Ivor Massey Jr.’s passions include historic sites and new technology

by Robert Powell
Virginia Business
June 2005

Anyone who associates the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities with white-gloved society ladies has not met Ivor Massey Jr. The bearded, 6-foot, 3-inch president of the APVA looks like a man who might ride a Harley. He does, in fact, and used to own a Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership as well — one of many business interests.

Massey, a resident of Richmond’s Fan District, has practiced law, managed his family’s investments and played a major role in a venture capital fund that promoted high-tech businesses. But the APVA is his cause. He wants to transform not only the venerable historic preservation group but also the public’s perception of historic sites. “We’re trying to change the culture to the point where people value historic resources rather than see them as something standing in the way of progress,” he says.

Continuing an initiative begun by the late Martin King, his predecessor as APVA president, Massey is trying to reposition the organization from just being the owner of historic sites such as the John Marshall House and Historic Jamestown to being a high-profile advocate for historic preservation. Massey encourages nonprofit groups to pool their resources so they can effectively lobby the legislature, raise money and market ideas. Preservationists, he notes, are competing for people’s attention “along with companies selling automobiles and soap.”

Bob Bluford, a Presbyterian minister who is president of the APVA’s Douglas Southall Freeman branch, praises Massey’s leadership. “He has been a great advocate for things that are very important to the community. He’s also a dependable friend,” he says.

Under Massey’s guidance, the APVA joined a protest last winter against plans by the state government to level two former Richmond hotels used for years as office buildings. Demolition has been stayed while a feasibility study funded by several groups, including the APVA, is conducted on use of the buildings. A previous state study was “not as open-minded as it could have been,” Massey says with a wry smile.

Rather than protests, the APVA is best known today for the Jamestown Rediscovery Project, an archaeological program begun in 1994 that has captured headlines around the world. At Historic Jamestown, which the APVA co-administers with the National Park Service, Dr. William Kelso, the APVA’s director of archaeology, has discovered the remains of the settlement’s original fort and uncovered some 300,000 artifacts.

One of the most dramatic recent discoveries has been the grave of a man that Kelso believes is Bartholomew Gosnold, one of Jamestown’s founders who died only months after his arrival. This month the remains of one of Gosnold’s relatives will be exhumed on England to extract genetic material. Kelso hopes to use the DNA to identify the Jamestown skeleton as Gosnold’s.

Massey wants to use state-of-the-art technology to offer Kelso’s findings to the public. He envisions a comprehensive Web-based resource center that would provide access to every imaginable piece of information about Jamestown. His model is “The Valley of Shadow,” a digital archive tracing the history of two places, Augusta County, Va., and Franklin County, Pa., through the Civil War.

Massey, 57, is well acquainted with the marvels and the perils of technology. He was a major investor in Monument Capital Partners, a $25 million venture capital fund begun in 2000 to jump-start a number of Richmond high-tech companies. The fund was phased out in 2003 after many of the companies failed. “Monument started at the height of the technology bubble,” Massey says. “We paid too much for some bad ideas and some good ideas.” Today, his company, Triad LC, invests in technology companies on a much more limited basis. “We’re still licking our wounds,” he says.

Triad is based in the former Watkins-Cottrell hardware supply building that Massey owns in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom. The building, which also provides offices for Timmons Group, Massey Cancer Center and Priority Capital Management, is a post-modern marvel with brick walls, skylights and internal bridges. In Massey’s waiting area, a spiral staircase in an old elevator shaft leads to a rooftop patio with a view of downtown. Massey offers the building as a example of what can be done with the adaptive reuse of an old structure. “It can be a delight,” he says.