RICHMOND, Va. — A Southside development group has gone shopping again on Hull Street.

Michael Hild and Laura Dyer Hild earlier this month purchased the former Siegel’s Supermarket site at 2005 Hull St., adding to their collection of real estate nearby. Their holdings include three buildings a few blocks north being converted into a donut shop, brewpub and market/restaurant.

The Hilds’ Church Hill Ventures purchased the old Siegel property Oct. 10 from Strong Tower Pentecostal Church for $630,000, according to city records. It was assessed most recently for $412,000.

This is the couple’s first major investment south of the Cowardin Avenue/Jefferson Davis Highway corridor into the nearby Swansboro neighborhood.

Over the last few years they have become prolific landlords in the Manchester and Blackwell neighborhoods, snatching up two dozen derelict buildings and vacant lots.

Their latest deal involves one of the largest commercial properties along the Hull Street corridor, with a 20,000-square-foot building sitting on 2.4 acres along West 20th Street, stretching from Hull to Bainbridge streets with mostly surface parking.

Constructed in the mid-1950s, the Siegel’s store opened to great fanfare in 1957, according to city historic records.

“It was the largest and most expensive grocery store constructed in the Richmond area at the time,” Michael Hild said.

A 1957 advertisement in the Richmond Times-Dispatch shows the building cost $225,000 to construct, and included a parking lot that could accommodate 200 vehicles.

It was the second store at the time for brothers Charles and I.J. “Hip” Siegel, who owned their original market, established in 1935, on North Sixth Street downtown where the Richmond Coliseum now stands.

It’s the building’s architecture, Hild said, that was one of the main reasons he and his wife purchased the property.

Click here to keep reading on RichmondBizSense.