image: The Inaugural Teens’ Choice Award is presented to the Playground+ team.

Storefront for Community Design and Historic Richmond hosted the 2022 Golden Hammer Awards on October 27 at Hardywood Brewery. As Richmond-area non-profits with interests in historic preservation and neighborhood revitalization, we were delighted to co-present the awards for the sixth year and recognize professionals and community members improving our neighborhoods through restoration, adaptive reuse, new construction, placemaking, and historic preservation. The Golden Hammer Awards were started in 2000 with a goal of honoring excellence in neighborhood revitalization projects throughout Greater Richmond.

Our nominees completed projects in many of Richmond’s well known historic districts - Jackson Ward, the Museum District, Scotts Addition, Monroe Ward, Northside, Manchester, the East End, the Carillon, Monument Avenue and Downtown’s central business district – but this year we see, for the first time, projects focused on the revitalization of public housing and public investment in areas of South Richmond. The focus on the public housing projects developed in the city during the era of Urban Renewal contrasts with parallel efforts by private developers and county governments to revitalize suburban areas that were developed during a period of white flight from Richmond’s city center.

A church, a gas station, an early downtown “skyscraper,” a school, an Art Deco commercial storefront, a fraternity house, a 1970s shopping mall, the riverfront, and multiple iconic civic institutions - these unique and authentic elements of our historic built environment are now seeing new life thanks to the work of our nominees.

The collective work of our nominees reflects innovative solutions to address contemporary issues, marking a year of progress towards a more vibrant and equitable Richmond with more housing, more education, more accessibility, and more places for people to just be themselves.

This year, we also introduced a new Teens’ Choice award voted on by Storefront for Community Design’s City Builders. As part of our youth program this fall, we met with participants to present the 12 winning projects and asked for their vote to pick the Teens’ Choice award. The City Builders even designed two awards that was presented to the winner.