End in the opposite direction. The River District has received more than $300 million in public and private investment over the last 13 years.
Steven Gould, an attorney speaking on behalf of CCKW, thanked the city of Danville and residents in the Monument-Berryman area for seeing the neighborhood’s potential.
“This is a great community now, and what CCKW hopes to do is just build upon that,” Gould said during his remarks.