Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Followed notifications
Please log in to use this feature
At least one new mixed-use community with a sports-venue centerpiece is taking shape in the Richmond region. But it's not on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. The former site of Virginia Center Commons is being transformed from a weedy, moribund mall site to a place of townhomes, apartments, hotels and restaurants anchored by the
Henrico Sports & Events Center . Virginia Center Commons opened in 1991 and enjoyed a brief heyday before the openings of Short Pump Town Center and Stony Point Fashion Park in 2003 rendered the northern Henrico County mall obsolete. As the mall property became increasingly desolate, Henrico officials mulled the creation of a sports center at Richmond Raceway before settling on the Virginia Center Commons site for a building that houses up to 12 regulation basketball courts or 24 volleyball courts for touring teams and tournaments. The timing could hardly be better. You might have noticed that women's basketball is having a moment. Combine this athletic facility with the
upcoming GreenCity arena four miles to the south and northern Henrico looks like a budding regional sports entertainment hub. Shamin Hotels
plans to build two hotels at the former mall site — a Residence Inn and a Home2 Suites by Hilton — as well as two restaurants. "This area has tremendous potential," Neil Amin, CEO of Shamin Hotels, said in Friday’s Times-Dispatch. "It has the bones to really achieve greatness, which it will." The same might have been said about the area of Arthur Ashe Boulevard where our minor league ballpark sits. But Richmond has balked or struck out on its sports venues while Henrico scores.
The Henrico Sports & Events Center, located at the former site of Virginia Center Commons, opened in December 2023. Henrico quickly advanced its redevelopment vision for Virginia Center Commons; Richmond has dawdled for two decades on
what to do about The Diamond . Then-Richmond City Council President William J. Pantele said as much back in 2008, before the Atlanta Braves ultimately opted to yank their minor league team from Richmond in favor of Gwinnett County, Georgia, amid frustration over what was already a substandard ballpark. “They found themselves right back in a holding pattern with a great deal of uncertainty,” Pantele said. “Unfortunately, the city seems prone to consulting things to death to such a degree that nothing happens,” he said. “You’ve got to have the strength to pull the trigger.” The song remains the same today as our Flying Squirrels team faces a Major League Baseball deadline to upgrade Richmond's ballpark. That lack of movement has cost the city. It's as if Richmond officials believed they could build a cut-rate ballpark, as the city and its surrounding counties did in the mid-1980s when they chipped in to build The Diamond over eight months for $8 million. That regional effort should have
remained the template , given that the Flying Squirrels most avid fan base is largely suburban. In 2003, Chesterfield and Henrico counties were onboard with an $18.5 million renovation that would have addressed some of The Diamond's most glaring defects by adding lower-level seating and concession areas, reducing the upper deck and renovating the clubhouses and restrooms. But that renovation plan derailed when then-City Manager Calvin Jamison began what would become an impractical, years-long City Hall pursuit to build a ballpark in Shockoe Bottom, once a major center of the domestic slave trade. Along the way, city officials became consumed with the idea that The Diamond site was too valuable to reserve for a ballpark. They envisioned the area as an urban Short Pump — an idea no doubt off-putting to Henrico officials — and during the administration of then-Mayor Dwight Jones took tentative steps toward a mixed-use development at the site. It's further evidence of how counterproductive Virginia's unique "independent cities" status — coupled with its annexation ban — has been for Richmond, promoting urban isolation, school inequity and unseemly intra-region competition that has hindered us in competition with metro areas and former peer cities such as Charlotte, Raleigh and Nashville, or even smaller cities that can somehow come up with the scratch to build ballparks and civic arenas. As recent as 2022, the cost of a new ballpark was projected to be as low as $80 million. But, as inflation swelled, interest rate hikes increased the cost to finance the Diamond District project. The city recently announced its intent to issue its own
general obligation bonds for the project , rather than create a community development authority to issue bonds. This allows the city to act quicker and take on less long-term debt. But this approach leaves city taxpayers on the hook if the Flying Squirrels miss lease payments or the city fails to generate enough tax revenue from the development planned around the ballpark. Paul Goldman, among the leaders who torpedoed the casino project in South Richmond, has accurately described this as a bait and switch by the administration of Mayor Levar Stoney. I agree with Goldman that this matter should be put to city voters, and that the city should not be bullied by Major League Baseball into rushing into something foolhardy to meet MLB's deadline. I doubt that MLB would rashly leave our lucrative minor league market. I disagree with Goldman on the idea that The Diamond is salvageable at this point. There's nothing nostalgia-evoking about its access-challenged design. That the team routinely sits at or near the top of the Eastern League in attendance more reflects our market strength than a ballpark whose fan-friendliness and player facilities leave much to be desired. It never should have come to this. Richmond taxpayers are being asked to pay the price for two decades of inaction. And this ballpark should have never been viewed as a a linchpin of redevelopment, in Shockoe Bottom or the Diamond District. Besides, Arthur Ashe Boulevard hardly needs a baseball stadium to spur renewal. Residential buildings, restaurants and other businesses in Greater Scott's Addition have transformed the area from isolated to "it." Private developers would remake this area without city stage-managing. I must say, though, that I'm increasingly impatient with arguments that pit projects like this against other needs, primarily because of how infrequently those more pressing needs get addressed. Richmond retains too many shoddy school buildings even as its ballpark, Coliseum and courthouse outlive their usefulness. Metro Richmond has the bones to achieve greatness, but our regional setup is designed to encourage more cannibalism than cooperation. I love how Henrico is reinvigorating a dead mall area. But is our north suburb the most logical location for a regional arena? Instead of falling for these zero-sum games, we need to ask ourselves: Why is it so hard for Richmond to have nice things?
Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Followed notifications
Please log in to use this feature
