flaneur

Not sure if this got posted last week, but here's some positive data on in migration to RVA and residential rentals. We're number 13 on the list: https://www.storagecafe.com/blog/us-renters-migrate-toward-feeder-cities-with-dallas-suburbs-biggest-renter-magnets/

Hopefully they can come up with either some shared solution using other under-used existing parking near Willow Lawn or some kind of public-private joint venture to build a parking deck with housing above it. That land is way too valuable for a surface lot park and ride, and that use seems antithetical to the type of dense, infill that the Pulse will help catalyze. Broad from downtown to Short Pump should be Richmond's version of Wilshire Boulevard in LA. In cities with successful transit, you still usually need to pay at the park and ride lots.

Really???? I don't mean to offend, but I live in Atlanta and I find Truist Park and the Battery so sterile, manufactured, and not urban. All of it is very nice, there are fun restaurants, bars, and an area to enjoy after the game. But there's no transit option aside from an insane bus ride, traffic is bonkers, and it's all so very Short Pump feeling without any of Atlanta's dynamic edgy vibe. I get that for the vast majority of the fan base in metro Atlanta, it's likely easier to access now so it may make economic sense for the Braves. Ironically, the area by the former Braves stadium, Summerhill, has EXPLODED with AWESOME real urban infill since the Braves moved out (check it out: https://atlanta.urbanize.city/neighborhood/summerhill). The Braves could have done a lot to add to the urban setting and capture the profits, but when they were there, they held a lot of the area for surface lots and it stymied investment. Then they tried to extort the city for funds and I am so glad Atlanta said no. Just as I am so glad Richmond told the Braves no 14 years ago (Gwinnett County is STILL deep in debt from that deal). Anyway, my whole point here is that I hope the Diamond District is urban and vital and not a manufactured sterile bubble. I also lived in LA for 7 years and I can tell you that LA Live and the area around Staples Center has the same "safe suburban manufactured entertainment zone" feeling. It did help inject investment in downtown, but the rest of downtown LA has EXPLODED and is so much more awesome. Both Summerhill in Atlanta and downtown LA would have gotten where they got to without a big suburban sports-anchored entertainment zone. The Diamond District is in such a prime area so I hope we don't force something contrived. The market will do its thing in this location, which begs for urban connectivity, vibrancy, and authenticity. My two cents with a clear bias to urban living for better or worse:)

Oh I would love a mixed use tower in the 500-600 foot range with retail at the base, hotel, residential, and office if the market will bear that. All that together could add up to something signature that breaks our current 449 foot top building height. Baltimore has a similar project in the queue for a surface lot right by the Inner Harbor at 300 Pratt Street, but unfortunately their downtown has a high office vacancy right so they're still struggling to lock in an office tenant so still waiting. But I think this is a good example of the type of project that could test our market and fit that site well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_East_Pratt_Street Here's the latest article on this project from last year: https://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2021/06/03/mcb-real-estate-pratt-street-tower-on-hold.html Actually this is the latest from two days ago: https://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2022/04/18/40-story-tower-across-from-harborplace-move-ahead.html?cx_testId=6&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s

@eandslee your dream is exactly what Columbus, GA did and it's a big success. Great rapids. But the river is narrower than the James. Still, could be something to explore. https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/build-columbus-georgia/

Yes, +100 on adding density, mixed uses, and more connectivity so this is a vital and economically viable node for the city. I look forward to seeing the different perspectives unfold in the comments in Biz Sense. I'm rooting for a gem from Bruce Milam, but something tells me Brian Glass will have something less positive to say on Stony Point. What's interesting is that when you actually crunch the numbers, it's been a good investment for the city with a positive rate of return. Though I never thought subsidy should go into malls. But still, it wasn't an investment failure, yet I bet the public perception and narrative will be "another 6th St. Marketplace."

Here's the press release from Second Horizon Development: https://www.secondhorizon.com/news-launch I'm hopeful they can really revitalize and enhance Stony Point--keeping some of the star attraction tenants (Saks, Cinebistro, some restaurants), adding more local/regular retail need tenants (somewhat like what Willow Lawn has done), opening access to Huguenot Rd., adding in more residential and developing some of the huge surface parking to increase the density and add more mixed uses. I wonder if there's even a way to connect to the river and nature, though I think other roads and private residential areas might make that difficult.

Looks like the slavery museum now has some real traction with the city committing $1.3 million in addition to what the state already allocated: https://richmond.com/news/richmond-city-council-approves-1-3-million-allocation-for-slave-museum-in-shockoe-bottom/article_1cfc76a9-9056-55bb-a188-8db650ec436a.html#tracking-source=home-breaking

Here's the relevant book from Rev. Ben Campbell that looks really interesting, Richmond's Unhealed History, and I bet you can get it from a local bookstore such as Fountain or Chop Suey. This shorter piece by Campbell in Style Weekly is also a great read: https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/unhealed-history/Content?oid=1669944

@blopp1234 check out the documentary, How the Monuments Came Down, as it has a whole section on this racism and redlining, urban "renewal," and the construction/devastation of our freeways. The Rev. Ben Campbell also has excellent work on this topic; he's such a gem to RVA! @upzoningisgoodI suspect it is a both/and wherein the primarily white political and downtown business establishment saw what was happening with suburban flight and they genuinely thought freeway and car "modernization" (fueled by massive federal subsidy encouraging this destruction for "progress") would bolster downtown business, and at the same time as they made what to us seem like horrendous decisions for urbanism and anti-Jane Jacobs dynamism and vibrancy, they weaponized this "modernization" to take out what they deemed as slums, aka often vibrant, but poor and minority neighborhoods. @I miss RVAI found one more article that explains the origins of our existing freeway lid/cap, Kanawha Plaza: https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/the-lost-park/Content?oid=1631213 "In the early 1970s when the Federal Reserve Bank announced it would build a world-class structure near the James River (development of Brown’s Island was still a pipe dream) it stipulated that the city must construct a bridge in the form of a park that would straddle the Downtown Expressway and create pedestrian linkage to the financial district."

@I miss RVAbingo on a giant moat freeway being incompatible with vibrant, dynamic urbanism. We may be off the technical Jackson Ward/Gilpin topic, but still on point given just how much devastation and disconnect both the Downtown Expressway and I-95 caused to so much of RVA's core and perpetuates to this day. Heck, even the Wikipedia entry on the Downtown Expressway names this tension: "The Downtown Expressway has been criticized for a lack of urban sensitivity ever since the project was proposed in the early 1970s. Its construction destroyed hundreds of homes in Oregon Hill among other neighborhoods like the Historically Black neighborhood of Randolph , and cuts off pedestrian traffic to the river front. The lack of mixed use urban activation along the downtown Richmond riverfront and surrounding the highway in general has been linked to the expressway. Some have even suggested a renovation in the manner of San Francisco's Embarcadero or Boston's Big Dig."

@I miss RVA correction, it wasn't Ed Slipek, it was Harry Kollatz, Jr. and Tina Eshleman in Richmond magazine: https://richmondmagazine.com/news/richmond-history/the-distressway/ Ah, just rereading what could have been breaks my heart!!!! Of course, this type of boulevard is exactly what Seattle is building to replace the elevated freeway that disconnected downtown from the Puget Sound. Maybe one day we can fix the expressway:) What could have been.... "The “Main-to-the James” committee in 1972 hired the Philadelphia-based urban planning and landscape architecture firm of Wallace, McHarg, Roberts and Todd. Rather than a below-grade expressway forming an asphalt moat between Main Street and the James River, the Wallace group suggested converting it into a boulevard, similar to the present four lanes and median of Leigh Street behind the Science Museum. They advocated restoration of the canal. A rift ensued, and the committee denounced the consultants’ work as sketchy, unscientific and with weak justifications."

On Friday, my family and I parked at Semmes and walked the T-Pot to Brown's Island, then the Canal Walk to 14th St., crossed the Mayo bridge to Manchester, and then took the Manchester flood wall back to Semmes. I took this from the Manchester flood wall close to 14th. The entire walk, I was blown away by all the positive infill on both sides of the river, the improving connectivity to the existing urban fabric, and the untapped potential that still remains in many blocks and surface lots. I hope the city can soon dismantle the old Reynolds building along the Canal Walk. A lot of people were out walking, biking, and running. which was awesome to see. Embracing the river as our Central Park really has come a long way, and the general dense urbanism of Richmond is phenomenal. I wish we had that in Atlanta. CoStar will really add to this view, and more importantly to enhancing the urban fabric of that part of the riverfront.

I know the owner of Douglas has some questionable history personally, but the firm does good work. I lived in DC 2002-2006 and then again 2010-2017. In that first period, Douglas bought up a lot of downtown DC when it was full of empty blocks as well as much of the former commercial corridors in Logan Circle (14th St.) and Shaw. (7th, 9th, and U Sts). It took some time for them and the market to align, but if you visit any of those areas in DC now, they're all bustling (albeit not without displacement issues for long-term residents and small businesses). To Douglas' credit, they restored vital parts of DC's urban fabric and had the foresight at a time when many had written off DC (the population nadired in the early 2000s). I think they have a similar long-term "skin in the game" approach to Richmond, at least I hope so. Re: freeway caps, they are so cost prohibitive that I doubt many will get implemented. Here in Atlanta we have two under consideration and I know LA and other major cities have similar aspirations. We're quite lucky to have Kanawha in RVA. From what I understand, the Federal Reserve insisted upon that as they were shocked to discover the site they acquired would soon be cut off from the rest of downtown (back then in the early 70s, no one was down by the river). There's a great old Style Weekly article by Ed Slipek of a sad missed opportunity re: the downtown expressway. Apparently the first designs proposed an urban boulevard rather than a moat of a freeway. Alas, what could have been. But we have a real opportunity in this decade to reconnect so many areas we screwed up with our leap to the auto over everything (and with some heavy racism too to run through and redline certain areas such as Jackson Ward, Fulton, Navy Hill, etc.).

Dang, well now that rendering makes a lot more sense re: why it looks so similar in height to the Fed. But still, I'll take it. Honestly, I'd rather have a bunch of well-designed 200-400 footers that fill in downtown surface lots and add density than one or two 500-600 footers.

This is AWESOME!!!! Hopefully this will also support more growth and activity along the Canal Walk. 510' fits in nicely with our skyline, though it doesn't really look much taller than the 393' Fed next door in the rendering. But I feel that way about the Dominion tower; at 417' you can't notice much height difference from the Fed. Now we just need Capital One to move most of its West Creek campus to downtown. I know that has almost zero feasibility, but hey, I can dream.

This is fantastic. I'll never forget a quote from Bette Midler that I read in [RTD/Style Weekly/Richmond mag] back in the day, something along the lines of "my God, you have a GORGEOUS city, but what is with all the holes? Fill in the parking lots!" Monroe Ward offers tremendous infill potential to build downtown's residential base. It could be our own unique version of Portland's Pearl District.

"I miss RVA" nailed it above. I've always described Richmond as what you'd get if Philly, Baltimore, and Charleston had a threesome that produced an offspring. Re: that earlier list of banal cities, I would most certainly take Cincinnati off. I went for work before the pandemic and the seriously dense, rich, and unique urban fabric blew my mind. Over the Rhine, the amazing Roebling Bridge (Brooklyn's antecedent), quirky Covington KY just across from downtown (a la our Manchester), and a host of other urban neighborhoods really impressed me. I had a similar feeling when I went to Buffalo. Meanwhile I found Austin and Nashville to be highly over-rated. The places that developed and built out in a much earlier era, and prospered for so long before deindustrialization, offer so much that many of our booming, newer growth cities do not from an urbanism perspective (though I wish they had more jobs to get people back). Richmond really sits at a prime intersection in that it benefits from its old growth bones, but is still very much a player in the modern economy and will only get more and more in the game given recent trends, location benefits, and more.

Amen! RVA dodged a major financial bullet. Letting the Braves leave was a BIG WIN for the city. See what happened in their hometown, where I now live: 1. Gwinnett County, where they moved, committed a massive amount of public dollars and has struggled. They had to change the name as it confused people who thought they were going to the actual Major League Braves game. Gwinnett will be paying off the debt for the stadium for years. https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/refinancing-coolray-field-debt-could-save-gwinnett-millions/MUIVMRAVlWp8J0IJBQCVwI/ 2. The Braves just care about the bottom line, but no surprise as they're a business. They moved their Major League team out of the relatively new stadium built for the Olympics and left Atlanta's urban core to go out to suburban Vinings in Cobb County. They built a soul-less entertainment district called The Battery adjacent to the stadium, which makes sense for them as they are the landlord and get most of the revenue. But going to a game there feels so generic and sterile, and Cobb County is on the hook for $400 million in taxpayer subsidies. https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/cobb-reckons-with-braves-stadium-debt-during-pandemic/jh3SXflP3iNIvftXNQvo3M/

Agree, we need to work as a region, which we do somewhat through the Greater Richmond Partnership, and really harness this third shot we have for expansive growth. I feel we finally have the momentum and pieces in place after a long period of relative stagnation. By my estimate, we've had two periods previously where we were poised for big growth, and yet it didn't happen. The 1970s-early 80s, which we've covered a lot on several threads (e.g., possible Piedmont hub, but then the negative effects of the deregulation of interstate banking, the likely crippling results of the annexation battle and how racial tensions held back the region, etc.). But what I find really interesting is our first shot in the late 19th/early 20th century. In 1860, Richmond and Charleston vied for the largest city in the south after New Orleans. Then from 1870-1890, Richmond was by far and away the largest (again, after NOLA). In 1900, Atlanta moved up, but still neck and neck with Richmond (and Richmond was likely actually still larger as the city had yet to annex Manchester). It's not until 1910 that you see Atlanta pull ahead, but even then it's still pretty close, and then by 1920 the gap grows wider, though Richmond still remains much bigger than Charlotte, Raleigh, and Nashville for several decades. I found this short article highlighting Richmond's aggressive campaign in 1913 to get picked as one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks really interesting as the city clearly saw itself as this dynamic, growing metropolis. Read pages 4-10. So fascinating. Everything at that moment pointed to Richmond being one of the major new south cities. And yet, we slowed down and kind of stalled out (really low city growth in the 1920s and 30s). At the same time we succeeded landing the Federal Reserve, we also went all in on enshrining the city as the home of the Lost Cause, and I think that must have hurt us in many ways tangible and intangible. Link to Richmond's 1913 Federal Reserve effort: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/econ-focus-federal-reserve-bank-richmond-3941/winter-2007-476936/federal-reserve-504047 Link to city population (scroll to bottom and you can pick all decades from 1840 on): https://www.biggestuscities.com/

Fantastic photos! Thanks. I sure wish we could time travel and change a lot of highway and housing policies post-WWII. Hindsight is 20/20, but we went all in on cars and suburbs and we're only now course correcting.

Oh I have seen some of those photos, and the entire urban vibrancy from the golden era of the American downtown is amazing. I had the chance to experience the tail end in the late '70's and '80s and have fond memories of trips to Miller & Rhoads, Thalhimers, Cokesbury, and more with my family. I think those trips are where I started my strong love of cities and affection for places that have a real there there. I often joke that aside from modern medicine and civil rights, I live in the wrong era. But cities are dynamic and I'm excited to see our downtown evolve with an emphasis on more residents, better connectivity, and an embrace of the river....more of a human feel than the big monolithic downtown approach of the 90's and early 00's with "economic savior" projects such as convention centers and big towers disconnected from the urban fabric.

Yes, I've been to Santana Row and it is well done, though sterile IMHO. It embodies a lot of what Innsbrook hopes to achieve in its overhaul and what a bit of that West Broad village has across from Short Pump. But nationally, brick and mortar retail has and will continue to take a hit, so I don't foresee many new retail districts. More like a few top draw places (e.g., Fashion Island in SoCal, Tysons in NoVa, Lenox in Atlanta) and even they will struggle. RVA is so lucky to have Carytown and I hope we can sustain and grow that. I have lived in LA, DC, and I'm now in Atlanta, and with the exception of a few stretches in LA, none of these far larger areas have anything close to the special mix (and size) of Carytown. And I will take Carytown any day over a mall. Downtown definitely needs to grow its residential population further, but it has made tremendous progress. I was just home and walked all around, ate lunch at Lillie Pearl, picked up Stella's Market on Grace, and it was all promising. I think that stretch of Broad and Grace from VCU to the Capitol has made so much progress and has such future potential. That's the part of downtown that excites me most.

Yes, this. I think the NC bathroom bill is a main reason CoStar ultimately chose Richmond over Charlotte a few years ago. Here in Atlanta, our state's politics at the time were a main reason Amazon ruled out Atlanta in the HQ2 search. Inclusive politics matter for business and growth.

Richmond as a region actually has a very vibrant city core that will continue to get better. Downtown itself still lacks a lot of 24-7 activity, but it and the immediate neighborhoods around it, and the river, have really improved in the last decade. Richmond too often in its past has sought the big, grand, "downtown savior" project and we know those things do not work, and often they make it worse and make the downtown focus on single use activities such as entertainment, shopping, etc. Rather, it's the whole fabric....residential, streets that don't just cater to cars going in and out for work commutes, commercial, parks, art, etc., that all add up to a compelling experience throughout the day and during both work week and weekend. I've brought so many people from out of town who had almost no mental perception of Richmond, and every single one has expressed how incredibly surprised they were and how the city is much cooler than they anticipated and how it has so much potential. Every time I come home I walk all over downtown, the river, and hit the neighborhoods around it, and it just keeps getting better and better.