Arena project on hold as Henrico officials adjust budget

Construction of an indoor sports arena and convocation center at the current site of Virginia Center Commons mall is on hold as part of Henrico County’s revised budget proposal.

The county had hoped to begin construction by now on the facility, which will include seating for 4,500 and enough space for 12 basketball courts or 24 volleyball courts, as well as team and meeting rooms.

Henrico’s Economic Development Authority earlier this spring sold $50 million worth of bonds to fund the project; county officials spent slightly more than $8 million of that amount to purchase the roughly 25-acre site at VCC from The Rebkee Company, which had bought it along with the majority of the mall site in January for $12.8 million. (Henrico intends to partner with Rebkee and Shamin Hotels on the project.)

But the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the county to freeze all capital construction projects that weren’t already underway, meaning that the arena won’t take shape as soon as they had hoped. The original construction timeline (18 to 24 months) would have resulted in a completion date of late next year or the spring of 2022.

Design plans for the facility are expected to be completed soon, according to Henrico Deputy Finance Director Meghan Coates, but beyond that, officials aren’t sure when the project will get underway.

The county’s Board of Supervisors is expected to adopt the framework of a $1.3-billion budget  – $99 million less than originally planned – May 12, though it will only allocate funds three months at a time, as a way to continually evaluate the economic landscape and potentially make amendments to the plan as needed.

If the economic situation improves more rapidly than expected, some of the projects that were slated to receive funding in the new budget could be reinstated, officials have said. But the order in which those projects might reappear ultimately would be up to supervisors.

Henrico has invested heavily in sports tourism in recent years, and the arena will be another step in that direction. The pandemic has forced a shutdown of all sports locally and nationally, but Vithoulkas told the Citizen that he's confident they'll return in strong fashion at some point.

“The last recession, the only area that wasn’t impacted was sports tourism,” he said. “This healthcare crisis makes this situation totally different. But our economy, our region, is built on kids being able to go out on soccer fields, moms and dads being able to congregate again. I don’t know when, but there will be a return.”

Henrico’s parks and sports complexes hosted more than 180 tournaments and other events in last year, generating more than $55 million dollars in estimated local spending, according to county officials. A study conducted by Richmond Region Tourism for Henrico County last year concluded that the county was missing out on at least $33 million in additional economic impact annually from indoor sports tournaments that it could attract if it had sufficient space.

Given the county’s growing regional and national reputation as a recreational sports host – and its significant investment in indoor and outdoor facilities – Henrico officials aren’t planning to shift their focus now, Vithoulkas said.

“We committed a number of years ago . . . to make our county more attractive to not just the local teams but also the regional and the national teams, and I think that is going to be part of our DNA going forward,” he said. “The question is, is that a year [from now], a year and a half, is it two years? I can’t give you an answer. But I can tell you the approach is to not deviate from that.”