Someday, the Richmond Coliseum will have a face not even the Colonial Athletic Association could love.
On Monday night, the national spotlight was on Richmond during the title game of the Colonial Athletic Association men's basketball tournament, which was televised on ESPN. Sadly, the Coliseum is not the sort of civic center you want a spotlight shining on.
Its faded façade and antiquated design gives the building the look of an antique spaceship. With its broken bricks and missing chunks, the Coliseum appears as if Father Time and Mother Nature have been snacking on it.
The 6th Street Marketplace was called a symbol of failure and torn down. The marketplace and The Diamond opened in 1985. The Coliseum was already nearing its prime.
Where our rundown civic arena is concerned, we have finally moved past denial and into the long-overdue study phase to replace it.
We have a location: A consultant has identified a site between East Marshall, East Leigh, North Eighth and North 10th streets. Those 6.17 acres include city-owned parking lots and the Richmond Public Safety Building, a facility even more forlorn than the Coliseum.
We have the arena's price tag: $147.1 million. We have its capacity: 14,000 to 15,000.
What we don't have is a sense of urgency.
Yes, money is tight, and no one knows how we'll pay for a new arena. But Henrico County Manager Virgil R. Hazelett — the straw that stirs the drink in our region — says a new arena might take seven to 10 years to build.
Ouch. In a decade, the Coliseum will be 50 years old and an even more embarrassing spectacle than it is now. Pulling it through the keyhole of viability will require millions of additional dollars in patchwork. Perhaps by then, even the CAA may have lost patience with us and moved on — taking with it nearly $6 million in economic impact.
The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference basketball tournaments both left Richmond for North Carolina. The University of Virginia's John Paul Jones Arena snares the big concert acts. It seems unimaginable that our Coliseum once hosted NCAA men's basketball subregionals and the 1994 NCAA women's basketball championship.
Those days are gone forever, strangely unlamented, as if we've become comfortable with losing ground.
Meanwhile, Memphis, Tenn. — a region of comparable size — has built two arenas (The Pyramid, 1991; FedExForum, 2002) while our Coliseum crumbles. Raleigh, N.C., Oklahoma City and Louisville, Ky., are among other comparably sized metro areas that have managed to build ballparks and arenas without succumbing to the creeping paralysis that afflicts our region.
We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that whatever replaces the Coliseum — Altria Arena or whatever — is the city's responsibility to bear alone. A new civic center won't happen without corporate support and the buy-in of Richmond's suburbs.
All the players need to be at the table now, prepared to act. It's already late in the game.
(804) 649-6815
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