Drive along Dabney Road and you’ll see what Richmond’s industrial past looks like: squat brick warehouses, loading docks stained with decades of diesel exhaust, chain-link fencing that’s more rust than steel. It’s functional architecture designed in an era when nobody expected anyone to look twice at a building where work got done.
Stefan Cametas is betting that era is over.
The developer behind the Westhampton on Grove project in the West End is now turning his attention to Westwood, where a new industrial building is rising that he says will look nothing like its neighbors in the Dabney area. The first tenant is already signed: a window-and-door supplier will occupy a portion of the spec building, bringing the kind of light manufacturing and distribution business that industrial real estate brokers say is increasingly hungry for modern space in the Richmond market.
The details of the lease terms and the building’s total square footage weren’t immediately available, but the project signals a broader shift in how developers are approaching Richmond’s industrial corridors. Where once a warehouse was a warehouse — four walls, a roof, loading docks — today’s tenants want higher ceilings for racking systems, more truck court space, better lighting, and yes, buildings that don’t look like relics from the Eisenhower administration.
“It doesn’t look like your typical buildings over there in that Dabney area,” Cametas said of the new construction.
The Westwood and Dabney industrial areas have long served as Richmond’s working backbone — close enough to downtown and the interstate system to move goods efficiently, cheap enough on rent to attract businesses that couldn’t afford Scott’s Addition’s prices or Short Pump’s polish. But as e-commerce continues to reshape logistics and light manufacturing creeps back into urban cores, the calculus is changing.
Modern industrial space in the Richmond metro commanded average asking rents above $7 per square foot in recent quarters, according to brokerage reports, while older product often struggles to crack $5. The gap creates an opening for developers willing to build new — assuming they can find sites that aren’t already earmarked for apartments or mixed-use projects that promise higher returns.
For Westwood, the question is whether one new building marks an anomaly or a turning point. The area sits in an awkward position — too industrial for the urban infill crowd, too close to the city for suburban distribution centers that want sprawling sites near I-95’s outer interchanges.
Cametas appears to be betting that tenants like the window-and-door supplier represent a middle market that’s been underserved: businesses that need real industrial space but don’t want to exile themselves to the exurbs.
Whether Richmond’s aging industrial stock gets upgraded or simply outcompeted may depend on how many developers follow his lead — and how many tenants are willing to pay for a building that doesn’t look like every other one on Dabney Road.
- Developer Stefan Cametas is building a new industrial building in the Westwood area near Dabney Road
- A window-and-door supplier has signed on as the first tenant in the spec building
- Cametas previously developed the Westhampton on Grove project in Richmond’s West End
- The building is designed to differ architecturally from typical industrial structures in the Dabney corridor