We have heard recently and for years (decades) that the most important things we need in this region are more housing, jobs and economic development, and good schools. But in the city, those things have not been priorities. After the Navy Hill boondoggle wasted two years of the public debate and was killed by City Council early in 2020, the discussion then turned to two casino referendums and allocating $130 million for a baseball stadium. All the while, the city has been growing more unaffordable for many and the housing issue is arguably getting worse, not better, and economic development (in the city) always seems to be accompanied by a massive city investment and outlay; but it’s worth it they say, because it will be “transformational.” When priorities become so warped you chase arenas and casinos and diverting city dollars in an obsession just to get deals done, the things that matter and the things that will make a real difference get sacrificed.
Most of local politics is the very unsexy work of taking calls, listening to constituents, and trying to solve problems that help make a resident’s life or job or business a little easier to navigate. In the case of the roughly ten square blocks of city-owned parcels surrounding the Coliseum, that should include the hum drum work to position those parcels and incentivize private developers (with some city involvement paying for someinfrastructure) to develop them and make them a vibrant part of the city’s and downtown’s fabric. It’s work that is long overdue.
It took almost two years for the city to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) in late 2022 for what is known as the City Center Plan. It sought responses from interested developers who would demolish the Coliseum and build a convention center hotel and more housing and development downtown. There were five detailed responses to the RFP outlining what they could do with the vacant downtown lots. But since receiving those proposals in early 2023, the City Center plan has gone into the witness protection program and barely heard from since. The final developer selection was supposed to be made in the spring of 2023 but repeatedly delayed. In April 2024, Stoney tried to get Council to agree to pay $3 million to demolish the Coliseum, which was the developer’s responsibility in the initial RFP (which Council refused). Since then, the only thing we have heard is that the negotiations were “ongoing.”
From what can be pieced together (and using past city history as a guide), the longer there is an impasse, the more the city gets desperate to close the deal — any deal — to say that big changes are coming with the “transformative project.” History also tells us that when the city gets too eager to close the deal, it usually ends up giving away the store and costing the city a lot more than it should and the “benefits” promised do not match when reality bites some years later.
According to an April 2025 article in Richmond BizSense, emails they obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request included discussions from earlier in 2025 about adding more city-owned properties than the ones around the Coliseum to the City Center plan so they could enlarge a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district that is planned to help fund parts of City Center through a Community Development Authority (CDA). Tax revenue generated from the development over time would be used to pay for bonds that would help fund the project and would be issued by the CDA.
Mayor Avula told City Council during the budget season in March that the City Center plan was needed to broaden the city’s tax base, but Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Sharon Ebert said in an email from early 2025 obtained by BizSense from that the Robert Bobb Group would review the project’s scope and whether more properties should be added to it, “to ensure sufficient tax revenues will be generated to adequately cover the debt service payments.”
The city hired the Bobb Group in February to help the city with the plan. They will advise on developer negotiations, project financing and finalizing agreements, among other tasks outlined in its scope of work. The firm started working on City Center in February after Richmond hired it last fall through a contract that’s set to not exceed roughly $359,000. A letter from Bobb to the city in February said his work would lead to a project award within four months (which would have been in June).
Bizsense reported in December that the Maryland development firm Capstone was the firm in negotiations with the city and has a portfolio of residential and mixed-use projects, mostly in urban areas (they are also slated to build the hotel next to the new baseball stadium).
Bobb, who served as Richmond City Manager from 1986-1997, also helped Mayor Avula hire the city’s new Chief Administrative Officer and was a consultant for the developer leading building the mixed-use development in the Diamond District project under Mayor Stoney. Bobb’s group has also consulted and been engaged in cities like Petersburg, Washington, D.C., and Detroit.
Ebert alluded to some level of city investment, which would be set up through the CDA and TIF district. Some (or all) of the taxes generated in that district would pay for the city’s responsibilities, presumably things like streetscapes, sewer, and parking (presumably structured parking). There is not an expensive arena to pay for in the City Center plan, and it is still unclear what or how much debt Ebert is talking about. The emails reviewed by BizSense did not reveal how the CDA would work or how large the TIF district would be.
Don Harrison reported in Style Weekly in July that Ebert said talks with the developers had stalled and both sides have been at odds on a number of issues (like parking and infrastructure). The development area is roughly ten square blocks so alarm bells went off when Ebert told Style, “We started looking at just the revenues that would have been generated from the private investment [of City Center], and those revenues, whether it was real estate taxes, property taxes, meals tax, sales tax, admissions tax, none of that was enough to support the debt service on $100 million.”
However, Ebert also told Style, “It’s the private sector that’s doing the bulk of the investment here,” and said, ideally the city would spend nothing, but it could be as much as $20 million. So, somewhere between $20 million and $100 million apparently is the range, and we know which number the developer is aiming for; but it is terrifying that someone apparently has a plan on the table that is asking for $100 million of debt service from the city.
The city needn’t negotiate away its advantage (or its common sense) just to get the deal done and crow about the “transformation.” On queue, Matt Welch, acting director of the city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) said in April, “The details of a financing plan are still being negotiated, as we explore the best possible path to enabling a transformational project while also protecting the City’s financial resources.”
In the original City Center RFP, there is no mention of the city taking on any debt for selling (or ground leasing) land to developers to build needed housing, office, hotel, and other tax producing properties. It initially said that whatever project was chosen would “minimize public investment and risk and maximize private investment.”
Expanding the TIF district could mean the city needs to encompass more properties to capture more tax revenue because the debt service is larger than the city initially planned. When proponents of the Navy Hill boondoggle realized no one believed the economic development revenue projections would cover the debt service for the new arena, they tried to create an 80-block TIF district that would have vacuumed up 30 years of tax revenues from some of the most valuable properties and office buildings and cost the city more than $600 million in total principal and interest that would go to the arena instead of schools and roads and other services.
Standing up for the city does not mean selling it out just to say the deal got done. It means making a smart deal, and if the developer doesn’t want to play ball, then find one who will. It’s not complicated — at all.
When the developer of Short Pump Town Center wanted help from Henrico County in the late 1990’s, the county agreed to pay about $25 million for infrastructure improvements. The county created a CDA and the bonds were secured by a semi-annual installment payment by the developer who placed a special assessment on every store lease in the development. If the developer failed to pay, the county could place a surcharge on each property, backed by a lien if necessary. If the mall had underperformed, the county would have still gotten their money back; but it performed so well, the bonds were paid back early and they continue to benefit from the taxes paid and the ancillary development around it that also pays into the Henrico treasury. The deal was not structured in a way where they did not have to divert county money from other resources to help build the mall.
The original City Center RFP issued by Stoney did not seek regional cooperation on any part of developing the long-asked for convention center hotel. The regional convention center authority (aka GRCCA) is in charge of the convention center and runs Richmond Region Tourism. Both are success stories with solid bookings, plenty of debt capacity to issue their own bonds, and a track record of driving tourism dollars into local businesses.
Mayor Avula even bemoaned the lack of the needed hotel when he told Style in July: “We’ve lost out on over $200 million of convention center revenue over the last few years because we can’t support large conventions because we don’t have enough hotel beds that are walkable to the center.”
It’s a number even larger than that, and there is an easy solution: a regional one. However, instead of choosing the easy solution, the Mayor and his new Chief Administrative Officer seem determined to remain under the spell of the Stoney curse that the city has to do everything itself. There is no reason at all — zero — that the city’s City Center plan should include City Hall negotiating a deal with a private developer to build a 500+ room convention center hotel.
Back in November 2022, we wrote on these pages: “The City could have given or sold for a fee the Coliseum and the land for the hotel (the old Festival Park) and the 6th Street Marketplace to the GRCCA. The regional body could have issued and managed the request for proposals for a hotel, arena, etc. and fund it through bonds and without requiring City revenues or backing.”
If the city were to break out of its antiquated mindset, it would offer the land next to the Coliseum GRCCA for $1 and let them do whatever they want with it. They could plan, select, and build the hotel that they have been begging for for more than two decades and do it far faster than the city and with no cost to the city but the convention center could start gaining new business instead of losing it. They could even include the Coliseum which GRCCA could demolish or repurpose, and they could pay for it (as well as the Blues Armory). Because GRCCA can issue it’s own debt and has clear and transparent procurement policies, they could build a hotel years faster than the city dragging on through endless negotiations and going through City Council.
If the hotel had been handed to GRCCA five years ago, it would already be open and operating, and the lost money Mayor Avula complained about would not still be accumulating. At the current rate of “progress” of the City Center plan, the hotel won’t be ready until 2042 and the city will likely end up paying for most of it.
Avula and Council need to team up and find ways to incentivize the other parcels downtown but do the easy and smart thing by taking the convention center hotel and Coliseum out of the realm of the city and the developer. Unlike the city, putting GRCCA in charge of a new hotel (and possibly the Coliseum) means the development, finances, contracts, operations and the costs would be done and paid for through a regional authority with 100% transparency and efficiency and cooperation — not through the City or favored politicos. Most importantly, it would get done well and it would get done fast.
No one had confidence in the City being able to pull off Navy Hill for those very reasons, but by giving GRCCA the power to pursue part of the City Center plan, the city wins, the region wins, and it doesn’t cost a fortune and take forever. It’s frustrating and hard to understand why City Hall just does not get that. We can not continue to keep giving taxes generated by real estate development back to the developer instead of generating new revenue and funding the things we say we care about — schools, affordable housing, safety, etc. If we keep making bad deals, we will never begin to tackle those problems.
It’s time for Avula to stand up and look toward an easy regional solution rather than repeat the failures of his predecessors. The longer he tries to figure out a way to make some huge splash by negotiating a “transformational” deal, the more he’s going to end up mimicking failure and costing the city millions. The city, despite its problems, is growing and has so many advantages. City Hall’s insistence that it give away more and more when it doesn’t have to is beyond perplexing and frustrating, especially when a better solution is available.
In this case, a regional solution is at the ready and will accomplish far more together than we could alone. It’s a solution that will get things done fast and without city funding and will be a massive benefit to the city and that part of downtown. The last thing we need is another mayor who pushes bad deals for big, shiny projects and swears it will be “transformational” while pining for press conferences and fleeting social media adulation that only results in costing the city far more than it will ever stand to benefit.
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Image source by Architecture Richmond HERE
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