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The eastern side of Henrico County has long been praised for its pastoral beauty. While at the moment Eastern Henrico retains its rural charm, two new land-development projects, Rocketts Landing and Wilton on the James, are seeking to change this view and have citizens looking to live in the other side of Henrico County. But make no mistake, neither of these projects is your typical development. Both are taking the usual subdivision concept and turning it on its ear.
With a history stretching back to Captain Christopher Newport’s exploration of the James River in 1607, to the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Edgar Allen Poe, and Abraham Lincoln, the Rocketts Landing site has a historical pedigree that most modern developments could only dream of. For the developers of this new community on the James, they are hoping that this sense of place, coupled with a public appetite for an urbanized, waterfront lifestyle, will have modern-day ‘settlers’ flocking to the new Rocketts Landing.
Four days after the first settlers arrived in Virginia Captain Christopher Newport and his ship, the Godspeed, followed the instructions of King James I and the Virginia Company to proceed 100 miles up the first navigable river and establish a settlement. After a week’s journey Newport arrived at the fall line of the James River, near the current Rocketts Landing site, on May 24, 1607. Newport planted the English flag and then returned to the settlers he had left behind. When he arrived there he found the fortifications of Jamestown already being constructed, and thus the establishment of Richmond would have to wait a few more years.
Rocketts Landing itself came into being in 1730 when Robert Rocketts began operating a ferry service on the James River transporting goods. By 1770 the port of Rocketts had grown to be one of the busiest inland ports in America. The site saw Richmond’s first steamship in 1815, and by the 1870s over 900 steam-vessels per year would visit at Rocketts. But at the end of the 1800s hard times would come to the Rocketts Landing area. With the dawn of the 20th century the site became home to factories and industrialization, but that boom was a short-lived solution and many businesses closed up shop with the end of World War II. By the 1970s the area was virtually abandoned and in quite a neglected state. While most in Richmond saw the area as an urban blight, Bill Abeloff saw its potential.
The name William H. Abeloff is synonymous with urban renewal in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom area. In the 1970s and 1980s he saw the enormous potential in the area and began buying old and worn down properties that he felt could be renovated into new residential and retail space. He began to build apartments as well, constructing the first 260 in Tobacco Row during 1991. In 1998 Abeloff passed the project off to Forest City Enterprises, Inc. of Cleveland, and his gaze moved a little farther east down the James River.
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