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How much would it cost to revive the Richmond Coliseum?
Drawing a blank? You’re not alone. As the city barrels toward demolishing the brutalist downtown arena, something is missing, as it has been for at least the last decade: a formal “facility assessment” to determine the building’s physical condition and needed repairs.
Not even Mayor Danny Avula knows the answer. And his administration is currently shepherding through a proposal to demolish the Coliseum, at a cost of $12 million to $15 million, to make way for a government-subsidized hotel for the convention center next door.
“I have some vague recollection that it was going to cost in excess of $10 million to replace the roof on the Coliseum, and it just wasn’t worth it,” Avula recalls. “Now, again, this is long before I had anything to do with this or was even thinking about [the Coliseum’s] future.”
Indeed, there was a study conducted by outside consultants in 2008 that found it would cost roughly $25 million to $35 million to give the building a “face-lift.” A decade later, however, former Mayor Levar Stoney dismissed the idea of renovating as “sunk costs” in pursuit of the $1.5 billion Navy Hill redevelopment proposal, which included a new $235 million arena.
John Gerner, a Richmond-based financial consultant who served as vice chair of the City Council-appointed Navy Hill Commission, doesn’t recall seeing a formal analysis of the Coliseum’s condition. “It was not part of our mandate,” he says.
Avula points to the Richmond 300 master plan and the 2022 addendum approved by City Council, which recommends tearing down the 13,500-seat Coliseum in favor of a “headquarters hotel” to attract large-scale conventions. That rationale, however, hinged not on the building’s physical condition, but on Henrico County’s pursuit of a larger, 17,000-seat arena as part of the now-defunct GreenCity development.
If a private developer wants to finance renovations, Avula says he’s all ears. “There was a group that came to us through an intermediary and said, ‘We’re interested in cobbling together $100-plus million dollars to reuse this. Would you be interested in a conversation?’” Avula says of a proposal his office received last year. “And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ But it never went anywhere.”
Still, it’s never too late to conduct a “proper analysis,” Gerner says: “The assumptions drive the process, and it’s time to reevaluate the assumptions.”
