RICHMOND, Va. — A local development team is lining up what it bets will be a strike for the city’s hottest neighborhood.
Rob Long, a former investment banker with BB&T Capital Markets, is leading a team that includes former Jefferson Hotel restaurant director Ben Eubanks to bring a high-end “boutique” bowling alley to a mostly vacant lot between the Boulevard and the Cookie Factory Lofts.
To be called River City Roll, the $5 million project is planned for a 2-acre plot at 939 Myers St., a block east of the Boulevard across from Scott’s Addition. The 25,000-square-foot facility would include 150 parking spaces and replace a pair of dilapidated storage buildings on the site.
Long, a St. Christopher’s School and UVA alumnus who moved back to Richmond in 2014, said he came across the so-called boutique bowling concept – alleys with fewer lanes and an emphasis on high-end food and finishes – in bigger cities while working debt capital raises for some of the country’s largest corporations.
“I lived in San Antonio, Charlotte and Boston, where these concepts were doing very well. Being from Richmond and understanding the market here, I knew this was a concept that could work here,” he said.
