NOTE: This is the first of a multi-part series over the next few weeks about the baseball stadium issue in Richmond.
News came out this week about the new baseball stadium designs in the Diamond District, which is a sign of progress, but also a sign of trouble. Renderings and designs are something that can signify progress, but no one has heard a word for almost a year about how the stadium will be financed and who will pay to turn those fancy new designs into a reality.
The stadium can’t be built without money or by simply declaring good intentions, but promises are the only thing we have heard from City Hall for months. If shovels are not in the ground soon, the bosses at Major League Baseball (MLB) have made it clear they could move the franchise to another city and facility.
Since MLB took over the operations of Minor League Baseball four years ago, they have warned cities and franchises across the country there are minimum standards being applied to all minor league baseball stadiums that are required to be met. Last year, MLB mandated that the Diamond receive $3.5 million in various upgrades(mostly underneath the stadium) and the city paid to have those completed. Durham’s baseball stadium was required to have $10 million of improvements and the stadium in Reading, PA required $20 million.
As John O’Connor wrote in the RTD, “It’s all part of the cost of doing business in the new minor league model run by MLB. Proceed with the upgrades, or lose the franchise.”
MLB has made it clear that if the requirements and improvements are not met, they can move a franchise whether the owner wants to move or not. Richmond is now facing a looming deadline and we are headed to the bottom of the ninth inning, and we are behind.
We know the Squirrels don’t want to leave Richmond. Franchise owner Lou DiBella has said quite clearly and repeatedly that he loves Richmond; it’s a great baseball town, the Squirrels have spent almost 15 years becoming a huge part of the DNA of our region, and they have displayed the patience of Job while the city has dithered for decades (literally) when it comes to a new stadium (which is a future post all on its own).
But rather than looking at the past at this point in time, and since time is running out, let’s fast-forward to the most recent part of the stadium saga. In late 2021, the Mayor and administration embarked on the ambitious Diamond District project to put a new stadium and high density developmenton the 63 acres around where the Diamond currently resides. The old industrial areas all around that huge parcel are being transformed and growing like weeds in the last decade, and the Diamond District’s potential fits right in with that explosive demand and growth in the area.
The vetting process to select the development team was thorough and in the fall of 2022, the award went to a local groupled by Thalhimer Development called RVA Diamond Partners (RVADP). The press conference was optimistic and hopeful, and the timeline called for many complex parts to be put into motion and a new stadium that would take 18 months to build would open in the spring of 2025.
But since that optimistic start, things have slowed like a dribbler down the third baseline. The city negotiated with RVADP for months and the final agreement was not announced until April 2023, when the city also announced they would miss the spring 2025 deadline to open the new stadium set by MLB. The city blamed rising interest rates, a previously unannounced responsibility for the bill for public infrastructure, a Tax Increment Finance (TIF) district to pay for the infrastructure, and that the land for the stadium would be transferred and owned by the City’s Economic Development Authority (EDA).
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At that time in April 2023, according to WRIC, DiBella was concerned about the lack of progress up to that point.
“Since the Diamond District development was announced, there has been very little progress on plans for a new stadium. Much needs to get done, but we are running out of time to meet the requirements of Major League Baseball,” he said. “The next three or four weeks will be critical with respect to moving forward in the hometown that we love.”
A few weeks later in early May 2023, the deal was officially approved by City Council to move forward, but someone forgot bring the starting gun. The deal that was approved a year ago also listed tasks that the city needed to undertake and complete to keep the project moving forward, including:
• Rezoning the Diamond District by amending the TOD-1 district and creating the
Stadium Signage Overlay District
• Creation of a Community Development Authority
• Creation of Public Realm Design Standards
• Lease agreements with both the Flying Squirrels and VCU
• RVADP submits the subdivision of land to create the new District
So far, from those things listed above from a year ago, only the rezoning of the area to TOD-1 (the first item) has been completed. And somehow, in the article this week about the designs being finished, Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Lincoln Saunders told Eric Kolenich at the Times-Dispatch that the city expects workers to break ground on the construction in early summer. Which seems odd, considering no financing plan has been announced, approved, or vetted.
You might remember that back at the press conference in the fall of 2022, Mayor Stoney and city officials proclaimed that the development of the stadium would be paid for fully by incremental tax revenues from the surrounding Diamond District development and the city would not have to provide any obligation whatsoever direct or indirect. They said a Community Development Authority (CDA) would be established to finance the stadium as they were a tool other localities has used for projects like Short Pump Town Center and the Virginia Beach Town Center (but on a much smaller scale and with different structure). But you can’t fund a project using a CDA unless you first establish the CDA.
The last CDA update provided by the Mayor or CAO was in June 2023 when they delivered this presentation to City Council with the following timeline:
The first task on that list was for the city to convey the land to the EDA in May-July 2023, but that did not actually take place until February 2024, according to Richmond BizSense, even though the EDA Board authorized the transfer of the land in September 2023. BizSense reported that at that meeting, Economic Development Director Leonard Sledge told the board that the transfers were “in process” and said afterward that his department had “prioritized other tasks related to this project and others.”
CDA’s are structurally not that complicated to establish. Other localities have established them in as little as two or three public meetings (4-6 weeks), but as of last week, there have been no papers or ordinances introduced by the Mayor to establish a CDA. An email sent by RVA 5×5 to Sledge two weeks ago asking for the latest timeline for the establishment of the CDA and issuing bonds has not been returned.
That makes the worry about meeting the deadline of MLB all the more serious. The timeline presented to City Council last summer shows that the time between drafting the petition to create the CDA and the adoption of the ordinance to create it and hold the CDA’s first meeting is three months, followed by up to three more months of preparing the financing and selling the bonds. Which means the timeline the city shared with City Council last summer is running about nine months behind and the city might not have bonds ready for sale to fund the construction until later this fall.
If a stadium takes 18 months to build and has to be ready by April 1, 2026, that means we would have to start digging by August 1st of this year to meet the deadline. As of today, the city has given no indication that is possible because they refuse to address or talk about the financing issue that would enable the money to be available to start construction. The city hasn’t organized the entity (the CDA) that will ostensibly sell the bonds, nor have they prepared the information or prospectus about the bonds, and you can’t buy steel or hire crews or equipment unless you can pay for them by convincing investors to buy the bonds.
But we know that MLB is watching what the city does, and the longer we display a casual regard for their deadlines, the higher the probability that MLB could say “enough” with the clown car. If MLB does not have clear evidence that the long-promised new stadium will be open and ready by April 2026 and given the woeful state of the 39-year old Diamond, it is unlikely they would have a major problem finding another place to locate our franchise in another city.
Future issues in RVA 5×5’s stadium series will look at the possible options of financing a stadium using the CDA as well as other methods including Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and a straight up moral obligation by the city. Each one carries their own issues, risks and rewards, but we don’t know anything about the current options or possibilities because the city is not talking and inside sources say the financing is a mess.
All we know now is that the city is in a pickle and hard up against the MLB-imposed deadline to have a new stadium completed — not planned or under construction or on a to do list, but finished and open — by April 1, 2026. Yet the Mayor and CAO still haven’t begun the basic legwork to create the financing vehicle (the CDA) they claim will provide the funds to build the stadium; all they keep telling us is that it will all be done “soon.” And there is zero question that just repeating over and over that “we are committed”, that “we are moving forward”, etc., won’t cut it much longer.
The Mayor and CAO are literally almost out of time to reassure MLB and the city and the Squirrels that they/we can get the job done — but if they do decide to finally lay out the financing, they will also have to reveal to the people of Richmond the real and total cost of the bill and the method in which it will be paid.
We are in the bottom of the 9th inning, we are behind on the scoreboard from having committed far too many careless errors, and we are down to the last three outs.
Batter up.
For more from Jon Baliles, check out his RVA 5×5 Substack HERE
Main photo: The Diamond under construction in 1984, photo courtesy of The Valentine Museum
