Ballpark discussion comes back to Shockoe

In the on going saga about the baseball stadium everything old is new again and we’re back to discussing putting a stadium in Shockoe Bottom. The last time a baseball stadium was seriously in the mix was in 2009 when  Highwoods Properties’ proposed Shockoe Center (pictured above). RTD has the latest news which as you would expect is big on generalizations and short on details.

“We are the Richmond Flying Squirrels. We’re going to go the route that Richmond wants to go,” said Lou DiBella, the president and managing general partner of the Flying Squirrels. “If the city and the chamber prefer Shockoe Bottom, if that’s the route that they believe is best for developing the city, then we’re fine with that.”

Kim Scheeler, president of the Greater Richmond Chamber, confirmed Monday that discussion of a new baseball stadium has moved from being a regional project on the Boulevard to an economic development project downtown.

Under the new approach, the city would make a ballpark part of a larger development downtown “as a way to raise the money to pay for the stadium rather than have the counties put money into it,” Scheeler said.

A small sampling of previous Shockoe News articles on a baseball stadium.