After years of boarded-up storefronts and empty streets, Broad Street is back. Locals are opening shops, businesses and restaurants, and Richmonders and tourists alike are flowing in. Entrepreneurs and residents are eager to turn the page and see new life on the downtown stretch.
The downtown commercial district — roughly from the present-day Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center to Belvidere Street — emerged with the 1888 development of the world’s first practical and privately run city-wide electric streetcar system. Additional trolley lines fed into growing suburbs, even to Ashland and Petersburg, and allowed easy access into the center of business and civic life. North of West Broad Street is Jackson Ward, home of the historically significant financial and business district known as one of America’s Black Wall Streets, which saw its apotheosis in the early decades of the 20th century.
“You had Jewish owners and a variety of immigrant owners, and you had Black business owners. In the early part of the 20th century, it was a melting pot of businesses,” says Bill Martin, director of The Valentine museum.
Broad Street’s modern history is a cycle of blight to boom and back again. After midcentury white flight to the suburbs and the destruction of Jackson Ward via Interstate 95 construction, West Broad got a lot of attention in the 1970s and ’80s from a new mayoral administration and some local nonprofits.
The Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimers department stores, both fixtures on the street, drew shoppers for decades, but by the early 1990s, those major retailers had vacated and the normal buzz of commercial visitors receded.
In the 2000s, the opening of the Greater Richmond Convention Center and several nearby hotels helped bring both business and leisure visitors downtown, along with federal money for historic restoration and preservation projects, but the Great Recession of 2008 dealt the district a blow.
Slowly, signs of life returned. Richmond CenterStage, now the Dominion Energy Center, celebrated its opening in 2009, and Richmond’s powder-pink boutique hotel, Quirk, opened in 2015.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic knocked the wind out of Broad Street. Many businesses closed all over the city, and social justice protests in summer 2020 and the police response to them made visitors wary of returning.
Its reputation in those days as a dangerous ghost town may not be entirely warranted. It’s true that properties were damaged and some owners lost their businesses; Bistro 27 and female-focused coworking space The Broad were two Broad Street–area casualties of that time, for instance. Yet things may not have been as they seemed. Sure, some downtown businesses were boarded up in 2020, but plenty were not closed, just simply awaiting repairs, says Lucy Meade, director of economic development at downtown advocacy group Venture Richmond. “We did an inventory that summer and fall. Even we were surprised how many businesses were open compared to perception.”
Unfortunately, the perception remained, and it still keeps some locals from exploring downtown. It’s a reputation that business owners and residents want to shake.
Svetlana Green has lived in Jackson Ward for the better part of a decade and walks to work at her floral design shop, Rushing Blooms Floral Studio, at 18 W. Broad St. She’s aware of the reputation the downtown corridor of Broad Street wears, and she suspects it’s what keeps foot traffic low on some sleepier weekends. There’s nothing to fear down here, she says — it’s just home. “I’m pretty confident being out and about this neighborhood because I feel like it’s mine.”
Green understands business owners’ reluctance to set up downtown. There are still boarded-up buildings, and though foot traffic surges on the weekends or during events, the ebbs are worrisome. “It is a tricky decision to move downtown” as a business owner, she says. “What is the guarantee that you’re actually going to do well?”
Ashley Smiley, owner of Dog House Cat on Broad Street (Photo by Jay Paul)
The Return
Many downtown business districts in the United States have emptied following the ravages of the pandemic and the popularity of remote work, but Broad Street is proving to be an exception.
While public transit ridership nationwide has been sinking since 2015, it has increased for the GRTC Transit System. Its Pulse, a rapid bus line that runs the length of Broad from the Willow Lawn shopping center to VCU Medical Center and beyond to Rocketts Landing, is far and away the most popular line in the system, carrying an average of 4,600 riders every day.
Jack Berry, president and CEO at Richmond Region Tourism, says that tourism overall has recovered beautifully, better than expected, in fact. “In 2008, when the banks collapsed, it took us 60 months to get back to record-level hotel occupancy. It was 16 months with COVID. July 2021 was the biggest July we’ve had. We set records for 24 or 25 months in a row on highest occupancy and average daily rates.”
Since 2020, a slew of new restaurants have opened along the Broad Street corridor and on nearby streets — in September 2022, Carytown’s Can Can Brasserie opened a sister project, Can Can Café, in the Library of Virginia to capture the downtown breakfast and lunch crowd; a month later, ML Steak opened next door to the convention center. Wine and tapas shop and restaurant Penny’s opened on Brook Road in early 2023 and, a few doors away, And Dim Sum opened in November. Mainstays weathered the pandemic, too: Tarrant’s Downtown Cafe, Urban Hang Suite, Jamaica House, Bar Solita, Mama J’s, and Lift Coffee Shop & Cafe were among those that have stayed in business. Our food scene is a magnet for tourists, Berry says.
Common House, a social club and coworking space, welcomed its first guests in the fall of 2020, and its sister restaurant, Birdie’s, launched a year later. A Virginia Credit Union branch on the corner of Broad and Adams streets opened in summer 2023, as did Ember Music Hall at Broad and Third streets in July. Old City Hall, an 1894 Gothic Revival marvel, recently reopened after a years-long renovation.
Kenda Sutton-el opened Birth in Color in 2022. Boosted by a $10,000 grant from Venture Richmond, she created Broad Street’s first nonprofit dedicated to maternal and reproductive health care for women of color.
In July at 5 W. Broad St., native Richmonder Ashley Smiley opened her pet supply boutique, Dog House Cat. She remembers Broad Street in the 1990s, when it just wasn’t a destination. Now, she says, she gets to be a part of the revitalization, setting an example for future business owners.
“I think people coming in see that they can take a chance on a passion. A lot of the other small businesses in the area are owned by women, and they’re busting their butts to make their passions accessible to others. That’s an awesome thing to be a part of.”
Smiley sees locals in the shop, plus a lot of foot traffic from tourists who’ve come to the city for a weekend away or to attend a wedding. Travelers from Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and cities in North Carolina stroll in. The chatter is positive: People are excited to find Richmond is worth the trip.
Birdie’s Bar & Cafe and Common House social club (Photo courtesy Common House)
Built for a Boom
Broad Street had the infrastructure to recover from the pandemic. The convention center and the established hotels, performing arts venues, restaurants and galleries were already there. And the Pulse, which opened in 2018, carried workers, travelers and shoppers even during the lowest points of the pandemic.
People were keen to get out again after years of quarantining. First Fridays, the monthly art festival along West Broad, is drawing crowds once more. But the neighborhood can’t yet sustain the energy every night. Recovery is still in progress.
“There are events like First Fridays that really transform this neighborhood into something that I wish it was every day,” Svetlana Green says. “It brings people downtown. There’s music and food and drinks, but the next day, it’s like tumbleweeds.”
I feel an ownership to make my shop a place that’s integrated into the neighborhood.
—Ashley Smiley, owner, Dog House Cat
There is plenty still to come for Broad Street. In the years ahead, VPM will build its new public media headquarters between First and Foushee streets. VCU will erect a performing arts building and data center on an empty block at Belvidere and Broad streets.
A second Pulse line running north to south will make a stop on Broad. Though the station’s location hasn’t been chosen, it will land somewhere between Belvidere and Ninth streets, connecting new communities to the boom.
On its way to recovery, though, some are left behind. There are people without homes who often seek shelter on Broad Street. Kenda Sutton-el hands out information on local support organizations, and Green has called for help when she finds someone unwell. Both would like to see more assistance for unsheltered Richmonders.
Plus, the area may need price control. Sutton-el’s friends and colleagues have inquired about some of the empty buildings and spaces, but they’re already priced out. “People say it’s not affordable for them to purchase and utilize now that Broad Street is becoming a thing again.” This was once a thriving Black business district, she says. How can it come back?
Broad Street still needs to shake its outdated reputation. Business owners say they know that the perception of downtown soured after 2020 — warranted or not — but Broad Street is not the place it used to be. Venture Richmond and the city are sponsoring beautification projects, and graffiti gets scrubbed off regularly. Even on a weeknight, when Virginia Repertory Theatre is putting on a new show or there’s a performance at the Carpenter Theatre a few blocks east, the streets are full of life.
“The identity of Richmond is so tied to Broad Street because it’s our downtown,” Bill Martin of The Valentine says. “There’s the financial district, which is where you go to work and do serious stuff. Broad Street has been, for a very long time, the place where you go to shop and enjoy yourself.” It’s the heart of Richmond, he says. “We have to make sure that our heart is in good shape and reflects the energy of the region.”
Smiley takes the responsibility personally, and she’s committed to being a part of the neighborhood’s reinvigoration. “I feel an ownership to make my shop a place that’s integrated into the neighborhood, where people say, ‘Oh, that’s the local pet store I go to, and it feels like part of what makes this home.’”
