flaneur

Good points all around on the city often going all in on big ticket "this has to be it!!!" projects that really have so many complicated variables (we so dodged a major financial nightmare by not seeing the Navy Hill project land), but I do think the stadium will get built given VCU's involvement and others. That general site right off 95/64 next to Scott's Addition and right up to the Pulse/Broad corridor will be in demand by private developers, and full of market potential requiring no subsidy, regardless of an RFP process. Re: Maritza Pechin, she had the chance to be a schedule C political appointee in the Biden administration working under Sec. Buttigieg. While her job might only last until the end of this year depending on the outcome of November, it's definitely something that for someone with her talent and capability, would be hard to turn down. I wish her the best, am grateful for the serious human capital value add she made showing the caliber of person the city should strive to hire, and I hope she'll consider returning one day.

I did a full downtown walk on both sides of the river last week and happened to take these two pics of the site. My friend's husband is doing some of the electrical work and he said they're on a very fast schedule. He'd never heard of CoStar feet so I educated him when he said "it's going to be the tallest building in the city."

Midlo is definitely still growing. I grew up there, graduated from Midlo in the 90s, and the changes around the village are huge. The former cow field just west of Winterfield at Midlo Turnpike is full of development with townhomes and retail. I wish it were more urban that it is, but it as least tries with townhomes and sidewalks. We visited both Wongs Tacos and Triple Crossing and they've somehow leveraged a stormwater retention pond into place-making where people gather by the water. There's also a big village master plan that got approved to hone in on the old core and emphasize sidewalks, infill, and development that complements the village core. I hear the long-term plan is to reroute Midlo Turnpike around the area and the current stretch in the village will have diagonal parking and more of a main street feel. There's also a plan to move the middle school so that site right in the village center will be a huge play. Sycamore Square also has tremendous potential. I wish a Trader Joe's would go in the old Ukrops. Oceano took over the old Crab Louies and has added some nice al fresco dining facing Midlo turnpike. Slowly, but surely, the village as coming together to bolster the "there there" rather than pave over it. It's still way too much car-centric sprawl, but it's better than it could be. And the beloved Apothecary with the good old-fashioned soda fountain is still there dishing out great sandwiches and limeades and serving as a true third space for much of the community.

this is awesome! i feel they will go for some strong architecture that really adds to the skyline (so prominent given the elevation) and really shows up strong for people approaching the city from the north. and i think it can reknit, reconnect some of the awful urban fabric in those blocks. i hope.

speaking of prognostications, here's bizsense's crystal ball for 2023. i am interested in seeing how the old beaufont mall turns out across from cloverleaf, and stony point too as it has a lot of potential, even though i really dislike malls. https://richmondbizsense.com/2023/01/03/the-bizsense-crystal-ball-things-to-watch-in-2023/

i'm most excited about all the infill going in downtown--the 15 story student housing already underway, the lovely new 8 story building near quirk, and others in the works. i'd rather have a lot of that than one large office tower, though i do look forward to seeing costar rise. i'm also excited about the diamond district, the coliseum rfp process, the work to get started on the national slavery center/museum, and hopefully keeping the pulse and other bus transit free. unannounced--i would love to see capital one seize upon low commercial space rents and move some of its west creek functions downtown.

the future health and vibrancy of downtown definitely depends on increasing housing and adding residents rather than adding office towers and daytime commuters. luckily, downtown is well positioned to evolve as a real 24/7 neighborhood. it has good urban fabric bones that connect well to adjacent neighborhoods such as the fan, jackson ward, and church hill. plus plenty of infill opportunities, especially in monroe ward. really the only area of downtown that feels more isolated and single use/disconnected, and thus not as appealing as a neighborhood/harder to integrate to the rest of the urban fabric, is the newer area around the Fed, future CoStar, etc., where lone towers, often on a pedestal, sit by themselves and cater to parking garages. but the rest of the downtown is prime for residential growth and truly becoming a real 24/7 neighborhood. related, this article nails it: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/12/remote-work-is-poised-to-devastate-americas-cities.html

replying to the post above about broad st being quiet, i had the opposite experience while home for the holidays last week. on wednesday, my brother and i parked near the jefferson to see the decorations, then walked to quirk for their pink tree, and then walked all over downtown covering broad and grace back and forth from belvidere to the capitol and then going down to main and cary. we got coffee at quirk, cocktails and oysters at birdies, amazing bread at europa crust, and i wanted to eat and drink at many more places but ran out of stomach space and time. we passed so many relatively new businesses such as jolene and vinyl conflict. perly's had about 20 people waiting on the sidewalk, lillie pearl and rappahannock were both packed. true, the streets weren't bustling with pedestrians as in downtown's retail golden age, but the amount of vibrant small businesses nicely filling in the old retail core is really impressive! i also saw some great infill under construction such as the large, 12 or so story residential building near franklin and adams. downtown's making some awesome progress and it just keeps getting better and better every time i come home.

i walked all over downtown while home last week and stumbled upon a GEM of a bread bakery--Europa Crust--right on main between 13th and 14th. the bread is some of the best i've had and would hold up against some of the best global bakeries. this is a great example of the type of small business we need more of in downtown as the residential population grows. i talked with the owner and he seems to be doing pretty well with one year of business under his belt. if you're downtown, i highly recommend buying a fresh loaf or two from europa crust: https://europacrust.com/ here's a good article from last year in the RTD Metro Business section: https://europacrust.com/assets/images/RTD Metro Business.pdf

not to make this a subs thread, but mr. submarine is legit and an institution on broad at westwood. however, is it the highest and best use given the pulse and increasing infill and density in the area? probably not. that's the challenge...not losing all the small businesses and quirky buildings that add to the special sauce of our urban frabric while also growing and densifying in prime areas such as broad. in this case, the drive-through mr. submarine set-up should go, but i hope the business would have a home in future development should the owners sell. and speaking of subs, i was just home for christmas and hit bernie's over on ridge road. simply THE BEST old school richmond sub institution. and the new spot next to it, supper club, is excellent too. i also had to hit stuffy's at libbie and grove. my second favorite RVA sub:)

DC votes today whether to make its entire bus system free within city limits. if it passes it'll be most populous city in the US with free bus transit. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/12/06/dc-council-free-metrobus-vote/

a nice shot my friend sent looking out from the new dominion tower yesterday.

that rendering is lovely! it reminds me a bit of the very underrated, understated, and aging very well welton becket designed BofA/first and merchants national bank building on main. three cheers for thoughtful, good urban design that will age well and enhance the urban fabric!!!

@mintscraft56I think the post refers to Norfolk being unable to expand its geographic footprint via annexation as land-locked, not that it is literally land-locked in the way that Roanoke or other inland cities are. This is a legacy of the 1970s annexation moratorium decision, rooted in the legacy of racism too. All complex, but at least we're making progress, finally.

nice find and this is exciting! while i would have loved that tall glass cube rendering shown awhile back, this entire corner at broad and madison is currently empty surface parking. this will be a great chance to enhance the urban wall and fill in gaps in that block. with quirk and common house within a block in each direction, this is a prime area to add to the growing vibrancy of broad. and 8 stories will fit in nicely! i can't wait to see the rendering.

+1 to many of the above comments. this doesn't have to be an either/or between development and preservation. it really should be a nuanced both/and where we have a holistic, balanced approach and don't weaponize either. we need to keep a fair amount of the rich historic urban fabric we have while also growing. one of the unfortunate realities of modern development is that it's hard for many projects to pencil (make it financially viable for the developer) beyond the omnipresent " 5 over 1" concrete podium with five floors of wood above it flowering in so many cities. these are good for adding density and new residents, and you can vary the facades quite a bit, but they get repetitive real fast. many of the older buildings we just could not build economically today. so to get around just the 5 over 1s and try to get better urban design, this is where our TOD zoning overlay and other efforts to help increase land values, incentivize height, etc., give us a chance to enhance the urban fabric with new development. but all said, i'll still take new "5 over 1s" on surface parking lots as smart infill any day of the week. but if it takes out a row of decent buildings, then it gets complex. for example, look at the block on 805 w. cary st. development near dinamo. that's one where i wish the developer had kept the facades of the existing buildings on the block while adding 5 story density infill behind, instead of tearing down most of that block and building the "fugly" 5 over 1 there.

I agree. The HOW of this process is light years better in terms of transparency and inclusion than Navy Hill or the Casino. RVA at 1.3 million is the 44th largest MSA, so yes, I suspect MLB wants our market share when most of our peers at the AA level are more in the 75-150th MSA size. I think the biggest contingency will come down to how they structure the financials, specifically the use and boundaries of a TIF/TAD. The Navy Hill TIF was just bonkers and felt so gerrymandered with so many fragile dependencies for it to pencil (see second Dominion tower). For the Diamond District to get buy-in and not get hijacked by "another 6th St. Marketplace" narrative, it will need to have a much more logical TIF boundary and not put the burden/trade-off on more of the city. The actual market demand for this, and the fundamentals behind it, seem far more solid than most any econ. dev. "big project" I've seen the city pursue in my lifetime.

Take this with a very big grain of salt, but while visiting family in RVA this past week, my brother told me his friend at CoStar said, "don't be surprised if the plans get scaled back." This is second-hand and I don't know his friend, but apparently there's talk internally about reassessing the scope of the project among staff. I'm hoping this is just second-hand speculation, but given office trends now and the evolving future of how we work, it wouldn't surprise me. I know CoStar has had a stricter return to office policy, but if they want to compete for the best talent, they'll probably need to ease up on required days in the office. Do any of y'all work for CoStar or have good contacts who might know more? On a positive note, the city looks amazing and you can feel the increasing urbanism and vibrancy everywhere. Plus the food and drink scene just keeps getting better and better.

Oh I wish Richmond had "lavender trees." When I lived in LA I LOVED jacaranda season when the streets exploded in a blossom of lavender trees with petals all over the ground. It's beautiful.

Don't get me started on the Richmond Real brand and money spent. Such a waste. Michael Paul Williams wrote a very compelling piece in yesterday's RTD. Whereas RVA happened in such a bottom-up, organic, non-corporate way and it took off. I live in Atlanta and love seeing occasional RVA bumper stickers down here. I know the city said that RVA is the region and the city itself needed a brand, but outsiders see the whole region, not arbitrary jurisdiction lines. Just go all in on RVA. Related, I'd love it they could get a big RVA sign up on one of the high-rises adjacent to 95 (Monroe Tower would be ideal, but it might be demoed) that you could light up different colors for holidays and such. An easy way to build the brand.

Not a big surprise that Saks has closed off its upstairs floor. I think it's positive that they're staying instead of closing completely. As the new owners reposition Stony Point, there's super potential for dense infill residential while keeping a condensed and reduced retail row with a mix of luxury (Saks, Tiffany, etc.), restaurants, and more local-serving retail for residents. The Dick's spot is ripe for residential. It would also be great to add ingress/egress to Huguenot and Cherokee, but I suspect NIMBYs would oppose that. https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/06/10/saks-fifth-avenue-downsizes-at-stony-point-fashion-park/

My point wasn't to NOT grow. I think RVA frankly should already have an MSA population of 2-2.5 million had she not fumbled so many times. I'm just saying you can try to strike a sweet spot between strategic, inclusive growth vs. fervid, rampant growth for growth's sake. Be aggressive trying to grow while being intentional about how to accommodate the growth. Note I did not say contain. I hate that frame and I loathe NIMBYs and BANANAs (build absolutely nothing near anybody). The Austin of the early 2000s was fun and still growing and robust economically, but I now hear that the Austin of today is leaving a lot of folks behind while attracting a lot of...forgive me for tacking to overly simplistic, negative/perhaps offensive language..."tech bro d-bags." Change is inevitable if indeed a city is dynamic, and that's much better than the alternative, stagnation or decline. I will choose the former any day over being stuck in a bypassed time capsule. But my main point here is it doesn't have to be an either or zero sum game when it comes to growth.

I hope RVA does indeed grow and achieve her potential, but not unchecked or so explosively that she loses her soul. Change, churn, and dynamism are positive and inevitable in a healthy economy. But rapid growth comes with tradeoffs. The people describing RVA as a Portland or Austin from 20 years ago did so with a lament of what's been lost in those cities and how they'd like to leave them or are happy to have left. I doubt there's ever a perfect sweet spot balancing not losing the special sauce with growth, but I hope we hit it.

Ditto. I have several friends who've visited or moved from Austin and Portland and both said that RVA reminds them of both of those cities about 20 years ago. There's a real there there, and an urbanism that belies RVA's relatively smaller size. Several NYC friends see it as a mini-Brooklyn.

Agree. I'm happy in so many ways with the building, but some approaches really lack curb appeal from afar. But I can't complain as the building at street level mostly enhances the urban wall and meets the street soooooo much better than its neighbors. We really need to do something about the Cary. St. dead zone of parking entrances and also the Federal Reserve's fence (not needed; at the Atlanta Fed in the heart of midtown Atlanta you can walk right up to it and there's a park open to the public where people hang out and walk their dogs). On a random note, I'll say that the early 1970s Farmers and Merchant Bank HQ just a few blocks east, now Bank of America and designed by LA firm Welton Beckett, has really aged well.