Opening a storefront in Richmond's historic districts: COAs, licenses, and launch.

Richmond keeps two entirely different ledgers of historic property, and conflating them is the most common mistake in this whole subject. The city has over 154 individual properties and 122 historic districts — nearly 28,000 properties — listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. Those listings are an honor, not a rulebook: the City's historic-preservation page states plainly that they "are not subject to any historic review requirements."

The rules live in a much smaller set: the City Old & Historic Districts — the St. John's Church district plus 15 additional multiple-property districts (and a number of individual-property districts), roughly 4,006 properties in all. Inside those districts, exterior changes require a Certificate of Appropriateness before work begins.

Not every COA goes before the commission. The Secretary of the CAR can approve a defined set of changes at staff level, with no hearing and no fourth-Tuesday wait: painting, replacement doors and porch decking, new handrails and porch rails, porch roof replacements, and exterior storm windows and doors.

This is not a minor side door — it is how most reviews happen. Of the 216 total reviews in 2025, 118 were administrative approvals: about 55 percent of everything the CAR processed that year never needed a commission meeting. If your storefront plans amount to paint, doors, and storm windows, your path may run through the secretary's desk, not the hearing room.

Whatever district you are in, the license comes first. Per the City's BPOL page, "any person, firm, corporation, LLC or other form of business entity is required to obtain a business license before they begin conducting business in the City of Richmond," and new businesses must apply within 30 days of opening.

The 2026 news is good. Effective January 1, 2026, the BPOL threshold doubled from $250,000 to $500,000 in gross receipts — an amendment to Ordinance 2024-187 passed by City Council on July 29, 2025 and announced by Mayor Danny Avula and Councilmember Stephanie Lynch. A business grossing between $5,000 and $500,000 now pays a flat $30 license tax. The City says nearly 70 percent of Richmond businesses fall under the new threshold; some previously paid as much as $2,900.

The calendar: licenses expire December 31, and renewal plus the BPOL tax are due March 1. Miss it and the penalty is "10 percent or $10.00, whichever is greater," with interest at 10 percent annually. Filing and payment run through the RVA Business Portal at rvapay.rva.gov/bpp, upgraded January 5, 2026 with a "Copy from 2025" filing option, five years of bill and payment history, and an exception dashboard; support is RVA 311, 804-646-7000.

One honesty note: as of our access date, parts of the City's BPOL page still carried the old $250,000 bracket language alongside the new threshold. The bracket figures above follow the July 2025 press release and ordinance amendment, which control — but confirm the current brackets with the Finance Department before you file.

Storefronts in the low-lying blocks near the James sit behind the Richmond floodwall, dedicated October 21, 1994 at a cost of $143 million. The City's floodplain-management page states the wall protects 750 acres and "is designed to protect those areas located behind it against a flood with an average recurrence interval of 280 years."

A wall is not an exemption. The City participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, and lenders "must require flood insurance policies on all new loans for structures in mapped special flood hazard areas." The same page carries the sentence every tenant near the river should read twice: "In Virginia it is the property owner's responsibility to find out if a structure is in the floodplain." Before signing, look the address up on the FEMA Flood Map Service Center.

And if your build-out disturbs ground: "Any land disturbance equal or greater than 4,000 square feet or equal to or greater than 2,500 square feet in a Chesapeake Bay Protection Area (CBPA)" requires a separate Richmond Erosion & Stormwater Management Program (RESMP) permit — and that includes demolition, new buildings, additions, and grading. The contact is the Water Resources Division, (804) 646-7586.