Richmond opens CarMax Park after decades of delays
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CarMax Park's opening day is here. Photo: Karri Peifer/Axios
Opening day at CarMax Park has arrived.
Why it matters: It took three decades for Richmond to get here.
The big picture: Richmond's new baseball stadium is the culmination of negotiations that spanned four mayors, two baseball teams and, at various points, a half-dozen alternate locations.
- Mayor Danny Avula will be there on opening night, but it was his predecessor, former Mayor Levar Stoney, who got the deal done.
- The result: CarMax Park, which at around $130 million, is one of the priciest minor league baseball stadiums ever, the Times-Dispatch reports.
- The ballpark is also the centerpiece of the $2.4 billion, 67-acre Diamond District development, the largest development deal in the city's history.
Here's how we got here.
Flashback: The battle for a new ballpark began in 2000. That's when the region's former minor league team, the Richmond Braves, first started noticing issues at The Diamond, the stadium that opened for them in 1985, per the Times-Dispatch.
- Soon after, a chunk of concrete the size of a human head fell from the ceiling into the stands during a game.
- By 2004, as field flooding forced the team to postpone multiple games, former city manager Calvin Jamison proposed a new stadium in Shockoe Bottom.
- The next year, Mayor Doug Wilder briefly floated the idea of building the stadium near Fulton, in the East End, per Style Weekly.
- By 2008, the Braves said they'd had enough of the floods and the rodent-prone stadium and would move the team to Georgia.
Zoom in: The Flying Squirrels landed in Richmond in 2010, lured here with the promise of a new stadium very, very soon.
- In 2013, Mayor Dwight Jones proposed building a new stadium in Shockoe Bottom, a plan that drew widespread pushback.
- Nearly a decade later, in 2021, the city finally opened requests for proposals for a new stadium, one that kept baseball on Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
- They announced the deal in 2022, with the ballpark funded through bonds backed by revenue from the Diamond District development.
- Two years later, already set to miss Minor League Baseball's 2025 stadium deadline, City Council approved a new financing plan, one that could put the city and taxpayers on the hook for the full cost of the new stadium.
What's next: It should be full speed ahead on the Diamond District development, which over the next 15 years is expected to bring more than 1,000 apartments and condos, a 180-room hotel, parking and tons of retail space to Arthur Ashe Boulevard.