SHAMIN HOTELS, ONE of the largest Asian American owned hotel development and management companies in the country, has a new home with a literary pedigree. It has purchased the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper building that it will renovate and share with the newspaper.
Shamin bought the four-story, nearly century-old building for $14.462 million on Jan. 2 and is planning a $1 million renovation, according to the Times-Dispatch. Its previous assessed value is $20.293 million.
The newspaper will consolidate its offices on the building’s fourth floor while Shamin’s new offices will be on the third. The move is expected to be finished later this year.
At 40,000 square feet, the new office will be a substantial increase from Shamin’s current 17,000-square-foot office. Shamin CEO Neil Amin has looking for a larger office space to accommodate the company’s growth.
“The key to our search was finding centralized space that provides areas for teamwork, collaboration and wellness. We feel that the RTD building provides all of that and more,” Amin said. “The downtown location is accessible to all of our associates who live across the region from New Kent to Midlothian and from Hopewell to Short Pump, as well as those that travel from the D.C. and Hampton Roads areas.”
Shamin operates 59 hotels in six states with 36 of them in the Richmond area, such as the Renaissance Portsmouth Norfolk Waterfront hotel in Portsmouth. It was founded by Amin’s father P.C. Amin with his partner and brother-in-law, B.N. Shah, in 1979. The company was featured as the cover story for Asian Hospitality’s February 2019 issue.
Built in 1923 to house the Times-Dispatch and the former Richmond News Leader, the 172,110-square-foot building, which has an attached parking deck, has been expanded three times during its existence. The paper’s former President and Publisher Thomas Silvestri had been trying to sell the building for two years as the number of employees at the publication has shrunk.
“We have found the right partner to allow us to stay true to our downtown roots while upgrading our offices into a first-class operation,” Silvestri said. “We welcome Shamin to our longtime home and look forward to helping [Shamin Hotel’s] Neil Amin keep the building a vibrant center of activity in an important part of Richmond’s downtown.”
