An Expensive Wedding Diamond; T is For Texas Beach; A Pricey Toll; Hungry For Taxes; $460,000 Per Housing Unit?

RVA 5x5 - May 6, 2023

No algorithms. No content filters. Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.

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In today’s edition of news you need about RVA, we have stories on:

• Why will it take almost two years to replace the Texas Beach Replacement Bridge in James River Park when federal money has been allocated?

• The city raised the meals tax two cents in 2018 to help build new schools, but an audit found it is failing to collect a lot of what is owed due to old software and using manual calculations and outdated information.

• The city is getting engaged next week and the engagement ring is going to cost a lot more than two months salary to get the new baseball stadium built…

• The pandemic’s impact on remote and office work is forcing the first toll increase in Richmond in 15 years — and you can get rid of all your nickles and dimes.

• The non-profit developer building a new mixed-use community across from the old Creighton Court public housing is building units for $460,000 per unit. Excuse me?

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STORY #1 — T is For Texas Beach
There is an age-old debate about which came first — the chicken or the egg? In Richmond, there is a similar conundrum: which will come first — a new Texas Beach pedestrian bridge or a new baseball stadium?

If you enjoy the James River and the incredible trails of the James River Park System, then you are likely already aware (and disappointed) that the pedestrian access bridge to the highly-trafficked Texas Beach portion of the park and river — closed due to structural dangers back in September of 2022 — will likely not open for at least another year. The problem has been known about for years, but the deterioration became so bad that closure was the only safe option.

(Is it a coincidence that September of 2022 was also the same month the city chose a developer for the Diamond District and it took almost eight months to then see any movement and discover through a press release that the schedule for the stadium is already one year behind?)

Now, it has taken eight months since the closure of the bridge for the city to announce it will take at least another year to fix it. We aren’t talking about building a $120 million baseball stadium or $300 million arena. This is a project that would cost about $1 million+ for replacement or a repair project that would cost about $800,000 (so reliable sources tell me). Of course, the railroad (CSX) is hard to deal with (like all railroads), and the staging of the project would be tricky, but not impossible by any means. They already did it once in 1970 when it was built.

Last fall, the Mayor included the replacement of the bridge as a recipient of some the one-time money from the American Rescue Plan Act, but now the city has said just to evaluate the fix will take at least a year, even though Mayor Stoney has said on multiple occasions since his February State of the City speech that “We are about the fix.”

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