Robin Miller Associates

Robin Miller & Associates is an experienced real estate development firm based in Richmond, Virginia. Our sister companies are Horizon Construction Management (fully licensed Class A general contractor in Virginia and North Carolina), Monroe Properties (property management), and MP Maintenance (maintenance company). We specialize in adaptive reuse, historic redevelopment, and advising institutional, municipal, and private-sector clients as they navigate the complexities of revitalizing legacy buildings and underutilized campuses.

What sets us apart is our holistic, full-cycle approach. Traditional architectural, urban planning, and engineering firms typically address only a single discipline—design, planning, or technical analysis. While those components are important, they represent just one slice of what it truly takes to bring a historic or adaptive-reuse project from idea to execution. These firms do not have the long history of successful execution of historic renovation projects that Robin Miller & Associate does – as exemplified by our extensive project portfolio.

By contrast, Robin Miller & Associates operates as a true integrator and strategic owner’s representative, solving the entire puzzle of redevelopment:

• We coordinate architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental teams.
• We understand funding, capital structuring, and historic tax credits at a developer-level.
• We navigate political, regulatory, and community-engagement hurdles.
• We approach every project from the standpoint of long-term operations, feasibility, and lifecycle performance—not just schematic design or entitlement.

Our clients gain the advantage of 25+ years of real-world execution and a deep roster of associated professionals, including architects, engineers, preservation specialists, environmental consultants, financial advisors, and policy experts. We operate with a level of ownership-minded pragmatism that conventional consulting firms simply cannot match.

Our 80-Acre Living Laboratory: The Villages at Staunton (formerly the Western State Hospital Campus)

For more than 20 years, Robin Miller & Associates has been the owner and steward of the historic Western State Hospital campus, now known as The Villages at Staunton—an 80-acre property in Staunton, Virginia consisting of 12 large historic buildings dating from the 1800s. These buildings were designed and built by architect Thomas R. Blackburn who was an understudy of Thomas Jefferson.

This long-term ownership gives us an unmatched operational perspective that typical A/E or planning firms do not possess:

• We have overseen real-world maintenance, capital planning, and preservation of historically sensitive structures.
• We have managed phased redevelopment, occupancy stabilization, and long-term financial performance across multiple cycles.
• We understand through lived experience the true costs, risks, and opportunities of owning and operating large historic assets over decades—not just during design or construction.
• We manage ongoing leasing, operations, and reinvestment, learning firsthand what actually succeeds over time.

This deep, hands-on experience informs every advisory engagement we take on. It allows us to provide owner-level insight, anticipate long-term challenges, and deliver recommendations grounded in the lived reality of sustaining historic properties—not just theorizing about them.

Scope of Services

• Federal Historic Tax Credits
• State Historic Tax Credits
• Special Assessments
• Redevelopment & Economic Feasibility
• Certificates of Appropriateness (COAs)
• Local Tax Abatement Applications
• Grant Applications
• Land Use & Historic Design Review
• National Register, Local Historic Site & District Designations
• Design Collaboration (SOI Standards for Treatment of Historic Properties)
• Historic Documentation, Surveying & Planning
• Community Outreach & Public Engagement
• Historic Research & Interpretation
• Cost Estimating & Budget Preparation
• Historic Building Condition Assessments & Maintenance Plans
• Project Management to Protect HTC Eligibility Through Construction
• Capital Structuring & Redevelopment Financing
• Conservation Easements
• Historic Asset Strategy
• Portfolio Optimization for Institutional Clients
• Referral Network: legal, accounting, lending, contracting, architecture, environmental, government agencies, and more