By Peter Galuszka
In a blow to Richmond’s business elite, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones has withdrawn, at least for now, his $80 million project to build a new minor league baseball stadium as part of a mixed-use, publicly-funded development in the city’s historic Shockoe Bottom.
The stadium had been up for a council vote Tuesday night but ran into trouble when three swing vote councilmen indicated they’d vote it down. Jones says it may come back.
The new stadium which would be home to the Minor League AA Richmond Flying Squirrels was to anchor a new slave museum and mixed use development near the city’s Main Street station downtown. The current location is the crumbling Diamond on North Boulevard.
This is the third time a plan to move the stadium to congested Shockoe Bottom has run into trouble in 10 years. Failure to replace the Diamond was one reason why the AAA Richmond Braves bolted to the Atlanta suburbs a few years back. There are a number of reasons why the plan is dead, at least for now:
- Secrecy. The third attempt sprang from Venture Richmond, a marketing group controlled by the city’s business elite. From the git go and true to form in corporate Richmond, everything was done behind closed doors. Even when Jones announced the plan formally in November, it was dotted with questions such as what to do about a slave museum since neighboring ground is hallowed with the blood and tears of slaves. Deadlines were missed and missed again to explain what the plan was all about.
- Bad PR: The arrogance of the city’s controlling interests and the low esteem with which they hold ordinary citizens is breathtaking. The editorial section of the local paper ran story after story propagandizing for the Shockoe stadium. They even ran one incredibly tasteless and bizarre cartoon on a Sunday editorial page. A young-African-American woman, neatly coiffed and carrying design shipping bags, walks arm-in-arm with her studly, white husband wearing a Squirrels cap while playing catch with their mixed-race youngster. One assumes they are walking to the new ballpark past the slave museum. Get it? “Look how far we have gone from torturing slaves to our happy interracial family today.”
- No other ideas allowed. A Chesterfield development firm came up with a counter proposal to build a new stadium near the Diamond site and add some badly-needed retail. The Mayor and his kin reacted vigorously to shut down the plan. Emails came up among the ruling elite that the plan was not to keep suburbanites in their comfort zones. A big advantage with the so-called RebKee idea is that no public money would be involved to keep the ballpark at its convenient and popular location.
- Public money? Part of the Shockoe plan would have involved millions in public funds. Some $79.6 million would be funded through bonds let by the Richmond Economic Development Authority. Councilman Jonathan Baliles worried that the city had voted an amendment to be let off the hook for the bonds. They didn’t want to have the “moral obligation.” If not the city, then who gets the tab if it goes bad?
- The fans don’t matter. Gee in all of this mess and intrigue, no one seems to be asking the Squirrels fans what they think. A few takeaways are that most of them come from the suburbs and polls show that most like the current site just fine since it is where Interstates 95 and 64 connect. Many are moms and dads with 10-year-olds. Apparently in the thinking of the city’s ruling elite who push the idea of Richmond being “the capital of creativity,” these average suburbanites don’t count. They don’t fit the image of the hip, cool, tat-sleeved yuppie dabbling in the arts or software that they so badly want to use as marketing for the New Richmond they envision. Fact is, many fans with a van-load of kids probably aren’t interested in downing craft beer or designer cocktails right after the game. They probably want to get their tuckered-out tykes back to their boring, car-centric suburban homes. Apparently, they don’t count. I attended a Squirrels game a few weeks ago for Chesterfield Monthly and out of 12 families I spoke with only one wanted to leave the current Boulevard site.
My takeaway? The Squirrels are showing a lot more patience and class than the Braves. Either start something serious at the Boulevard site or come up with a few honest, open and clear proposals. It should not be up to just Richmond, however, even though they own the stadium, since their fan base is out of the city. And if Richmond fails, screw the city and built it at Short Pump or at some other suburban location. Try to stick with private money.
