Hotel to rise beside Tom Leonard’s store in Short Pump

RICHMOND, Va. -- A Short Pump site once floated for a car vending machine tower is now slated for a slightly shorter hotel.

A TownePlace Suites by Marriott is in the works for the undeveloped site to the east of Tom Leonard’s Farmer’s Market.

The 119-room hotel is set to fill a 1.7-acre portion of the grocery’s 6.3-acre parcel at 4150 Tom Leonard Drive, alongside Interstate 64 near the Broad Street interchange.

Highly visible from the interstate, the site is the same spot where used-car retailer Carvana once proposed a “car vending machine” tower when it was breaking into the Richmond market in 2016. It withdrew that project and later built a taller tower beside Interstate 195 in the city.