AC Hotel Richmond Downtown (Eighth & Main)

Douglas Development is converting Richmond's vacant, 20-story former Dominion Energy office tower at 707 E. Main St into a roughly 207-room AC Hotel plus 288 apartments, a $158 million adaptive-reuse project targeting a spring 2027 hotel opening. It is downtown Richmond's first hotel built inside a former all-office high-rise, and the city's first project financed with a C-PACE energy loan.

The place

Occupies 707 E. Main St in downtown Richmond, a 20-story, roughly 325,000-square-foot office tower built in the 1970s and long associated with Dominion Energy, one block from the James River canal walk and within walking distance of the convention center and financial district.

The concept

Washington, D.C.-based Douglas Development bought the vacant tower for about $19.25 million in December 2024 and is converting it into a mixed-use building known as Eighth & Main: an AC Hotel fills the lower floors while roughly 288 market-rate apartments fill the rest, a combination this building has never held before — it was purely office space. FILLAT+ Architecture is the project architect, and the roughly $158 million redevelopment is financed in part by a $38 million C-PACE loan from Nuveen Green Capital, Richmond's first project to use the state's Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy program. The historic 1970s facade is being retained while mechanical and building systems are replaced for LEED certification; planned ground-floor amenities include a fitness center, co-working space, and game rooms.

Dining & wellness

Plans reference an AC Lounge and a ground-floor restaurant open to the public, standard for the AC Hotels format, but no chef, operator, or additional food-and-beverage concepts have been announced.