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Diamond Area / Hermitage Rd Corridor / Ownby District


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42 minutes ago, eandslee said:

I wonder how many proposals the City of Richmond got for the Diamond District today?  I even wonder if there will be a news story to indicate the number (at the very least).  I sure wish we could see them.  Sigh...I guess we have to wait....:whistling:

I'm betting RBS has SOME kind of write up on the progress in the next few days, even if no real details are available.

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I would guess they'll get 4-5 bids for the entire area, then possibly dozens of bids for sections or individual buildings.  Some of those will be great but not feasible, some will be terrible like the firms never looked at the 300 plan or has any clue what the people here want or need (see: trying to build a casino by Stratford Hills). It will initially be a mess for them to parse through and come up with 3-4 consolidated options which I imagine will be presented to the public.

Edited by 123fakestreet
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1 hour ago, 123fakestreet said:

I would guess they'll get 4-5 bids for the entire area, then possibly dozens of bids for sections or individual buildings.  Some of those will be great but not feasible, some will be terrible like the firms never looked at the 300 plan or has any clue what the people here want or need (see: trying to build a casino by Stratford Hills). It will initially be a mess for them to parse through and come up with 3-4 consolidated options which I imagine will be presented to the public.

Very well said. I agree 100%. Tbh, I've often wondered if only one bidder would end up getting the nod to build out everything, soup to nuts. I keep thinking this HAS to be parsed out because of the different components. If we have a firm that specializes in ballpark construction, wouldn't we we want them focusing on building the stadium and not have them trying their hand at high-density residential development? Conversely, if there are firms that have fantastic ideas about and experience with carving out a great, high-density, mixed-use urban neighborhood, but never so much as slapped plywood and two-by-fours together for their kids' Little League park, we certainly wouldn't want them trying to design a state-of-the-art minor league ballpark. That wouldn't make sense.

I've been wondering how this would all shake out, given the variety of components that are, at once, both separate yet combined and how all of this gets woven together to create the desired urban tapestry for the district.

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A firm can always subcontract.  I would assume financing to be a larger issue.

For example, let's say some group is willing to throw down big to build a ballpark, shopping, and apartments with shared structured parking or other connections where it would be hard to do if there are individual projects. They could then hire a firm with experience building ballparks to build the ballpark.

For example, the arena front he Navy Hill project that was so connected to retail, the hotel, office space, etc. I couldn't imagine it would be as feasible with multiple firms doing individual projects.

If someone says they'll go big or go home, I hope we choose to go big.

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37 minutes ago, RiverYuppy said:

A firm can always subcontract.  I would assume financing to be a larger issue.

For example, let's say some group is willing to throw down big to build a ballpark, shopping, and apartments with shared structured parking or other connections where it would be hard to do if there are individual projects. They could then hire a firm with experience building ballparks to build the ballpark.

For example, the arena front he Navy Hill project that was so connected to retail, the hotel, office space, etc. I couldn't imagine it would be as feasible with multiple firms doing individual projects.

If someone says they'll go big or go home, I hope we choose to go big.

100% agreed. I always harken back to that line in The Sopranos where Uncle June told Tony - "If you're going to come in, you come in heavy or don't come at all." Words to live by. It definitely applies here.

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Is 15 good considering over 100 developers were on the initial meeting regarding this development?  I'm just genuinely asking.  I think it's a good number considering there was very little time to put anything together.  With the time constraint, I hope some good thought was put into the proposals.  I'm sure local developers had the upper hand knowing this was coming and had a better understanding of the dynamics of the area.  I'm intrigued.  I hope some details leak out.  I want to see them so bad!

Edited by eandslee
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1 hour ago, eandslee said:

Is 15 good considering over 100 developers were on the initial meeting regarding this development?  I'm just genuinely asking.  I think it's a good number considering there was very little time to put anything together.  With the time constraint, I hope some good thought was put into the proposals.  I'm sure local developers had the upper hand knowing this was coming and had a better understanding of the dynamics of the area.  I'm intrigued.  I hope some details leak out.  I want to see them so bad!

I honestly wish the city hadn't waited until the 11th hour to move forward on this. Honestly, is there any reason (other than did they have staffing in place -- or was this dependent on approval of the Greater Scott's SAP, Richmond 300, etc.?) to justify the city waiting until allllllllllllllllllllllllll the way to the end of the year to send out the request - only to now give developers a truncated time-frame in which to put together what SHOULD be (hopefully) game-changing proposals? My biggest fear is that when we operate under constricted time frames like this - it's alllllllll too easy to make a bloody mess of the final product - and that what might be unveiled to the city are a bunch of very messy, possibly "well, this was the best we could do under the circumstances" proposals that really would sell this process short. Don't major redevelopment projects such as this often take even a few years to fully flesh out and really get right?

Maybe I'm wrong (and I pray the universe will prove me to be way off base on this one) - but this is one aspect of this whole process that concerns me.

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Nothing much in here that RBS didn't already report, but for those interested, here's the Times-Dispatch's coverage of the developer group selections:

https://richmond.com/sports/local/15-groups-submit-interest-in-developing-richmonds-new-diamond-district/article_87af8875-beb4-5003-b2e6-20a0aa9c0afd.html

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Vision300 Partners LLC sounds like a solid mix of players  

Vision300 Partners LLC, a Richmond-based team that includes locally based staffing firm Astyra Corp., housing nonprofit Better Housing Coalition, construction firm Canterbury Enterprises, building firm Hourigan, Metropolitan Business League, Shamin Hotels, developer Spy Rock Real Estate Group, and YMCA of Greater Richmond.

Out-of-town firms on the Vision300 Partners team include Toronto, Canada-based Brookfield Asset Management; Atlanta-based developer Greenstone Properties; Dallas, Texas-based developer KDC; Florida-based Kodjoe Family Foundation; and Brooklyn, New York-based sports club Sports United.”

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2 hours ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

It should only be fashionable to rag on city hall. Richmond as a place has improved so much in so many ways. The culture, vibe, energy whatever you want to call it is strong and people are definitely starting to notice. 

RVA in 2022 is light years farther along from where she was in 1992. Or even 2002. Folks who are newbies or who are too young to know what this place was like 20, 30, 40 years ago, might not understand this, but folks, listen to me: What we are witnessing now - there is NO WAY this would have happened here in 1982, 1992 or 2002. The city has emerged from whatever she was back then -- and has been -- and continues undergoing an amazing -- AMAZING -- metamorphosis. It is unlike anything in her history - at least certainly in my lifetime. I really believe now that the sky is the limit - and I wouldn't have said that even 10 years ago.

It's amazing to see how far she has come. I can't wait to see how far she will go.

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

RVA in 2022 is light years farther along from where she was in 1992. Or even 2002. Folks who are newbies or who are too young to know what this place was like 20, 30, 40 years ago, might not understand this, but folks, listen to me: What we are witnessing now - there is NO WAY this would have happened here in 1982, 1992 or 2002. The city has emerged from whatever she was back then -- and has been -- and continues undergoing an amazing -- AMAZING -- metamorphosis. It is unlike anything in her history - at least certainly in my lifetime. I really believe now that the sky is the limit - and I wouldn't have said that even 10 years ago.

It's amazing to see how far she has come. I can't wait to see how far she will go.

This is what’s hard for me to understand- as someone who’s just recently started to frequent the city and feel somewhat invested in its growth. I just simply can’t imagine all of this talk of it’s down years. From the naked eye, it seems more like RVA is returning to its former glory, rather than a city on the rise that couldn’t imagine such development in the past. From an outsiders perspective, the city is in desperate need of even more development and infill among other amenities and removal of blighted properties. If this is the ‘new and improved’ Richmond, I just wonder how different it must have been before the revitalization, crime statistics notwithstanding.

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7 hours ago, varider said:

This is what’s hard for me to understand- as someone who’s just recently started to frequent the city and feel somewhat invested in its growth. I just simply can’t imagine all of this talk of it’s down years. From the naked eye, it seems more like RVA is returning to its former glory, rather than a city on the rise that couldn’t imagine such development in the past. From an outsiders perspective, the city is in desperate need of even more development and infill among other amenities and removal of blighted properties. If this is the ‘new and improved’ Richmond, I just wonder how different it must have been before the revitalization, crime statistics notwithstanding.

Going back to the 90s it was ugly. My dad was a contractor working in the city doing industrial demolition and expansion/construction projects. His client was sonoco paper mill over on commerce road. Riding with him working with him in the summers when I was a young little guy it was a sad place and even I knew it. As I got older I started showing my love for this city I knew I could be so much more and so much better and bigger. What I see today from when I was a child in the 90s is like Detroit turning into Charlotte or nashville. It was that bad in the 90s. We are lucky we got out of that dark hole. Once mayor wilder changed the whole cities charter I have to say it really made a big difference. A mayor used to be appointed and not elected for the longest time.  You want to talk about a corrupt city council the councils of 90s were satan and even though todays is better but still has issues I would consider it heaven compared to what it used to be. Still has a lot of work to do to it. But Richmond was satan back in the 80s and 90s. Now it’s like going to heaven. I used to call 95 going through Richmond the highway to hell now I call it the highway to heaven compared to what it used to be.

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1 hour ago, Downtowner said:

Going back to the 90s it was ugly. My dad was a contractor working in the city doing industrial demolition and expansion/construction projects. His client was sonoco paper mill over on commerce road. Riding with him working with him in the summers when I was a young little guy it was a sad place and even I knew it. As I got older I started showing my love for this city I knew I could be so much more and so much better and bigger. What I see today from when I was a child in the 90s is like Detroit turning into Charlotte or nashville. It was that bad in the 90s. We are lucky we got out of that dark hole. Once mayor wilder changed the whole cities charter I have to say it really made a big difference. A mayor used to be appointed and not elected for the longest time.  You want to talk about a corrupt city council the councils of 90s were satan and even though todays is better but still has issues I would consider it heaven compared to what it used to be. Still has a lot of work to do to it. But Richmond was satan back in the 80s and 90s. Now it’s like going to heaven. I used to call 95 going through Richmond the highway to hell now I call it the highway to heaven compared to what it used to be.

My brother was a student at VCU around 2005. He said you wouldn't dare walk through Monroe Park at night. In a group and especially alone.

And Churchill was just a wild story to people, nobody actually went there. And if you found yourself having to, for whatever accidental and insane reason, drive through Churchill you did NOT stop at any stop signs and red lights AT ALL. 

My uncle and his friends car broke down in churchill as they liked to party in shockoe bottom in those days (2000-2008). They were waiting for a tow truck to come and a few of the locals in churchill came over to them and very bluntly said "call a taxi immediately and GTFO now!" - these were older residents being extremely nice to them and watching out for them and their health. My family (and uncle especially) came from a war-torn country (and fought in the wars) and were/are not the type of people to push around and they said they haven't felt that frightened in America since war broke out in their country. 

Residents of Byrd Park, where houses are selling near $700k and the neighborhood is surrounded by 3 lakes, trail systems (plural), dogpark, and other parks, just as recently as 10 years ago had weekly gun shots and blatant drug deals going down. 

Jackson Ward was an afterthought. One could just go into a dilapidated home and live in it for years if they wanted it to. All jokes aside, I think the city would have paid people to simply just demo the houses and grow grass.
Carver was the neighborhood across Broad St that you didn't go to as a VCU student. 

Northside was where you go to drop off your dead batteries while driving the car (don't put it in park) - okay, this is mostly a joke at Battery Park.

I remember visiting my brother in the fan and he warned me about parking on some streets 10-15 years ago. You'd go from million dollar homes to "let's not park here" in a heartbeat.

In a way, you miss some of those days...but it's like fondly looking at the 70s and 80s and forgetting there was lead in gasoline killing braincells and people on the regular... Or the 50s and 60s and forgetting that women weren't allowed to open bank accounts without their husband's signature. I'm happy with new and shiny (less dirty?) RVA :)

Edited by ancientcarpenter
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32 minutes ago, ancientcarpenter said:

My brother was a student at VCU around 2005. He said you wouldn't dare walk through Monroe Park at night. In a group and especially alone.

And Churchill was just a wild story to people, nobody actually went there. And if you found yourself having to, for whatever accidental and insane reason, drive through Churchill you did NOT stop at any stop signs and red lights AT ALL. 

My uncle and his friends car broke down in churchill as they liked to party in shockoe bottom in those days (2000-2008). They were waiting for a tow truck to come and a few of the locals in churchill came over to them and very bluntly said "call a taxi immediately and GTFO now!" - these were older residents being extremely nice to them and watching out for them and their health. My family (and uncle especially) came from a war-torn country (and fought in the wars) and were/are not the type of people to push around and they said they haven't felt that frightened in America since war broke out in their country. 

Residents of Byrd Park, where houses are selling near $700k and the neighborhood is surrounded by 3 lakes, trail systems (plural), dogpark, and other parks, just as recently as 10 years ago had weekly gun shots and blatant drug deals going down. 

Jackson Ward was an afterthought. One could just go into a dilapidated home and live in it for years if they wanted it to. All jokes aside, I think the city would have paid people to simply just demo the houses and grow grass.
Carver was the neighborhood across Broad St that you didn't go to as a VCU student. 

Northside was where you go to drop off your dead batteries while driving the car (don't put it in park) - okay, this is mostly a joke at Battery Park.

I remember visiting my brother in the fan and he warned me about parking on some streets 10-15 years ago. You'd go from million dollar homes to "let's not park here" in a heartbeat.

In a way, you miss some of those days...but it's like fondly looking at the 70s and 80s and forgetting there was lead in gasoline killing braincells and people on the regular... Or the 50s and 60s and forgetting that women weren't allowed to open bank accounts without their husband's signature. I'm happy with new and shiny (less dirty?) RVA :)

Yes! 2000-2008 was rough too. I remember my dad and I as he owned his contracting company we had to take some stuff into Churchill that a employee of my dads was working on and even as a kid who didn’t understand bad parts of town I was in a part of town that I felt like I was in a nightmare. The first time I ever saw a project or went into one with my dad to take some equipment to an employee I had never been more scared in my life. Now it doesn’t even bother me nor should it as I’m 33. I’ve met a lot of nice people who live or lived in the hood at one time. The older I got I realized the only way for the most part the only way you got shot is if you did something wrong to someone. My moms mother lives in highland park until she died in 1995 and my parents for ever tried to get them to move in with them my grandmother would never agree to sell her house and leave. She said i don’t care if world war 3 is going on here I’m not leaving. 

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53 minutes ago, Downtowner said:

Yes! 2000-2008 was rough too. I remember my dad and I as he owned his contracting company we had to take some stuff into Churchill that a employee of my dads was working on and even as a kid who didn’t understand bad parts of town I was in a part of town that I felt like I was in a nightmare. The first time I ever saw a project or went into one with my dad to take some equipment to an employee I had never been more scared in my life. Now it doesn’t even bother me nor should it as I’m 33. I’ve met a lot of nice people who live or lived in the hood at one time. The older I got I realized the only way for the most part the only way you got shot is if you did something wrong to someone. My moms mother lives in highland park until she died in 1995 and my parents for ever tried to get them to move in with them my grandmother would never agree to sell her house and leave. She said i don’t care if world war 3 is going on here I’m not leaving. 

This is the honest truth. I also grew up in a project for some time when we immigrated to America and it was rough... like shootings and seeing my friends brother stabbed to death in front of our apartment. Usually if you don't mess with anyone you do just fine but night time is no joke in some places. 

Edited by ancientcarpenter
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@Downtowner-- that's a perfect analogy. Richmond very much was like a smaller version of Detroit that, somehow, suddenly found the magic elixir of "urban miracle grow" and in the last decade has taken off very much akin to a Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, or other mid-size cities that found the afterburner and began growing like wildfire.

@variderin a way, you've hit on something - returning (at least in part) to a bit of her former glory -- but it goes way beyond that. As briefly as I can, this is how RVA has been in my lifetime:  Until the 1970s, Richmond really WAS quite the city. She boasted a downtown retail core that was arguably the envy of similar-sized cities far and wide. The Broad-Grace retail core was something more in line with what would be found in cities with much larger populations. Back in the fall, I posted a brief pictorial history of the glory days of Broad and Grace  streets downtown. If you haven't seen the posts (about 10 or so in all) take a few minutes and check them out here.

https://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/topic/20234-richmond-off-topic-postings/?do=findComment&comment=1762090

Broad Street jammed with shoppers is exactly how I remember it when I was really small, growing up RVA in the late 1960s.

Downtown benefitted from having just shy of 30,000 people living either IN downtown or right on the periphery of the Central Business District. The dynamic began to change when the federal gov't routed I-95-64 through the city in the late 1950s, ripping a horrific gash through Jackson Ward, Gilpin, Carver -- displacing thousands of residents from Richmond's most historic and most prominent Black neighborhoods. In the decade that followed, Richmonders fell in love with their automobile and a slow but steady stream of residents began to be siphoned off by Chesterfield and Henrico counties. The city's overall population fell from 230K in 1950 to 219K in 1960. The then city annexed 23 sq miles and 47K residents from Chesterfield in 1970 - setting off a political firestorm that resulted in what is now a permanent moratorium on annexation in Virginia. Richmond was now (and is) landlocked at the 1970 boundaries. According a Richmond Times-Dispatch article in January 1970, the annexation boosted the city's population to an estimated 264K residents - which is interesting because some simple math indicates that the pre-annexation population had fallen by only about 3,000 people from the 1960 census (IF the RT-D's estimates were correct - and I've no idea how they were sourcing their data 50 years ago).

@Downtowneris spot on: from that point onward, Richmond became a mini-Detroit in that she absolutely HEMORRHAGED population over the course of somewhere between 30 and 40 years - often at an alarming rate. For example, from the time the annexation became official (01 JAN 1970) until the new 1970 census data was published, Richmond LOST approximately 14,400 residents... (from an estimated 264K to an official 249K census figure) a staggering loss of 5.4% of her population IN ONE YEAR'S TIME. No doubt, much of it was well-documented "white flight" to the suburbs (unquestionably driven in large part by former Chesterfield residents who simply packed up and moved back to the county). Yet the city didn't exactly help itself when -- in 1970, in the spirit of the "urban renewal" movement popular at the time -- the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority essentially bulldozed the ENTIRE Fulton Bottom section of the city into the James River, displacing thousands of Black Richmonders who had to be resettled in city public housing and/or elsewhere. Not all of those families resettled in the city.  (NOTE: Fulton Bottom was SEVERELY depressed economically, and SEVERELY blighted with a crumbling infrastructure. Still,  no efforts were made by ANY organization in the city (private, public, governmental or otherwise) to attempt to save, rehab, renovate, salvage, etc. any portion of what was Richmond's oldest and ostensibly most historic neighborhood.)

From there, the wheels not just fell but flew off the bus -- even though as late as the first third of the decade of the '70s, there was big talk among the powers that be, such as Mayor Tom Bliley and City Manager Bill Leidenger, as well as business and civic leaders that Richmond was still poised to become "the next Atlanta" -- with fervent hopes for tremendous downtown development and city growth. After all, RVA boasted numerous Fortune 500 companies (much like she does today). RVA was a banking headquarters. (That all changed in the '80s and '90s -- particularly when a phenomenon known as "Charlotte" happened). She was still a center of fairly heavy manufacturing, not to mention, arguably, the cigarette manufacturing capital of the world, particularly given the presence of the huge Philip Morris manufacturing center in South Richmond (which was not the only such factory in the city, as there was a smaller plant on Maury Street as well).

Big things were going to happen in Richmond. The only problem was - they never did.

Political divisions in the post-annexation era severely hampered the effectiveness of City Council. The city officially lost more than 12% of her population during the decade -- checking in at 219K -- down some 30K from 1970. She lost another 16K during the '80s - dipping to 204K population in the 1990 census - and hit her low point in 2000 - at 197K residents -- the first time the city had been below 200K since the 1940s.

Put into perspective: using the RT-D estimate of a city population of 264K in January of 1970 -- in just 30 years, RVA lost roughly 67,000 residents -- or one-quarter of her population.

There had been some bursts of highrise development downtown from the '60s into the '80s downtown - mainly office buildings (though there was highrise residential development along W. Franklin Street in Monroe Ward in the '60s & '70s). The Financial District grew taller and expanded south toward the river throughout the period -- but after the Riverfront Plaza towers were completed in 1990 -- something very odd happened: EVERYTHING STOPPED. Not a single NON-state-owned/supported highrise building was erected in downtown Richmond for the next 15 years -- a development drought broken when Riverside on the James I & II were built in 2005. Only the state's 11-story John Tyler Building (1991) and the 10-story Gateway Building on the VCU Health campus (2002) went up during that time.

Meanwhile - the once amazing, glorious Broad-Grace retail core withered and died. The much-ballyhooed Sixth Street Marketplace project -- despite a fairly robust start -- was an abject failure. Downtown's "grande dames" - the gorgeous, epic, anchor department stores for Thalhimer's and Miller & Rhoads -- the seismic center of Richmond retailing for multiple generations -- were shuttered. As others have mentioned on here - (and has been well documented) crime was always problematic. Blighted areas (or at least areas that were "down at the heel") were becoming more prominent. I can personally speak to both Manchester and Scott's Addition. Three of my cousins went to grade school in Manchester - and I saw first hand the area go to seed. Indeed Manchester's metamorphosis of the last decade that has been nothing short of miraculous. My father worked and managed a company in Scott's Addition for 45 years - and I hung out there in the summer time year after year -- and constantly wandered around certain parts of the neighborhood. Again, I watched it dry up and start to wither away. Again, like Manchester, the resurrection of the last 10 years in Scott's has been utterly amazing.

So for folks who are relatively new to RVA or who may be from the area, but are simply too young to remember the "bad old days" -- let me say again. What we are witnessing is unprecedented certainly in my lifetime -- and perhaps in RVA's nearly 300-year-old history. I honestly don't think the city has EVER seen THIS level of powerhouse momentum where development is happening broadly across ALL sectors of the city -- with specific neighborhoods (such as Scott's and Manchester) being completely transformed into something they never were to begin with and could only have dreamed of becoming. As I've pointed to our little 3-D downtown map -- just the fact that there is a least the possibility of seeing anywhere from 11 to 15 highrise buildings built just downtown in the next few years is MIND-boggling. The 15-year drought not withstanding, even during more "boom" times, if RVA saw 1 or 2 such buildings built over the course of a couple of years, it was considered really something! And I'm only talking about buildings 10-stories tall and taller. This doesn't take into account that there are currently four, five, maybe as many as six large (but less than 10-story tall) apartment building projects either already underway or about to get underway along the Hull Street corridor in lower Manchester as we speak. Similarly, several similar-sized projects are getting cranked up in Scott's Addition even as several others are winding down and accepting new residents. It is amazing that Manchester actually has a burgeoning skyline that -- if Tom Papa and other developers have anything to say about it -- will only get bigger over the next few years. Block after block after block of parts of Greater Church Hill, the Fan, the Museum District, Jackson Ward, the near Northside, etc., are blossoming with multiple infill projects that are converting vacant lots into apartments, bringing more and more people back to these old neighborhoods.  We've seen upzoning happening now throughout the city. Density is the watchword, and if what the city planners pushing hard for the new Diamond District and City Center redevelopments say is true, height will be a watchword as well. New residential buildings abound - and for the most part, with a few exceptions, residential construction will lead the way in terms of highrise buildings being built at least in the near term.

@varider-- to answer your post, it's not necessarily so much about what RVA WAS even just 10 (and certainly 20, 30, 40 or more) years ago -- it's that she is now on a trajectory that up until this recent spate of years, simply would not have happened. It's not so much about what she once was -- it's what she's on the way to becoming. A MUCH bigger and, I believe, far better, version of herself. I would argue she's finally starting to grow up - finally starting to become a "real" city (inasmuch as she's finally doing things that OTHER cities that figured it out and finally grew up have done and continue to do). 

We're seeing this playing out in the population growth figures. Even using what many here on the forums (myself included) have argued may represent a fairly significant "undercount" due to major problems in conducting the census in 2020 (many of which pandemic-related) -- even just using those figures, RVA GREW by roughly 24,000 residents between 2010 and 2020 - a growth rate of more than 12%. Already, some estimates are indicating that RVA may be growing at an even faster clip just since this past census -- and given the amount of residential construction in the pipeline and the overall health of the RVA economy, I would not be at all surprised if that's the case. If the city can maintain a blistering pace of growth, the city planners' projection that she could reach a population of 340,000 by the tricentennial year (2037) is not out of reach!

I can't help but believe that what RVA is finally now doing -- and appears poised to continue to do at an even greater pace in the coming years -- is exactly what Tom Bliley and Bill Leidenger envisioned and talked so boldly about back in the early '70s. And while it's no longer realistic to call us the "next Atlanta" as it was 50 or so years ago, I think it IS quite realistic to call RVA the next "up-and-coming 'IT' city" - the next "destination city" that, as @wrldcoupe4said earlier, is very much getting noticed. 

I can't wait to see this city in five ... 10... 15... 20 (or more) years - provided I live long enough to see it!

Edited by I miss RVA
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