Sheltering Arms, which provides programming for people with disabilities, is planning to open a new location at Regency. (Jack Jacobs photo)
Another medical tenant has signed on as part of Regency’s mixed-use transformation.
Sheltering Arms recently inked a lease for a nearly 25,000-square-foot space on the second floor of the former Forever 21 store at the western Henrico mall.
The nonprofit physical rehab organization plans to use 13,000 square feet of its space for its adaptive and medical fitness programming. Those programs serve people with disabilities who need help managing and learning exercise equipment, as well as people who are middle-aged or older and are at high risk of chronic disease.
Sheltering Arms currently offers the exercise programming out of its therapy clinics that dot the region, but aren’t the primary use of those shared spaces. The Regency facility would provide dedicated space for the fitness programs.
“(The facility) is a considerable increase in scale for those programs for us, the first real effort that we’ve made to focus on that part of our business,” Sheltering Arms President and CEO Dianne Jewell said. “Right now, all of our adaptive and medical fitness offerings are embedded in therapy clinics, which means therapy takes priority.”
The Regency space would also house an outpatient physical therapy clinic of 1,200 to 1,500 square feet under the banner of Sheltering Arms Institute, which operates a rehabilitation hospital in Goochland and is a nonprofit joint venture of Sheltering Arms and VCU Health.
The clinic would feature offices and treatment rooms, and also have access to the gym planned as part of the area focused on adaptive and medical fitness programs. Jewell said co-locating the therapy and fitness program would benefit the people who transition from one to the other, because it would be easier for the organization’s team to keep tabs on how they’re doing.
“What’s nice about having therapy services embedded in the same complex is the potential for warm handoffs between people who need physical therapy or occupational therapy and who may have completed their course of care, but want to stay active. And that way communication between the therapists who treated them and the exercise physiologists who run our programs is smooth,” Jewell said.
About 8,000 square feet of the overall Regency facility would be utilized by the recreational day program for adults with physical disabilities operated by Sheltering Arms.
A cost estimate for the project is still being developed. The Regency facility is expected to open, or at least be substantially completed, by August 2027, Jewell said.
J. A. Heisler has been tapped to serve as the project’s general contractor. The facility’s architect is PSH+, which recently acquired Hummel Associates, the design firm that has worked with Sheltering Arms on past projects.
Thalhimer announced the impending arrival of Sheltering Arms to the mall last week. Connie Jordan Nielsen and Nicki Jassy handle retail leasing at Regency, while Amy Broderick and Kate Hosko handle office leasing at the development.
Sheltering Arms’ arrival at Regency amid the ongoing mixed-used redevelopment of the mall by owners Thalhimer Realty Partners and Rebkee Co. The 10-year-and-counting project has seen anchor spaces once occupied by retailers revamped for the likes of Performance Pickleball and NOVA Aquatics, as well as construction of apartments atop what was formerly parking lots. Recent arrivals to the mall include Grove Eye Care and indoor golf simulator venue Tee Box.
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