Landmark Media Enterprises puts Plume Street building up for sale

Inside Business

By Philip Newswanger 

Marble floors. A lobby with skylights. A mail chute between floors. And a ghost, which on occasion tenants have seen flit through the elevators.

Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, parent company of Inside Business and The Virginian-Pilot, is shedding another property. The company is selling a building that once housed hundreds of employees of Trader Publishing, the precursor of Dominion Enterprises, and is now home to Targeted Publications, which is expected to vacate the building sometime early next year.

Inside Business is part of Targeted Publications.

Built in 1906, the 113,000-square- foot office building at 100 Plume Street in downtown Norfolk is for sale. The price tag: $9.9 million, or $87.03 per square foot.

Because of its age, the building is available for historic tax credits in case a new owner would like to turn the historic space into condominiums.

Mark Warlick, senior vice president of S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co., is marketing the property, which is across the street from Dominion Enterprises headquarters on Granby.

The bottom floor has up to 13,000 square feet for shops while each of the other six floors has a 13,000-square-foot footprint.

“100 West Plume Street is a landmark building in downtown Norfolk that served as the headquarters to Dominion Enterprises for many successful years,” said Jack J. Ross, president and COO of Dominion Enterprises, in a press release.

The property is zoned D-2, or downtown regional center district, according to a 16-page flier. The flier said the assessed value of the land is $1.278 million and the assessed value of the building is $3.82 million. The building is equipped with four elevators, one of which is a freight elevator, offices, a break room, kitchens on each floor and several conference rooms.

The flier states the Norfolk downtown building is a block away from a future light rail station and on a Norfolk Electric Transit Line that travels on Granby Street.

“The continued availability of historic tax credits makes the rehabilitation of this large downtown office building a unique opportunity in the current economic climate,” Warlick said. Property owners can realize up to 40 percent in federal and state historic tax credits for renovating buildings more than 50 years old in historic districts of cities.

Landmark has contracted with Warlick to sell its properties in Hampton Roads. Last year, he negotiated the sale of 23 acres on Greenwich Road in Virginia Beach.

Harmony Hospitality bought the property for $10.4 million and has plans to put a hotel, offices and apartments on it. Harmony co-owner Paige Johnson bought the 17 acres adjacent to Interstate 264 on Greenwich Road, once under consideration as a new Landmark headquarters , and 6 acres north of Landmark’s production plant.

The property sits between the Newtown Road and Pembroke strategic growth areas of Virginia Beach, so city officials are interested in Harmony’s plans. City officials view the development of the 23 acres as an extension of Town Center, which is north of the properties.

Warlick said the property is zoned for offices, but a hotel would require a use permit and apartments would require a rezoning.

Warlick is also trying to sell a 4-acre parcel in Suffolk that is also owned by Landmark and is zoned for commercial use.

The site is located at the intersection of Route 164, or the Western Freeway, and College Drive, midway between the neighborhoods of Harbour View in Suffolk and Churchland in Portsmouth.