At a recent rally to preserve a Black history site entrusted upon Virginia Union University, historian Selden Richardson used the school’s own words as an argument against the demolition of old Community Hospital.
“The first 10 words of the mission statement of Virginia Union University are these: Virginia Union University is nurtured by its African American heritage,” he said during the rally at the hospital building on Overbrook Road.
“This seems cruelly ironic as no imagination, no vision, no maintenance and certainly no nurturing has been seen on this site in the 20 years VUU has had it. To claim the high ground of African American heritage and let this case of demolition by neglect of an African American heritage site proceed is shameful.”
Virginia Union is partnering with New York-based Steinbridge Group to build up to 200 residences on acreage that includes the old Richmond Community Hospital. The university and Steinbridge will be joint owners and share the profits in a redevelopment touted as a first step in the college’s $500 million campus makeover.
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When VUU announced the project in February, the hospital building was pronounced unsalvageable, setting off a community effort to save it. Since then, the university has struggled to alter the perception that it plans to demolish the building, but its attempts to shift the narrative have suffered from a lack of clarity and conviction.
VUU and Steinbridge sought to change this at an April 5 awards gala at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.
Among the honorees were National Urban League President Marc Morial, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and Steinbridge founding partner and CEO Tawan Davis, who received Virginia Union’s HBCU Impact Award for its investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities like VUU.
During his speech, Davis said: “We are setting aside part of our commitment to honor the history, particularly the history of the Richmond Community Hospital at Virginia Union, with a $5.1 million commitment from our existing commitment to honor all those who were born, and worked, and built Virginia Union University, and this hospital, through its 160-year history.”
But again, the message was imprecise. Whose history is being honored? That of VUU, which will celebrate its 160th anniversary next year, or the hospital, whose roots date to 1902 in Jackson Ward and once bore the name of Dr. Sarah Garland Boyd Jones, a trailblazing Black female physician?
The art deco Community Hospital building was completed in 1932 after a painstaking fundraising effort by Richmond’s Black community during the Great Depression. For generations of Black Richmonders, it was a beacon of welcome in a city whose white hospitals remained segregated until the late 1950s. Our city remains populated with people with memories of the hospital, including a future newspaper columnist who had his tonsils removed there as a child.
Davis’ speech also raised the question of what “honor” means in terms of the hospital building’s preservation.
“I don’t think that is known yet,” said Grant Neely, VUU’s vice president of community relations, on Wednesday. “What everybody’s going to do is continue listening to the community and we’ll soon lay out our own process for community engagement.”
“What does it mean? I can’t say, because it’s not known yet. But I would observe that $5.1 million buys a lot more than a nice plaque.”
Viola Baskerville, a leader of the Save Community Hospital effort, is skeptical.
“I would question exactly what is meant by ‘honoring the history,’” said Baskerville, a former member of the Richmond City Council and the Virginia House of Delegates, and a former state secretary of administration.
“That is not the same thing as a commitment to make sure the building is NOT demolished but is rehabilitated and adaptively reused as part of Virginia Union University’s development plans,” she said in an email. “In addition, $5 million seems insufficient when looking at the scope of the present structure.”
She reiterated her call for Historic Richmond Foundation to independently assess the structure to inform future development.
Historic Richmond Foundation is a known quantity to VUU; it worked with the university on the restoration of VUU’s Industrial Hall, said executive director Cyane Crump.
“We have offered,” Crump said. “We would very much like to work with them to find preservation solutions that would save Richmond Community Hospital. We think it’s a really important building that has a significant story to tell. ... It’s clear to us that the community would like to see it saved.”
Historic Richmond Foundation would pull together volunteer architects, engineers and construction experts to look at options to incorporate it into VUU’s larger plans, she said. “That requires a cooperative effort with the property owners.” As for VUU, “they’ve acknowledged receipt and more or less said they’d get back with us.”
Meanwhile, the debate surrounding the hospital has exposed fissures on the topic within the Black community.
Baskerville, in an April 8 email to state Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Richmond, said she was perplexed at “the degree of silence exhibited by you as Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus and many of your members towards the threat of demolition by Virginia Union University of the 1932 building that once housed Richmond Community Hospital on Richmond’s Northside.”
Bagby replied that he was “unaware of any active threats of demolition by Virginia Union University” of the building, and cited the $5 million set aside by Steinbridge.
To which Baskerville replied: “No, there is not an active demolition permit on file with the City at this point; and I certainly hope you are not waiting for that to happen before you weigh in. However, the University has not published a statement clarifying that in fact it will not demolish the 1932 structure.”
She added: “Promises that funding will be ‘set aside’ are one thing; communicating a more concrete message to the community that the building will be saved and reused in the University’s development plans is another. “
Friday evening, Neely issued VUU’s most concrete take yet on plans for the hospital. He said the development team on this project “has expertise in historic preservation. The team and the University are committed to adaptive reuse of the Richmond Community Hospital building. This is expected to include at least the building’s facade, and likely more.”
Let’s hope for “likely more.” VUU can’t build a sound future on a foundation of mistrust.