A rendering of the future CarMax Park
The wait is over. After the latest series of delays — including a failed lawsuit and the threat of a hurricane — shovels finally broke ground for CarMax Park, the Richmond Flying Squirrels’ forthcoming stadium on Arthur Ashe Boulevard, in early September.
Although there were excavators and bulldozers onsite weeks beforehand, the ceremony featuring Mayor Levar Stoney, Flying Squirrels owner Lou DiBella, members of Richmond City Council and the Richmond Economic Development Authority, along with Flying Squirrels season ticketholders, put an official stamp on the long-winded quest to build the ballpark. The Double-A minor league baseball team, which had been promised a new stadium when it moved to Richmond in 2009, is on track to play there in the 2026 season.
“Fifteen years is a long time to wait for something,” DiBella said. “You start feeling like Don Quixote. You start feeling like you’re fighting windmills and chasing an impossible dream.”
But as Stoney concludes his term in City Hall, that dream is well on its way to fulfillment.
“Folks, this is a day we have been waiting for,” the mayor said. “This is the day the people of Richmond have been waiting for, for over a decade.”
In 2020, changes to the requirements for minor league stadiums handed down by Major League Baseball made replacing the Diamond essential to keeping the Squirrels — an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants — in Richmond. In 2022, City Council announced that the 67-acre parcel of land between Scott’s Addition, Leigh Street and Interstate 95 would be redeveloped into a new neighborhood called the Diamond District and anchored by the baseball stadium.
The multiuse neighborhood is slated to feature at least 2,800 residential units, 935,000 square feet of office space and 195,000 square feet of retail and community space, plus an 11-acre park. A fifth of the housing built must be made available to residents earning between 30% to 60% of the area’s median income, and another 20% will be earmarked for those earning 60% to 70% of the median income.
All in all, the project will require a capital investment of $2.44 billion. The initial development phase is being led by Diamond District Partners, who signed a Development Agreement with the EDA earlier this year.
“The baseball stadium is the first cog in the wheel that needs to shift,” said City Councilor Andreas Addison, a candidate for mayor.
After the groundbreaking ceremony, Addison said he was “happy to have a dirty shovel.” But he also knocked the failure of the city to close on the deal for the stadium in 2022, when the Diamond District was first approved.
A multitiered beer garden is planned for the left-field side of the stadium.
“After that window, interest rates went up, cost of construction went up, supply chain impacted our deliverables and everything became delayed,” he said.
Instead, it was last April when the city announced a funding deal for the stadium through a $170 million bond. Eventually, the bond was secured at a 4% interest rate, unanimously passed by City Council on May 8. The use of a special city revenue bond saved the city $215 million over the next 30 years by avoiding the standard interest rate of 8%.
A subsequent lawsuit filed against the city by Paul Goldman, a Democratic lawyer and council candidate, sought to put a referendum on the ballpark funding on the ballot in November. The ensuing legal process could have pushed construction past Opening Day 2026, which could have led the MLB to relocate the team for failure to meet the new facility standards for minor league stadiums. Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant, however, rejected the lawsuit’s arguments against the use of city-issued revenue bonds; Goldman ultimately declined to appeal the decision.
The Flying Squirrels will pay the city $3.2 million in rent annually for the first 10 years, after which the amount will decrease to $1.3 million. For the following 20 years, the amount will decrease by 3% annually.
The stadium will feature a wraparound concourse, a dugout suite, 20 luxury suites, a kids zone with terraced seating in right field, and a multi-tiered beer garden.
“They say it’s a ballpark, but I’ll say it’s a year-round venue,” said Todd Parnell, senior adviser for the Flying Squirrels. “This a lifetime event for all of us that’s a long time coming.”
CarMax Park will offer 20 luxury suites and a corner party suite with skyline views.
The stadium will stand on the former location of Parker Field, close to the current Diamond. Home to the Richmond Virginians, Parker Field hosted the likes of Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige and Ted Williams. It was replaced by the Diamond in 1985. As the home of the Triple- A Richmond Braves until 2008, the Diamond saw MLB All-Stars such as Chipper Jones, Javy Lopez and Brandon Crawford. In 2010, the Squirrels became the latest Diamond denizens and have led the Double-A Eastern League in attendance for nearly all 14 seasons in Richmond, including the past three years consecutively.
At the groundbreaking, DiBella thanked the fans for their support. “You made this day possible, you made it inevitable, you made it necessary,” he said. DiBella also thanked Stoney for his commitment to the team and thanked his own ownership group for sticking with him.
“When you tell people you’re going to have a new home in three years, and we’re here 15 years later … with a different group, you might be in trouble,” DiBella said. “But their faith never waned in me.
“Faith is a wonderful thing, and here, faith paid off. We had a ball, and we’re going to have a ball for one more year in that lovable ballpark across the street. And then, it’s CarMax Park — and thank God.”
This article has been updated since it was first published in the November 2024 issue.
