Green City

Mistachill said:
Yet, you pretty much have most of that already where the Coliseum is located, PLUS you have the Convention Center across the street. Not to mention, since you have major concerns about parking, you have the Pulse right there for folks who don't want to battle parking at the arena.

Again, Capital One Arena is downtown. There's a lot of foot traffic in that area even when there's no event in the arena. With GreenCity the appeal of restaurants opening at the site was due to a lot of housing and a hotel was being planned at the site as part of the development. The concept doesn't work unless you create a mini city at that spot similar to that area in Short Pump where Whole Foods is located.
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You also have the City of Richmond to deal with downtown.

Where Green City is going is not as desolate as some of you posters think. Plus, you have the Sports and Entertainment Center to compliment it, and there are numerous hotels/restaurants being built around that. Also, Henrico County bought The Crossings golf course last year and have signed a 99 year lease with the owners of Independence Golf Club, who are going to invest $13 million into renovating The Crossings into a championship course that will hopefully host the Senior Tour event in Richmond after next year. Vinnie Giles and Lester George are in charge of the re-design. All of this is happening within a 5 mile radius. If all of this falls in to palce, the I-95/I-295 intersection is going to be a regional sports and entertainment destination. And don't under estimate Henrico County's ability to pull this off.
 
Mistachill said:
I think capacity was restricted too with regard to impact on the surround community. Now maybe what could've been done is design the building so that it could be easily expanded if circumstances allowed them to do so.
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At the time it was built, the capacity was large enough to accomodate VCU basketball games. I highly doubt the forward thinkers at that time ever imagined VCU going to a Final Four. And , FYI, the capacity was only restricted by Eugene Trani. Many donors wanted a 10,000 seat arena and Trani said, based on his research, most mid-major on campus college arenas were 7,500 seats or smaller and that's all he would approve.
 
Mistachill said:
Yep, the building was a year late being opened and it created the season from h*ll where we didn't know where our home games would be played from game to game. Some games at the Coliseum, some games at UR, some games at noon on a weekday. And VCU kept lying about when the building may open during the season when anybody who entered the structure at the time knew there was no way the Stu was anywhere close to being ready.

I also recall that Bill Cosby was suppose to the the first event when the building opened and I think the first game was supposed to be against UVa.
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I don't remember Bill Cosby being mentioned as the first event. The first event was supposed to be the UVA game with Michael Buffer doing the intros. The game still happened with Michael Buffer doing the intros in the Robins Center. All home games were played in the Robins Center that year because the City of Richmond and VCU were at odds with each other and the Coliseum was not made available to VCU by the city.
 
WillWeaverRVA said:
Plus, the size of the Stu still lends itself to an intense gameday environment, even when games don't sell out.

The Dayton game (which did sell out) was one of the best gameday atmospheres I've witnessed, and that includes the Butler, Texas, and LSU games.
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GM game was much better…not sure if you were there
 
Ramlove81 said:
And as one who attended a lot of big time concerts at Scope growing up I can tell you it is awful for any concert where you need any kind of subtlety in the sound. Acoustic were terrible then, not sure they've done anything to improve that. HRC was much better and about the same size. Circuses, wrestling and hockey are fine there. And I watched a lot of great basketball for the few years the Squires were in existence.
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I saw the Grateful Dead at the Scope. When they played Drums-Space there was such reverb there that my pant legs were literally moving in response to sound waves coming from the Drums solo....they had 2 drummers and an entire wall of drums. You could literally feel the sound of the drums. Was pretty cool.....and I wasn't even high!
 
Wolfpack Ram said:
You also have the City of Richmond to deal with downtown.

Where Green City is going is not as desolate as some of you posters think. Plus, you have the Sports and Entertainment Center to compliment it, and there are numerous hotels/restaurants being built around that. Also, Henrico County bought The Crossings golf course last year and have signed a 99 year lease with the owners of Independence Golf Club, who are going to invest $13 million into renovating The Crossings into a championship course that will hopefully host the Senior Tour event in Richmond after next year. Vinnie Giles and Lester George are in charge of the re-design. All of this is happening within a 5 mile radius. If all of this falls in to palce, the I-95/I-295 intersection is going to be a regional sports and entertainment destination. And don't under estimate Henrico County's ability to pull this off.
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I think the opposite. The Sport and Entertainment Center is too far away to really compliment anything at the GreenCity site. It is almost four miles away. That's 4 times farther in distance than the Coliseum is from our main campus.

GreenCity is not desolate in terms of everyday life. But for an arena? GreenCity was a great concept because there was so much included in the design that you didn't need to rely on anything in the surrounding area to make it work. The development included housing, hotels, restaurants, and the arena among other things. Everything you mentioned is miles away.
 
Mistachill said:
I think the opposite. The Sport and Entertainment Center is too far away to really compliment anything at the GreenCity site. It is almost four miles away. That's 4 times farther in distance than the Coliseum is from our main campus.

GreenCity is not desolate in terms of everyday life. But for an arena? GreenCity was a great concept because there was so much included in the design that you didn't need to rely on anything in the surrounding area to make it work. The development included housing, hotels, restaurants, and the arena among other things. Everything you mentioned is miles away.
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Pretty sure if they put a 17,000 seat arena in Short Pump, you would argue it's a bad idea and it needs to be downtown. You've got all of your eggs in the City of Richmond basket and are just not open to anything being built in the suburbs.
 
The developers say they will pay but the deadline is tomorrow. We shall soon find out the (official) fate of this project.
 
Ramdog said:
GM game was much better…not sure if you were there
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Sadly I wasn't.

Wolfpack Ram said:
Pretty sure if they put a 17,000 seat arena in Short Pump, you would argue it's a bad idea and it needs to be downtown. You've got all of your eggs in the City of Richmond basket and are just not open to anything being built in the suburbs.
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A 17,000 seat arena in Short Pump is a bad idea because it's in Short Pump. :lol:
 
Mercury said:
The developers say they will pay but the deadline is tomorrow. We shall soon find out the (official) fate of this project.
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I have a feeling the county administration is wary of them at this point. If they accept payment I would be surprised. BUT I would also be happy because I want to go watch them have a groundbreaking ceremony and get going.
 
Wolfpack Ram said:
Pretty sure if they put a 17,000 seat arena in Short Pump, you would argue it's a bad idea and it needs to be downtown. You've got all of your eggs in the City of Richmond basket and are just not open to anything being built in the suburbs.
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Not true.

I think the reverse is true. You're open to any and all ideas except downtown because of your distain for the City of Richmond's leadership. I get it. For me I'm not addressing anything involving politics. I'm strictly focusing on the best, the most sensible location and keeping emotions out of it, period.

When you have to go to such lengths to try to make something work (i.e. supporting facilities miles away from the arena), that's usually a red flag. GreenCity works because the plan was the build a mini city surrounding the arena (hence the name GreenCity). Without the city part, a stand alone arena is not the way to go in that location.
 
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interesting debate here.

IMO the arena in Henrico works best because I trust the County's ability to fashion a financial plan that will succeed and the County taking the requisite steps to keep the facility up to date and in good working order

The City of Richmond has a long history of creating rosy financial feasibility plans that never come to fruition (6th street marketplace or whatever it was called , another is the district they created along broad street with street improvements and parking decks coupled that cratered and required city bailout and so on like the convention center

the city also has a reputation of not maintaining their facilities properly - sort of why Hampton and norfolk still have their arenas built at the same time as the Richmond Coliseum and ours fell apart 10-15 years ago from benign neglect

When Chill makes points about the existing restaurants and hotels that exist in the city , I think about the debate where to locate the new baseball stadium when discussion was being had about it being in the Shockhoe Bottom area near the downtown train station where plenty of restaurants and hotels existed but the Diamond location won out because the financial plan would not work without $4-5 million of annaul subsides from the dedicated revenue from new development adjacent to the Diamond (might be another failure coming because of the rosy projections of development)

I think you are both right that a SUCCESSFUL arena with lots of events (not sure that will be the case) will drive lots of restaurants wanting to be nearby but they have to have lots of events at the arena to succeed the more remote (isolated) the location is - Clearly a city location has an advantage there becasue of the proximity of VCUHS and the City workers to support the restaurant at times the arena doesn't have events

I looked at the scheduled events at the JPJ arena to get a sense about how often it is in use - and was really shocked that as far as concerts it looked like once or twice a month and then monster trucks and that ilk of event - will be interesting wherever built to see what will be scheduled

for 15 years the city has looked at a new arena project without a real plan that made financial sense to them - I am glad Henrico has stepped into the breach though it still maybe on life support

the amazing development I have witnessed in the last 10+ years is National Stadium in DC - I have been going to games there ever since it opened maybe 5 times a year - what has emerged in the one mile radius of there is AWESOME

I apologize in advance in that politics (view of City of Richmond and Henrico county leadership) will influence my view of this topic but 50+ years of history has numbed me

a topic that is not discussed is why won't VCU hold concerts in the STU - chance to make money to fund NIL or salaries

go rams
 
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