The Talk About City Stadium

Should City Stadium, an 82-year-old facility that no one uses anymore, be sold off? Or should it be fixed up using taxpayer money and remain, essentially, a football field that could be used for other purposes, such as concerts or midget car races? Or what?

In recent years, Richmond has been stewing over what to do about its aging sports stadiums and arenas. So far, talk is about all that’s happened. In the current economy, perhaps talk is about all anybody can afford.

Here, as in other cities, there’s a new questioning of just how important sporting events staged in publicly owned and operated facilities are to a city’s financial wellbeing.

Now comes news that a local developer, Fulton Hill Properties, wants to take the dormant City Stadium off the city’s hands and build a mixed-use complex there. In this case, mixed use seems to mean some residential, some retail, an underground parking lot, maybe some tall buildings, etc.

Paige Quilter, who lives four blocks from the stadium and is a member of the Carillon Civic Association, is more than willing to call it bad news. To back up her view, she points to a recent meeting at which most of the attendees seemed opposed to what they had heard about the development.

"Two hundred people showed up at the Carillon," said Quilter, who knows the lay of the land rather well. Her mother was one of the prime movers behind creating Arts in the Park, which has been staged each spring in Byrd Park since 1973.

Quilter said Mayor Dwight Jones made an appearance at the meeting, which came as a surprise to her, as he wasn’t invited. To her knowledge, no one representing Fulton Hill Properties was there. Quilter has become a spokesperson for a group of neighbors who are calling on the city and the developer to tell them more about the proposal being considered.

At the meeting, Jones said no deal has been struck. Afterward he issued a statement. In part it said:

"Now, while there may have already been some type of community discussion about the future of City Stadium, I believe we must have a larger conversation. Some have already said that we need athletic and recreational assets and not more development. At this stage, I don't think it is an either/or proposition. But these types of questions are exactly why I want us to have a comprehensive visioning process where the entire community is engaged—not just one or two neighborhoods."

By the way, in the ’50s, some of City Stadium’s neighbors got up a petition to put an end to midget car races at the stadium; they didn’t like the noise. So, this a neighborhood that has been organizing itself for a long time.

Between 1929 and 2009, the University of Richmond played its home football games there. In 1983, as it wasn’t being used much by then, the city began leasing its stadium to UR for one dollar a year; the university agreed to take care of the stadium’s upkeep. Now that deal is over, which means somebody at City Hall needs to figure out what to do with a 16.5-acre white elephant. What it would take to put it to use for high school sports, once again, isn’t known at this time.

Therefore, most of this story remains a mystery. Fulton Hill Properties president, Margaret Freund, did not respond to efforts to get her two-cents worth for this piece. Likewise, no one at City Hall responded to requests for information.

How the news of the mixed use scheme came to light is worth knowing. Credit Quilter, the whistle-blower, who said she received a phone call in mid-December from a friend. The friend, according to Quilter, was/is connected to the project. He basically wanted her help working behind the scenes to win support for the development, which the public knew nothing off at that point.

The friend told her about the plan—he named some national retailers interested in coming aboard. He assumed she would approve and jump on the secret bandwagon.

"Instead," Quilter said, "I alerted the media."

Which suggests that had her unnamed friend not spilled the beans, none of us would know anything about the project that had already been eyed by City Council members and the mayor.

What would Quilter prefer happen to the property if it cannot be spruced up and used for sports again?

"If a sports complex is not an alternative," said Quilter, "then individual residences would be best."

No matter how much of a boon to Richmond this project might have the potential to be, neither Freund or Mayor Jones’ administration are making a lot of friends by leaving the impression they are avoiding scrutiny from the press or the public. This isn’t to suggest that anything improper has happened. Freund certainly has no duty to be forthcoming at this time about her private business.

However, upon winning the mayoral election in 2008, Jones came into office saying there would be more sunlight into the workings of local government. So far, that promise seems to have been mostly talk, too.

The Talk About City Stadium

Share This:

More from this channel:

Reader Comments

Deal of the Day

Most Popular

Follow Us On Twitter

Richmonddotcom

Things to Do