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Dominion Resources: New High-rise Building Planned for Downtown


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On 5/19/2018 at 5:48 PM, RVA-Is-The-Best said:

I agree RVA is one of a kind but we don't have to put down other cities to bring ours up.

I agree be the best Richmond you can be. Richmond was long bigger than Charlotte but it was interstate banking in the 1980s that projected Charlotte a lot more forward with massive office developments for the large banks.  Then hub for Piedmont Airlines then USAir now American Airlines really contributed as well.  The airport is the number one attraction for business in Charlotte.  However for the time I live in the other Virginia in the early 80s(Fairfax County) there were years Richmond really didn't seem to want to grow.   But now with your location just south of the Washington NY corridor you are the best cost option to serve that market in a business friendly state.   My friends live in Chesterfield County and love it.  

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The one thing I would really like to know is when will the office market start to really take off in Richmond? Do we have to wait for the james center to be done with renovations and filled with tenants before we see a surge in office space being taken up? Also why haven't we seen any fortune 500 or fortune 1000 companies move to RVA recently? I am proud we have so many but are we not marketing ourselves very well to attract new companies to the area?  I  was looking on skyscraperpage which is to me is urbanplanet's rival but I couldn't help but notice and feel bummed when I saw cities like Des Moines Iowa get a 40 plus floor high rise and then think about town's like Omaha Nebraska have a 40 plus floor high rise in the middle of their downtown when their city and metro size is so much smaller than us? I mean come on Des Moines Iowa already has two multiple towers taller than anything we have here like what gives? Are we just going to not think about building taller and slimmer when we start getting scarce on space in downtown richmond? Sorry if I seem  frustrated which I am I just hope I live to see the day of taller buildings that are 30 plus and 40 plus floors as I will be 30 in November and I have almost given up hope that I will ever see a new tallest building here when the James Monroe tower is older then me.

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10 hours ago, Downtowner said:

The one thing I would really like to know is when will the office market start to really take off in Richmond?

I think one of the biggest issues is our schools.  There isn't a single public high school in the city that's well performing.

If you locate your office downtown, Glenn Allen is about the closest you can reasonably expect a family to live.

In my opinion, that's the biggest thing holding RVA back from being in the next tier.  In most other cities, it might be expensive, but it's at least possible for employees to live in a good school district in the city.

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Umm, what? Not a single public high school performs well? Open High is ranked #4 in Virginia and #187 nationally by US News. Maggie Walker, while regional, is a great option for high achieving kids living in the City. Franklin and Richmond Community seem to perform fine, but they are a little different. Most of the high schools are sub par, but most of the high school students live in poverty.  Fix the poverty if you want to fix the schools.

Glen Allen is the closest one could live? You're kidding right? Tuckahoe is an unreasonable area to expect a family to live? Bon Air is unreasonable? 

 

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37 minutes ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

Umm, what? Not a single public high school performs well? Open High is ranked #4 in Virginia and #187 nationally by US News. Maggie Walker, while regional, is a great option for high achieving kids living in the City. Franklin and Richmond Community seem to perform fine, but they are a little different. Most of the high schools are sub par, but most of the high school students live in poverty.  Fix the poverty if you want to fix the schools.

Glen Allen is the closest one could live? You're kidding right? Tuckahoe is an unreasonable area to expect a family to live? Bon Air is unreasonable? 

You're right Maggie Walker is an amazing high school.  So is Open and Community.  However, none of them have guaranteed admittance.  It's not like Tuckahoe where your kids are guaranteed to be in a good high school.  Maggie Walker in particular is very hard to get into.

I didn't say that those areas are unreasonable to expect a family to live in.  My point was that you're not going to find a good school district for high schools until you cross the city line.  It's not that Tuckahoe is far away.  It's that it's far away for being one of the *closest* locations.

EDIT:  Also, the #1 reason I hear for people leaving RVA for Henrico or Chesterfield is because of schools, so it would seem that there is an issue with schools.

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Of course school performance is an issue when you have such a high concentration of poverty within the city limits, a regional issue that overburdens the city because of Virginia’s dubious independent city setup. Schools aren’t inherently bad in and of themselves, but they do reflect their communities. 

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2 hours ago, RiverYuppy said:

You're right Maggie Walker is an amazing high school.  So is Open and Community.  However, none of them have guaranteed admittance.  It's not like Tuckahoe where your kids are guaranteed to be in a good high school.  Maggie Walker in particular is very hard to get into.

I didn't say that those areas are unreasonable to expect a family to live in.  My point was that you're not going to find a good school district for high schools until you cross the city line.  It's not that Tuckahoe is far away.  It's that it's far away for being one of the *closest* locations.

EDIT:  Also, the #1 reason I hear for people leaving RVA for Henrico or Chesterfield is because of schools, so it would seem that there is an issue with schools.

 

Don't a lot of people (most) raise families in the 'burbs surrounding the proper "downtown" area of a City like the ones mentioned in the original post?  Don't a lot of Cities have problems with poverty and poor public schools in the proper downtown district?  Is this really why skyscrapers aren't built over 20 stories....really? 

 

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Truthfully I think the high rises in cities like Des Moines and Omaha are vanity project by specific companies or developers (something like Dominion could have done). Obviously they wouldn't be built if they weren't profitable, but that doesn't mean they are exactly what the city needs. I would rather see surface parking filled in that taller buildings in Richmond. It's also important to remember that Richmond wasn't really booming for pretty much all of the 70's, 80's and 90's which is when a lot of high rises  where built especially in Omaha. Richmond doesn't NEED a 600ft building, we need continued smart development and population growth which can happen without skyscrapers. Although I wouldn't oppose at 600ft building haha.

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My family left the city (after living in the city for 12 years) for the 'burbs 100% because of the schools. There is such incompetence in the city related to schools not to mention they need to shutdown schools as opposed to continuing to dump more money into them. Until they "fix" (I use that loosely since the buildings and teachers are not the problem) the schools young families will continue to leave the city. Parents of kids need to be held accountable for their kids actions.

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On 5/21/2018 at 11:06 AM, wrldcoupe4 said:

Umm, what? Not a single public high school performs well? Open High is ranked #4 in Virginia and #187 nationally by US News. Maggie Walker, while regional, is a great option for high achieving kids living in the City. Franklin and Richmond Community seem to perform fine, but they are a little different. Most of the high schools are sub par, but most of the high school students live in poverty.  Fix the poverty if you want to fix the schools.

Glen Allen is the closest one could live? You're kidding right? Tuckahoe is an unreasonable area to expect a family to live? Bon Air is unreasonable? 

 

Maggie Walker, Richmond Community, and Open High are public schools even though they are specialty schools.  I don't know where you get the bit about most kids in the city live in poverty. Not true.  One of my kids  goes to Community High and the other graduated from the same school  a couple of years ago. To even get to that point my kids had to go through the same system that you declare inept. There are good teachers and administrators still left in the city however, whenever someone talks about Richmond the same old stale argument seems  to surface. Since all three of these schools are in the city and are outperforming all of the county high schools other than private schools one could reason that there is a  reasonable expectation for a decent  education in the city limits.  I live in the city and  enjoy a middle class income with a reasonably good job. All kids are not living in poverty. There are people who choose to live in the city  for other reasons other than schools. The school system has it's share of problems but  there  are  a lot of advantages to living in the city. Working  in the industry  I work in I know for a fact that a lot of people are relocating back into the city and there is a definite reversal of white flight in this region. 

 

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Of course not ALL kids in the City live in poverty, but I’m not making up that most kids attending RPS schools come from poverty...

“High poverty schools are located all across the state, although they are most concentrated in the Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads regions — two areas of the state with high percentages of Virginia’s Black population. Richmond City has the most of any division with 29, and almost two-thirds (63%) of students in the division are enrolled in one of these high poverty schools”

http://www.thecommonwealthinstitute.org/2017/10/26/unequal-opportunities-fewer-resources-worse-outcomes-for-students-in-schools-with-concentrated-poverty/

And, for perspective... we DO choose to live in the City, we aren’t in poverty, and our oldest WILL be attending Linwood Holton next year for Kindergarten.  But it doesn’t change the reality for most kids attending city schools and the fact that many middle/upper class families still choose to move or go private. 

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Seems I may have taken the title of this thread and driven it off topic...  seems like this is best suited for the Richmond Off-Topic thread, instead of the Dominion building, which by the looks is looking pretty good!  There's a lot going on at the top, the parking deck looks like it's almost complete and windows are going up on the 7th street side.  Looking good!

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10 hours ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

Of course not ALL kids in the City live in poverty, but I’m not making up that most kids attending RPS schools come from poverty...

“High poverty schools are located all across the state, although they are most concentrated in the Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads regions — two areas of the state with high percentages of Virginia’s Black population. Richmond City has the most of any division with 29, and almost two-thirds (63%) of students in the division are enrolled in one of these high poverty schools”

http://www.thecommonwealthinstitute.org/2017/10/26/unequal-opportunities-fewer-resources-worse-outcomes-for-students-in-schools-with-concentrated-poverty/

And, for perspective... we DO choose to live in the City, we aren’t in poverty, and our oldest WILL be attending Linwood Holton next year for Kindergarten.  But it doesn’t change the reality for most kids attending city schools and the fact that many middle/upper class families still choose to move or go private. 

This all depends on what reporting agency you go by and what definitions of poverty you use. Based on your supplied information  the study goes off of households that kids qualify for free lunch  based on an income of less that 43k per year however, the range of  what is considered middle income is varied by many reporting agencies. Therefore I can't say that this would be an accurate assessment. There is a difference between low income and poverty by the numbers.

 https://www.sapling.com/7481624/difference-income-families-poverty-families

All I am saying is the word poverty does not seem like an accurate description of  city schools and students.  There are many kids that live in poverty in any city . But I would say more are borderline low income verses living in poverty. 

 

 

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24 minutes ago, RVAbigdawg said:

Seems I may have taken the title of this thread and driven it off topic...  seems like this is best suited for the Richmond Off-Topic thread, instead of the Dominion building, which by the looks is looking pretty good!  There's a lot going on at the top, the parking deck looks like it's almost complete and windows are going up on the 7th street side.  Looking good!

I noticed that there is a green tarp at the very top - looks like they are doing some kind of spray fire retardant or something similar up there.  Also, looks like they are adding studs for exterior walls at the top.  

I also noticed the glass they were installing on the 7th Street side.  I assume those are removable for when they build the bridge to the new tower when it gets built.

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53 minutes ago, CitiWalker said:

This all depends on what reporting agency you go by and what definitions of poverty you use. Based on your supplied information  the study goes off of households that kids qualify for free lunch  based on an income of less that 43k per year however, the range of  what is considered middle income is varied by many reporting agencies. Therefore I can't say that this would be an accurate assessment. There is a difference between low income and poverty by the numbers.

 https://www.sapling.com/7481624/difference-income-families-poverty-families

All I am saying is the word poverty does not seem like an accurate description of  city schools and students.  There are many kids that live in poverty in any city . But I would say more are borderline low income verses living in poverty. 

 

So you're saying it's not quite red, more like a crimson. Got it.

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9 minutes ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

So you're saying it's not quite red, more like a crimson. Got it.

Just saying that wording makes a difference in perception. Low income as opposed to  poverty.  Anyway we both love our city and I am happy that things are moving in a positive direction. 

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1 hour ago, eandslee said:

I noticed that there is a green tarp at the very top - looks like they are doing some kind of spray fire retardant or something similar up there.  Also, looks like they are adding studs for exterior walls at the top.  

I also noticed the glass they were installing on the 7th Street side.  I assume those are removable for when they build the bridge to the new tower when it gets built.

I just looked at the most recent snapshot...take a closer look at the top and you'll see a curved beam!  

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1 hour ago, CitiWalker said:

Just saying that wording makes a difference in perception. Low income as opposed to  poverty.  Anyway we both love our city and I am happy that things are moving in a positive direction. 

This conversation has been moved to the off-topic thread.  Please go by and check it out.  Thanks!

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Excited to see how this will ultimately stand out on the skyline.  Has anyone taken any recent/current photos from Manchester - or heading north on the Lee Bridge or the Manchester Bridge?  Would love to see how the building stacks up now relative to the rest of the skyline and see how it impacts the skyline.  It's looking good, no question!

Too bad the original tower for the Locks at 321 fell through - having a similar glass tower to anchor the eastern riverfront along with the Dominion building and Gateway Plaza in the middle would have really beefed up the skyline nicely.

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