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Tag: city

Parking repeal gives developers space

Opening a small business is never easy, but for many Richmond entrepreneurs, the city’s previous minimum parking requirements added extra hassle.

Two years ago, when restaurant Africanne on Main relocated from its longtime downtown location to a spot near Virginia Commonwealth University’s Monroe Park Campus, city parking regulations stalled the move for weeks, recalls co-owner and chef Ida MaMusu. She had to scramble to find two additional parking spaces to rent to meet the city’s then-minimum requirement of five spaces for her business.

“Now things [are] slow, prices [are] going up in food, and we still got this huge parking bill,” MaMusu says.

Stories like this from local businesses are part of the reason City Council repealed the requirements on April 24.

The parking minimums had mostly restricted small businesses and developers, rather than larger operations with bank financing that typically require a certain amount of parking regardless of local regulations, says Richmond Association of Realtors Vice President of Government Affairs Joh Gehlbach. “Our hope is that this will add units to the market because we are in a housing crisis right now,” Gehlbach says.

Councilman Andreas Addison, who introduced the repeal, says the former requirements represented an outdated, car-centric mindset that complicated the city’s goals to develop a more walkable and accessible urban landscape.

“When you put parking as a requirement in a spot located for a development, that doesn’t mean it’s the best place for parking to be in general for public use,” Addison says.

Given that half of Richmond’s buildings were constructed before 1947 (city parking requirements were first instituted in 1943), the repeal impacts a wide range of properties, says Kevin Vonck, director of the city’s Department of Planning and Development Review. He hopes it will give developers options to share existing parking spaces and opportunities to repurpose unused lots. 

Brian Revere, president of Breeden Construction LLC, says that the flexibility the repeal will grant developers is a net positive, but it still won’t remove the need for parking altogether.

“Most of us still see this market as requiring some level of regular commuting outside of the city limits,” Revere says, “and the public transportation infrastructure is not here to support not having a vehicle.”  

Richmond riverfront amphitheater gets green light

Construction could begin this summer on a $30 million, 7,500-person amphitheater overlooking the James River. On June 12, Richmond City Council approved a 20-year performance grant that gives Red Light Ventures LLC the green light to build its proposed amphitheater on four acres of land it will rent from NewMarket Corp. behind the American Civil War Museum at the historic Tredegar Iron Works.

With plans to host up to 35 major acts annually, Red Light Ventures says the amphitheater could be open in time for the 2025 outdoor concert season. The project was initially pitched in summer 2022 by Charlottesville-based music industry executive Coran Capshaw, founder of Red Light Management, through which he has managed the careers of Dave Matthews Band and hundreds of other major music performers. Concerts at the amphitheater will be arranged via Starr Hill Presents, Capshaw’s Charlottesville-based concert promotion company. Capshaw also developed and operates Charlottesville’s Ting Pavilion and co-partnered with concert promoter Live Nation on Ascend Amphitheater in Nashville, Tennessee.

The performance grant is based on incremental new real estate and admissions taxes on the venue to offset the project’s cost. The performance grant is capped at $37 million, Richmond Economic Development Director Leonard Sledge has said, adding that financial models estimate that grant’s total at $26.4 million.

As part of the deal, the development team will stage a benefit concert during the amphitheater’s first year in operation, with proceeds to be donated to a nonprofit that will address community needs. The amphitheater will also be available to the city and nonprofit groups for civic events.

The new venue fulfills goals laid out in Richmond’s growth plan about developing tourism attractions to elevate the city’s image and to “continue to delight existing and future residents, employers and visitors,” Sledge adds.

Grant Lyman, Southeast region president for Live Nation, a partner in the project, says the new amphitheater will fill a void for touring artists between Washington, D.C., and the Carolinas, and puts Richmond on the radar of more performing acts.

“The fan and artist’s experience here in Richmond will be world-class, bringing fans downtown to the riverfront with a background that showcases the city’s urban growth,” Lyman says. “Richmond can often be overlooked by big-name artists who are looking for a venue that’s large enough to meet the demand of their fan base, as well as capable of supporting their production needs.”