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Scott's Addition Development


varunner

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Meh.  The scale of the two cities is so different. The Warehouse District is Raleigh’s one basket.  All of the proverbial eggs are in it.  Richmond still has many, many more eggs spread out across a much, much larger area.  
 

The Warehouse District is about the size of Manchester (just the old industrial part of Manchester too, not the classic neighborhood uphill from the James).  There’s no Scott’s Addition, no Shockoe, no Monroe or Jackson Ward.  Their downtown is about the size  of the VCU medical center (basically their downtown is the size of downtown Richmond north of Broad between 1st and 14th).   The Warehouse District has been “rapidly” developing since 2005 but you’d never know visiting the place.  It’s pretty unremarkable (not that Manchester or Scott’s Addition is remarkable either).  I will say that I’m extremely jealous of their Weaver Street Market grocery store there though (it might not technically be in the Warehouse  District but it is adjacent, think  Aldi’s relationship with SA here in Richmond). 
 

Where Raleigh is pulling away is in suburban development.  Their urban core is still very much in its infancy and still has a Mayberry feel to it.  The suburbs look like the suburbs of a much larger city.  I’m happy for their success but not one thing about the area (apart from that grocery store-the original one is in Carrboro ) makes me jealous or envious. 
 

Let us enjoy our own success for a minute.  We are actually winning for the first time in a very long time. And once again, pretty much this same project (scale) is talked about for the lot across from Dominio (in addition to the hundreds of apartments under construction in the CFD)  which is two blocks from  CoStar which should be breaking ground soon. 

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2 hours ago, eandslee said:

Agree, I think the VAB numbers are somewhat skewed because of the transient military in the area and being assigned to bases there...not necessarily because they desire to be there.  Good call, Coupe.  That would suggest that the numbers tell a somewhat misleading story.  However, it's clear that Raleigh is outpacing RVA due to its booming tech industry.  Apple's east coast HQ going there was HUGE!  Dang, RVA needs to land big catches like that...seriously!  Totally agree with what @I miss RVA has to say about this above!

Very true, hardly any new jobs will be added due to these announcements, but when you land the Amazon East Coast HQ2 bringing 25,000+ of jobs to Crystal City, the others are just a drop in the bucket!

Re: Boeing - true. They're still keeping their office space here (downtown Chicago) as far as I've heard - just with a smaller footprint.

The biggest catches then are RTP/Apple and NOVA/Amazon. So then the $125K question is: WHAT DOES RVA NEED TO DO TO NOT MERELY COMPETE BUT TO LAND BIG RELOS THAT WILL BRING SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF JOBS HERE? We need to solve for this, and quickly. Because as @upzoningisgoodpointed out, growth begets growth. Nashville had had a couple of big scores recently that netted out something like just shy of 14,000 new jobs. We CAN'T COMPETE when RVA is getting "Company A is opening an RVA office and bringing 45 new jobs" - or "Company B is making a BIG splash in the RVA market with a new office and 175 new jobs" ... Jesus Christ - do you know HOW MANY OF THOSE minnows we have to catch to even make a small DENT in the shortfall?

Again, I go back to the Austin example. They didn't sit back and wait for the jobs to come to Austin - they went out and all-but-DRAGGED companies by their shirt collars to the Texas capital. They made deals SO sweet that it was akin to - in the words of Brando - "I'll make ya an offer you can't refuse..." (I wish I could assign that to Tony Soprano - but ol' Tone never used that phrase that I can recall, and I've watched all six seasons - every episode - at least five or six times start to finish)...

So - again - WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO? Companies want young, smart talent - which is why "university towns" have turned into boom cities (Austin, Nashville, just to name a few) Okay the whole RDU-CH/RTP area is a "university town" (admittedly, one of the best in the country) - but RVA is a university town, too (not in the same ballpark as UNC, State and Duke, but c'mon...)  State capitals seem to do well - again Austin and Nashville qualify. Okay - Raleigh is a state capital. WE are a state capital, too. 

WHAT ARE THESE CITIES DOING THAT WE AREN'T? @wrldcoupe4-- a couple of weeks ago, you correctly suggested that THIS is the question WE NEED TO ASK - and WE NEED TO HAVE ANSWERED!! THIS, my friends, is the riddle that must be solved. Because if we don't, it's going to be more of the same ol', same ol' - as I stated above - we're already 4 or 5 laps down (using an Indianapolis 500 analogy) and the leaders are pulling away (and eventually blowing by us AGAIN) like we're standing still.

THIS

HAS

TO

CHANGE!!!!

Edited by I miss RVA
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@I miss RVARichmond has two things going against it on the financial side relative to Raleigh.

My data source won't let me give numerical figures, but Richmond's rents are decently but not overwhelmingly behind Raleigh's. The big thing is Richmond's cap rate* is way higher than Raleigh's, meaning the market is less bullish on future rent growth. A lot of that is for good reason--quite a bit of units are under construction for a city of its size. 

 

*Cap rate is the amount of the purchase price of a building (sell price from the developer's perspective) that the net operating income (basically, yearly profit you make from running the building) can cover in a year. Because NOI/PP = cap rate, you can do some algebra and get NOI/cap rate = Purchase price. So if your building makes 1M per year and the market cap rate is 5%, then the purchase price is 1M/.05 = 20M. Because cap rate is in the denominator, lower cap rates = higher purchase (sale) prices = more $ = easier to make expensive high-rises pencil out. The cap rate in the market is determined by seeing/finding out what comparable cap rates were on other deals and deciding if you are more or less bullish than the other guys from the previous deals. If you think rents are going to go up a lot, then you might be willing to buy using a lower cap rate than the other guys because you expect to make more money. You can then think of the cap rate is a rough proxy for the market optimism on an area's rent growth.

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47 minutes ago, Brent114 said:

Meh.  The scale of the two cities is so different. The Warehouse District is Raleigh’s one basket.  All of the proverbial eggs are in it.  Richmond still has many, many more eggs spread out across a much, much larger area.  
 

The Warehouse District is about the size of Manchester (just the old industrial part of Manchester too, not the classic neighborhood uphill from the James).  There’s no Scott’s Addition, no Shockoe, no Monroe or Jackson Ward.  Their downtown is about the size  of the VCU medical center (basically their downtown is the size of downtown Richmond north of Broad between 1st and 14th).   The Warehouse District has been “rapidly” developing since 2005 but you’d never know visiting the place.  It’s pretty unremarkable (not that Manchester or Scott’s Addition is remarkable either).  I will say that I’m extremely jealous of their Weaver Street Market grocery store there though (it might not technically be in the Warehouse  District but it is adjacent, think  Aldi’s relationship with SA here in Richmond). 
 

Where Raleigh is pulling away is in suburban development.  Their urban core is still very much in its infancy and still has a Mayberry feel to it.  The suburbs look like the suburbs of a much larger city.  I’m happy for their success but not one thing about the area (apart from that grocery store-the original one is in Carrboro ) makes me jealous or envious. 
 

Let us enjoy our own success for a minute.  We are actually winning for the first time in a very long time. And once again, pretty much this same project (scale) is talked about for the lot across from Dominio (in addition to the hundreds of apartments under construction in the CFD)  which is two blocks from  CoStar which should be breaking ground soon. 

I would agree with your argument except for a couple of points that poke rather GLARING holes in it: For all the great neighborhoods that we have that Raleigh doesn't and for the fantastic urban core that we have that Raleigh doesn't - they have double our population - AND they're landing companies like Apple that are HUGE job-generators and by extension HUGE resident-inflo-generators. So - exactly WHAT ARE WE DOING that is even REMOTELY comparable?

Oh - right - there was an insurance company that's bringing something like 45 jobs to the city. That's it. Got it. :tw_thumbsup: Okay - fire up the orchestra. Let's all dance.

So yes - I agree with you in saying that it's about scale. And Raleigh has it ALL OVER US right now in the scale metrics that actually matter.

When we start snagging companies that will bring 5,000-10,000 jobs to RVA (city or metro) in one shot - and we start skipping a few rungs as we climb up the population totem pole, then we can talk about whose urban core is better.  MAZAL TOV!!! We have the infrastructure they don't to support that kind of growth. But they're getting the big numbers and getting the big "catches" (company relos) without the infrastructure that we have.

Bottom line is: they have the raw numbers - and those raw numbers are what impact their economic factors (BIGGIE = MARKET SIZE) that impact what kinds of development they get, what kinds of developments get tabled or truncated during an economic hiccup (like uber-high construction costs), and how the city's population continues to explode. THIS is what constitutes nuts-and-bolts, meat-and-potatoes, bread-and-butter of urban growth.

Edited by I miss RVA
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2 minutes ago, I miss RVA said:

they have double our population - AND they're landing companies like Amazon that are HUGE job-generators and by extension HUGE resident-inflo-generators. So - exactly WHAT ARE WE DOING that is even REMOTELY comparable?

 

Apple.  Crystal City has Amazon.  :)

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5 minutes ago, eandslee said:

Apple.  Crystal City has Amazon.  :)

WHOOPS!! Thanks, @eandslee Lemme fix that one!  That's why happens when I'm ticked off* and typing stream of consciousness!

* - not ticked off at/with anyone on our forum - but ticked off by the situation with RVA.

Edited by I miss RVA
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34 minutes ago, upzoningisgood said:

@I miss RVARichmond has two things going against it on the financial side relative to Raleigh.

My data source won't let me give numerical figures, but Richmond's rents are decently but not overwhelmingly behind Raleigh's. The big thing is Richmond's cap rate* is way higher than Raleigh's, meaning the market is less bullish on future rent growth. A lot of that is for good reason--quite a bit of units are under construction for a city of its size. 

 

*Cap rate is the amount of the purchase price of a building (sell price from the developer's perspective) that the net operating income (basically, yearly profit you make from running the building) can cover in a year. Because NOI/PP = cap rate, you can do some algebra and get NOI/cap rate = Purchase price. So if your building makes 1M per year and the market cap rate is 5%, then the purchase price is 1M/.05 = 20M. Because cap rate is in the denominator, lower cap rates = higher purchase (sale) prices = more $ = easier to make expensive high-rises pencil out. The cap rate in the market is determined by seeing/finding out what comparable cap rates were on other deals and deciding if you are more or less bullish than the other guys from the previous deals. If you think rents are going to go up a lot, then you might be willing to buy using a lower cap rate than the other guys because you expect to make more money. You can then think of the cap rate is a rough proxy for the market optimism on an area's rent growth.

Okay - even though I don't understand it from a working perspective, I get the concept (you do such a good job of explaining this stuff, @upzoningisgood!! That's why I say we all go to school when you and @wrldcoupe4explain these things) -- so essentially RVA is lagging WAY behind a city like Raleigh in this area - but I take it that there is a potential "up-side" to this whole equasion - much of the lack of bullishness about the future of rent growth has to do with the amount of new construction vs market size (and demand fits in there somewhere) - which means that a natural "settling" or "shaking out" might have to occur for that bullishness to return - so long as RVA can maintain some form of momentum in terms of demand. I would think that continued population growth is going to help at least some - and absorption of new units will help even more. After all, the growth in construction citywide right now (and for the last several years) is absolutely utterly unprecedented in the city's history -- well, certainly from the standpoint of at LEAST a half century - and I would argue probably closer to a full century.

So there's room for growth. And it all comes back to the things that catalyze said growth - job creation in LARGE numbers. Which means - we need LARGE companies to either full-up relo to the city/metro - or - to at least establish an HQ2 here.

When I put all of these things into a bigger-picture perspective, I keep coming back to the biggest failure and that's the airport - as in - being content with a regional, domestic airport - and not taking the Nestea Plunge, investing in infrastructure and accepting a hub here 45 years ago when we had the chance. Yes - I know we can't dwell on the past - but we are WAY behind SEVERAL eight-balls when it comes to competing cities and their airports. We had our shot at it in 1978 and totally screwed the pooch on that one. And to this day, it's the fumble that keeps on bouncing. Mind you, I give the fine folks at RIC all the credit in the world - but even THEY have to know that - regardless of how much optimism we want to have about the facility's growth - we are MILES behind other cities - and we WOULDN'T be so far behind if RIC had become a hub and had been a hub for the past four-plus decades. A hub airport is a game-changer.

I don't meant to be the Darth Vader of anti-excitement because a LOT of wonderful things are happening in RVA. Finally! But JESUS... I get tired of fillet-of-minnow after a while, you know?

Edited by I miss RVA
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11 minutes ago, Brent114 said:

Y’all are getting awfully flustered over an unremarkable apartment building. 

In truth, it's more than the apartment building. It's the factors BEHIND the apartment building. That one building simply drives home the point of just how far RVA is lagging behind in economic drivers. Plus when there are all these announcements how how Raleigh is getting Apple, and NOVA is getting Amazon, Boeing AND Raytheon - and how Nashville got a couple of big wins that net them out about 14K new jobs - and KNOWING that there are going to be THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of new jobs in those markets - which is going to be a resident-magnet and how that will impact market drivers there...

And RVA got... oh yeah, an insurance company that might bring as many as 45 new jobs. I keep forgetting about that.

It's not the building. It's what the building represents. It's not even so much about what those other cities are doing. It's about what we AREN'T doing! And for as much as we all crow about wanting taller buildings - RVA NOT doing the things necessary to GET those taller buildings - and it's what's keeping us locked into this place of "celebrating" a new 7-story building. Okay - great. I'm glad we're getting it. But we want more. A LOT more. At least I do - and I know most of us on here do. RVA has the potential to GET more. 

Do you see where I'm/we're coming from here?

It's just extremely frustrating to me that we are lagging so damn far behind other cities that are just TEARING IT UP -- getting the HUGE relos, thousands of jobs, big population jumps. And we (as a city) just seem to be jolly-well a-okay good and happy with... SETTLING, which I've pontificated about long and loud. I just flat out can't accept settling. Not for a city with as much potential as we have.

Edited by I miss RVA
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I’m aware that Raleigh is putting up taller residential buildings, which is why this one setting off an afternoon of mourning makes no sense to me. 
 

It’s  awesome that Raleigh is getting Apple.  All that makes Raleigh though is Raleigh with Apple.   Hard pass.

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42 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

Raleigh is twice as big as Richmond within the city limits both population and actual physical size of the city and the Raleigh metro is bigger too.  (and this is not including adjacent Durham metro)   Raleigh is very fast growing with lots of biopharma and tech jobs.  These pay well and average rents are higher and the median sales price of homes is higher.   Yes downtown Raleigh all the parts of it are much smaller than the central part of Richmond.  They are not huge older neighborhoods like you have in Richmond there was no need as that they did not have the population.    Richmond was much larger than Raleigh for well over 200 years and Raleigh only passed Richmond city in population in 1990 but in the 1990s the city of  Raleigh grew at over 40% in the 2000s 30% 2010s 46%!  Raleigh has an economy like Austin lots of tech and government and big universities.  (But Raleigh has a huge biopharma and drug testing industry that Austin does not have)  

This 20 story apartment building being built by Richmond developer Capital Square is not even the tallest in the city being developed right now.  They just completed a 33 story apartment tower in North Hills  https://theeasternraleigh.com/  area north of downtown and 2 developers are getting ready to start two 30 plus story apartment towers Turnbridge (its Creamery project in the Glenwood South area of downtown) and Hoffman from DC area. https://www.hoffman-dev.com/my-product/rus-bus/  (Raleigh Union Station project downtown in the Warehouse district also a part of downtown).  

Many developers from DC area have come to both Raleigh and Charlotte of late.  High rise apartments are expensive to rent and to build so there has to be enough people willing to pay higher than market rents for them.  

Richmond per capita for the metro is building more apartments than the Raleigh metro so all these big buildings are needed in Raleigh to meet demand.

here is the Redfin study referenced https://www.redfin.com/news/metros-building-new-construction-Q1-2022/

 

 

My friend, all I can say is thank you. You have reinforced all my points on this argument for me - but with a lot of granular Raleigh-specific detail. Everything you just outlined points to my frustration - NOT with what RDU-CH is doing - but with what RVA is NOT doing.

Or - looking at the other side of the coin - what SO MANY in RVA appear to be MORE THAN HAPPY TO DO - and what -- obviously -- folks in Carolina ARE NOT WILLING TO DO - is SETTLE.

And THAT -- the SETTLING that seems SO rampant around these parts -- is what is SO anathama to me.

As I said previously - I've lost my appetite for a constant diet of fillet-of-minnow.

Edited by I miss RVA
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I gotta say @I miss RVA, I'm sitting here reading your posts nodding my head up and down saying "Amen!"  This is something that I wish would change about Richmond.  Hoping that the massive influx of people from other parts of the US into Richmond would carry some weight to help change the course of RVA to think bigger and to swing for the fences!  It's happening...just not as fast as we'd like.

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I do think RVA needs to get Richmond Real (lmao) about attracting new business. Luckily, I think macro trends do pretty decently for us. Suburbanization will continue to be a concern but moving from DC to Richmond is sort of like Suburbanization from their perspective. Introducing more residential to the CBD is a must. Nashville has it and it's a huge boon. Basically every deal we there do that's within telescope distance of Downtown talks about how far it is from it because Downtown is The Thing That Drives Everything out here.

Richmond doesn't really have something like that on the business front. It does on the amenity front--JRPS is actually sick even by national standards--but there isn't a business locus in the city.

(If anywhere it would probably be West Creek. I guarantee you every deal west of 95 talks about how easy it is to get to Capital One.)

 

Edited by upzoningisgood
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5 minutes ago, upzoningisgood said:

I do think RVA needs to get Richmond Real (lmao) about attracting new business. Luckily, I think macro trends do pretty decently for us. Suburbanization will continue to be a concern but moving from DC to Richmond is sort of like Suburbanization from their perspective. Introducing more residential to the CBD is a must. Nashville has it and it's a huge boon. Basically every deal we there do that's within telescope distance of Downtown talks about how far we are from it because it is The Thing That Drives Everything out here.

Richmond doesn't really have something like that on the business front. It does on the amenity front--JRPS is actually sick even by national standards--but there isn't a business locus in the city.

(If anywhere it would probably be West Creek. I guarantee you every deal west of 95 talks about how easy it is to get to Capital One.)

 

FULLY AGREED! A couple of thoughts:

1.) RESIDENTIAL IN THE CBD: hopefully the continued conversion of older, legacy highrise office buildings into apartments (condos? I'm not sure if any have flipped to condo) will help, but we need more. That I'm aware of - I think our list of highrise buildings downtown that have already gone residential or are in the process (or planned) are:  

ALREADY FLIPPED: Original VEPCO building - 7th and Franklin; old F&M Building, 9th and Main; Hotel John Marshall, 5th and Franklin; CNB Building, 3rd and Broad; maybe also the old ANB Building, 10th and Main?

IN PROGRESS: Mutual Building, 9th and Main

PLANNED: Eighth and Main Building/Wheat First Securities HQ, 8th and Main

So of the OTHER legacy office buildings in the old Financial District, what about the following buildings:

The old Ross Building, 8th and Main; the Fidelity Building, 9th Main, 700 E. Franklin, 7th and Franklin ... Eskimo Pie building, 6th and Main, are these still office buildings? Have any of them converted over? What about the building on the SW corner of 7th and Main, across the street from the Main Street Center (or whatever it's being called nowadays). I know the 700 Building became a hotel. How about the smallish (8 or 9 or 10-ish? story) building on the NW corner of 8th and Main.  What's going on with this group of buildings? Have any of them flipped? Are any of them still primarily office buildings? What's going on with the One James Center building? That's still an office tower, yes?

Are there other LARGE (as in highrise) legacy buildings aside from those listed above?

Okay - we can add proposed/planned or underway new residential construction:

UNDERWAY - Parc View - 321 W. Grace 

PLANNED - The Admiral - 2nd and E. Marshall; Bakery Lofts, 17th and E. Franklin (technically outside the CBD but damn sure close enough); Locks 7 and 8 - along the Canal; discussed highrise apartment building 7th and Cary; discussed buildings clustered around the corner of Foushee and Grace. Plus smaller buildings near the YMCA area - east-central portion of Monroe Ward

2.) BUSINESS LOCUS IN THE CITY: There USED to be that very thing with the old Financial District, no? Plus the state government. What specifically would you see being something that could work downtown?

 

 

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Agreed @Brent114

 

I haven’t been to Raleigh (outside of on google maps) so I can’t speak for the vibe that it gives off outside of what I hear from other people, but outside of the downtown area, the warehouse district and NC State, it seems relatively suburban. 
 

As for flights to the west coast and Midwest, it seems that the two flights we have to the west coast are over 2/3 sold multiple weeks in advance, which seems to be a good sign of things to come (I don’t have any inside info, just what I’m seeing on their website when booking). I’m with you in wanting more Midwest destinations. Flights to say St Louis, Kansas City, Indy, Columbus, Cincy and Cleveland would be amazing as I’d love to go visit some of those cities but connecting can be a pain and driving through West Va on I-64 is depressing.

 

I agree that VCU expanding STEM fields is necessary for increasing the talent pool for tech jobs in the city, however I don’t think we necessarily need these massive 5,000+ jobs at one time announcements. While they provide quick growth, it can lead to the economy’s over dependence on a few major companies and if those jobs were to leave, it could hurt the economy much more than if a company that added 100 employees were to close shop. 
 

I’m never against dreaming big but I think we undersell the amount of development going on in the city at this point. I mean a 7 story apartment building is in the pipeline for the area behind Scott’s walk and it basically go brushed over and had like one reply. We’ve gotten pretty spoiled with development over the past few years as even 5 years ago a 7 story apartment building in this part of the city would’ve had us very excited. We seem so focused on the North Carolina cities and what they are doing well that we don’t necessarily appreciate what we are doing well and how much we are growing.

Edited by blopp1234
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1 hour ago, Brent114 said:

Richmond is building real urban energy.  Raleigh is building suburban energy.  

Love this.

I think when people compare RVA to Raleigh, what they really are saying is "Raleigh has taller buildings!" but the point is missed that it's not about what it looks like off the highway driving by the city, it's the actually urban living.

I can't speak for Raleigh b/c I'm in RVA... but I can say I don't want RVA to change to some type of developer's paradise where we get to look at tall shiny buildings and admire what wealthy out-of-towners built in our city. I'd rather have authentic RVA with character than some suburban flavor of a city. 

I want mixed housing development. I want low income mixed with market rates. I want living places for people to own, not just rent. I want a mechanic shop down the road, daycare, gas station, paint company, etc. - not just apartments after apartments everywhere you look. This is what makes city living actually city living. I don't RVA just to become an upper-income playground.

I can now absolutely see why places liked Portland and San Francisco put up strict zoning. They didn't want to lose what made them so unique. Now, the entire world knows Portland's motto "keep portland weird!" and they get tourist all around the world that visit.  Who from Germany is coming to visit Raleigh as a tourist?

Do they have their problems? Of course...but so do all places. 

RVA should be more like Charleston, Savannah, SanFran, Portland category. To strive to be like Raleigh b/c they have "big tall buildings!" is just silly to me. I have/want to live here.

 

If developers had their way, James River Park System would be filled with mansions overlooking the river. Thank God that never happened... we now have world class trails IN the middle of our city.

Edited by ancientcarpenter
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3 hours ago, Brent114 said:

Richmond is building real urban energy.  Raleigh is building suburban energy.

Raleigh is building both, and doing it better and faster than Richmond. And it's only going to pull further away. 

That is not a knock on Richmond - I live here and love it, and couldn't pull for its continued success any harder.  Just calling a spade a spade. 

 

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I believe it is good to market the city. Thinking things will just naturally or spontaneously happen is not a good strategy. Now IS the time to move toward reinventing the cities image and rebranding. Riding the momentum of what already is going on make good sense.  I like the fact that we are to some degree becoming aggressive. The lack of aggressiveness is something that is always talked about on this board. People have talked about how in the past Richmond leadership dragged their knuckles and missed out on some big opportunities. I applaud what Stoney and his group is attempting to do. Of course no matter what Richmond leadership does, some people will find a reason to be negative only because it's Richmond. Richmond has its own identity and we need to stop worrying about emulating other cities and concentrate on the unique attributes of this city. In short worrying about being the best version  of Richmond not Raleigh, Nashville, Austin, ect. Marketing us a Real may not appeal to everyone but I like it. Real people in real places doin g real things.  We don't have to be DC we just have to be Richmond. Those people who can appreciate the lifestyle that this area has to offer will come. By the way Lego is going to be bringing over 1,700  jobs this way https://richmondbizsense.com/2022/06/15/breaking-news-lego-to-build-1m-plant-in-chesterfield/. I hope we can continue to think attack mode. Just my two cents.

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15 minutes ago, carolina1792 said:

Comparing Richmond, a city with 200+ years of being a city with booming growth in the 1700's, 1800's and early 1900's to Raleigh, a small college town until 20-ish years ago?  

Correct. It’s weird.  
Both cities can be successful and very different.  I’m happy that Raleigh is growing quickly.  It’s one of the closest cities to Richmond and the more interesting it gets, the more day trip options I have :) 

 

 

 

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