(03-04-2016 01:31 PM)WM Beancounter Wrote:  

(03-04-2016 01:02 PM)Tribe Fan Wrote:  

(03-04-2016 11:20 AM)Tribeheart Wrote:  State General Assembly has passed their bill to replace the Richmond Coliseum and sent it to the Gov for approval. Great news! Certainly should place Richmond back in strong contention for hosting the CAA tourney again. It would, also, be a viable neutral court site for OOC games to lure P5 schools that won't come to the Burg. With the convention center, and the present influx of downtown hotels, would have to believe any development would promote reuse/revamping of the 6th St Market Place space, also.
http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/go...55205.html

Richmond and the counties that make this Authority usually end up having their own agendas and do not get things done on a timely basis. They lost the AAA Richmond Braves because they could not agree on renovating the existing stadium or a location for a new venue. The parent Atlanta Braves gave the City and Counties plenty of time to come up with a plan and they could not. With that history it could a long time for a new arena to be actually built, unfortunately .

The city of Richmond will never build a new arena downtown. Never. Best case scenario is that they find a few hundred thousand dollars to renovate the Coliseum, and I doubt that will happen unless money can be appropriated to build a Slave Museum first, and there seems to be no appetite to throw money at that idea either. The local politicians seem more interested in debating tearing down the monuments on Monument Avenue then they do attracting revenue-producing events to the city. On a related note, mark my words that the Richmond Flying Squirrels will be gone within a few years.