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On Sunday evening, a fire broke out in Church Hill North at a boarded-up building listed by city officials as vacant.

Smoke could be seen billowing from a two-story structured previously owned by the Good Shepard Baptist Church at North 28th and R Streets. According to a sign out, the building was slated for redevelopment into “15 New 1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments” by a company called Cava Capital LLC.

The firm, which lists a mailing address in The Malvern Building just west of Scott’s Addition, owns two other properties also listed by the Richmond Department of Planning & Review’s Property Maintenance Division as vacant in its official citywide inventory, last updated April 2026. Shortly after publication, chief executive Frank Cava responded to The Lookout’s request for comment to confirm that the company owned the building.

Cava was recently profiled by The Richmonder for his prodigious use of the city’s laws governing additional dwelling units to build 100 “backyard cottages.” His portfolio, Ned Oliver reported for the outlet, “caters to Housing Choice Voucher holders (formerly known as Section 8)”. Cava declined to respond to The Lookout’s inquiry about the status of development at 1200 N. 28th, which Cava Capital LLC acquired in 2017 from Good Shepard Baptist Church of Richmond.

“With this being an active fire, we have no further details or comment at this time,” Cava said via email.

The fire, which based on Richmond emergency-services calls appears to have begun sometime around 6pm Sunday evening, sent billows of dark smoke over the East End that were visible from across the city. The Lookout observed the smoke driving north on the Manchester Bridge around 6:20pm.

Per active-call logs, the Richmond Fire Department responded to a call placed around 6:15pm. When The Lookout arrived on the scene around 6:30pm, dozens of firefighters and emergency responders had set up on R St. between N. 27th and 28th Sts. to battle the blaze and conduct crowd control.

In a social-media post mid-morning Monday, RFD announced that “there were no civilian or firefighter injuries” as a result of the fire, the cause of which is currently unknown. Bystanders speculated whether lightning from a thunderstorm that moved through the city shortly before RFD received the first call about the fire may have touched it off. On reddit’s active /r/rva forum, several users posting videos and photos of the blaze claimed to have observed lightning strike the building.

"The rain started. We heard an extremely loud snap of lightning essentially," a neighbor, Coleman Lucado, told WTVR. "All of a sudden we saw a little bit of smoke building and then all of a sudden from our house we just saw flames erupting from behind our buildings."

Firefighters extinguished the blaze Sunday night, with only minimal damage to the adjacent properties, according to the WTVR staff report. On Monday morning, RFD crews milled around the block as city officials and representatives from Cava Capital took stock of the damage.

This is a Lookout special report. It will be updated with more information as it becomes available. If you know more, please get in touch.