October 22, 2025
Barely a month after paying $31 million for Deep Run III in western Henrico and $7 million for part of the Gateway Centre office park in Chesterfield, Gagan Marwaha just dropped another eight figures for yet another local office building.
The real estate investor and his firm Marwaha Investments on Tuesday finalized the purchase of the Holland Tower at 2221 Edward Holland Drive for $13 million.
The 6-story, nearly 200,000-square-foot building sits off Staples Mill Road just east of Libbie Mill and in an area that’s seen recent interest from developers.
While the location was part of what drew Marwaha to the deal, it was the fact that the building is about to be half empty that really lured him in. He likes to buy troubled office properties, fix them up, break up their big blocks of space into smaller ones and lease them to smaller tenants.
The Holland building fit the mold, as its anchor tenant, health insurance giant Anthem, has already moved out on its lease of 90,000 square feet that’s up in June.
“I’ll have 50 percent of the building vacant. That’s the value-add,” Marwaha said of Anthem’s departure. “That’s the reason you’re buying such a beautiful asset for $13 million.”
Marwaha bought the property from Hampton Roads-based Robinson Development Group, which developed the property and co-owned it with Anthem. Newmark’s Will Bradley and Mark Williford represented Robinson in the deal.
The property and its 12 acres were most recently assessed by Henrico County at $21.7 million.
Marwaha said the deal was complicated by the fact that half of that acreage conveyed in the sale, while the other half is a ground lease with 50 years left that Marwaha had to assume with the acquisition.
“It was a very complicated process that I was able to resolve. We were able to find a solution around the ground lease,” he said, declining to go into further detail.
Marwaha navigated that tricky provision while getting to the closing table for the 355,000-square-foot Deep Run III and the 74,000-square-foot Gateway Centre II.
The three deals in the last 30-or-so days bring his office building buying spree to six purchases totaling $66 million in around 24 months.
Most of those involved troubled assets with high vacancy rates, including some that were completely empty.
Marwaha’s strategy also involves renaming the buildings he buys. Holland Tower is now known as Marwaha Tower III. That follows suit with the former Patriot Tower and Gateway Centre II, which are across the street from each other in Chesterfield and are now known as Marwaha Tower I and II, respectively.
He’s even renamed Deep Run III, known as part of the former Circuit City headquarters campus, as Marwaha Business Plaza.
Colliers will handle leasing on Marwaha Tower III.
Marwaha said the timing of these three recent deals closing in such close succession was coincidental. He would not comment on how he financed the acquisitions but added that he does not have any outside investors or co-owners at his firm.
Marwaha got his start in real estate by buying single-family residential properties and then began to make a name for himself by amassing a portfolio of apartment buildings in Petersburg totaling more than 400 units.
While he’s been focused on office assets for the last two years, he said he’s kept an eye out for additional apartment deals.
“We are very excited about the casino coming and the future of Petersburg. I just believe apartments are overvalued and they need to be corrected for me to get back into it,” he said.
In the meantime, office deals will continue to hold most of his attention, Marwaha said.
“I am not stopping. I have very aggressive growth plans,” he said. “We are very actively looking for more value-add opportunities in Class-A office buildings. It seems like REITs and institutions exiting that space are giving us an opportunity.”
And he said he thinks there are still enough office deals to be had locally to allow him to remain focused on making investments solely in the Richmond region.
“I believe we are lucky to be in Richmond,” he said. “I am very much focused in Richmond.”
