jbjust

Looks like it's going to be "Centennial Terrace" with 6 stories and street-level retail... https://www.richmond.com/business/local/new-york-developer-planning--story-apartment-building-in-downtown/article_ca57f196-e9b5-50c9-a52b-7b5130086f1b.html

The portion that the city would be expected to pay in a development like this (e.g., the arena, etc.) will be financed by TIF. The hotel, etc. will be privately financed. My recollection iw that they have already signed up a developer and operator for the hotel.

Just to be clear on the financial side of this -- the entire project is premised upon TIF financing, which is NON-RECOURSE financing from the bond-holders' perspective. If the project does not generate a sufficiently larger value in the underlying real estate to pay the bill, then the bondholders take the bath, not the city. These sorts of TIF bonds are widely syndicated, so Brent's desire to know what large single entity will fund this is searching for something that doesn't exist and has never been intended to exist.

This is actually a pretty big deal for flights to Europe, opening up a number of new options for flights.

I think it would be great if they moved one of the UVA/VT games to there. They used to play some fo those games at the Roanoke Coliseum.

Just to clarify - I have in no way broken any confidences or confidentiality agreements. This was a presentation to an organization and there were dozens of people in attendance. I wish I had a copy of the PowerPoint I could share...

Just to give you a little more to brighten up your day, according to this presentation by a VERY senior person: There is an agreement in principle with the company that will operate the convention hotel, All of the luxury boxes in the arena are already spoken for; The naming rights of the arena are spoken for; There have been very positive conversations with the NCAA about first/second round games and about the women's final four The Coliseum is going to form a large portion of the infill to raise Leigh Street -- they are literally going to bulldoze it into Leigh Street and use its bones as the fill.

Let me assure that this is not dead. I attended a presentation a few weeks ago and was blown away by the behind-the-scenes progress.

Isn't Enrichmond still in charge of the park? They have a twitter feed you can comment on.

They discovered that it is hard to get qualified employees for their web team that are willing to live/drive to Goochland every day. Seriously.

The old Dominion tower is definitely coming down. I know you can't say "trust me" on the internet and have it mean anything, but trust me. If you want to check my post history, note that I was 100% right about the two towers design.

I hate to advocate bright-line rules, but how about this one: "If your downtown redevelopment project proudly features a skating rink and bowling alley, you might not know what you're doing."

I would be more excited about the SW service to Tampa if it weren't a blatantly anticompetitive move to try to squeeze an upstart carrier out of the market. How about offering some NEW destinations from Richmond, like Las Vegas?

I'm not saying we ban them. I just don't think we should be incentivizing distribution centers with tax credits, etc. just as if they were a manufacturing facility or a corporate HQ as distribution centers have a huge footprint, employ relatively few people, and have significant negative externalities.

Not to be contrarian, but is having a huge inland port like that actually a benefit for quality of life in Richmond? Relatively speaking, the port and huge distribution warehouses employ very few people in proportion to their footprint and the ultimate result is many, many more tractor trailers on our local highways that are starting to get distressingly congested. I have the same reaction when I see the grand announcements of somebody building a new distribution center in Richmond, btw.

I was more excited about that number until I went to wikipedia and looked to see where that would put us — still probably out of the top 50 (extrapolating a bit based on 2017 numbers). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States. RDU is almost 50% busier than we are!!!

A thousand times no. Have you seen what hat has done to downtown detroit?

Service only on Sundays... Snore.

I have to say, it's growing on me. Would rather get more people downtown now than a perfect project in 5-10 years.

Agree, not to mention the expense of paying for all those singers!

Check and mate...

Wait until that parking garage is covered in trees...

Yes, people don't realize that the debt obligation is finite and that if the TIF generates more than needed it goes to the city.

The average IQ level on /r/Rva is distressingly low.

While you're correct about the debt burden, the city does get the future taxes that are above the amount needed to service the debt AND it's pretty safe to say that this area wasn't going to be generating a lot of incremental tax revenue for at least the next 3-4 years. You're also neglecting the fact that the city is spending $1 million/year on maintaining the current coliseum if nothing is done. I think the arena size was chosen specifically to be above the minimum needed to host a later-round NCAA tournament game.