Henrico, GreenCity officials announce ASM Global to manage new arena

One of the leading facility management companies in the world will operate the new 17,000-seat GreenCity arena, Henrico County and GreenCity officials announced Monday morning.

ASM Global, which is based in Los Angeles and operates more than 350 stadiums, arenas, convention centers and other facilities on five continents, will join the GreenCity project to oversee and manage the arena, which officials promised will be “the greenest in America.”

“For ASM Global, this is more than an arena – this is an opportunity to create an integrated and cohesive sports, entertainment and hospitality district that operates as one,” said ASM Global Executive Vice President for Strategy and Development Liam Thornton.’

The arena is viewed as the centerpiece of the $2-billion GreenCity community, a 200-acre development that will take shape during the next decade adjacent to I-95, north of Parham Road and south of I-295. Construction of the arena is expected to begin early next year, with completion expected by 2026. By next year, developers intend to have completed a project to repurpose the 300,000-square-foot former Best Products headquarters on the site.

“From the outset, GreenCity has always been imagined as an arena-anchored project,” developer Michael Hallmark said Monday. “It’s part of a synergistic plan. Unlike lot of other arena projects that are one-off projects, this one is meant to be part of a larger mosaic.”

Ultimately, GreenCity is expected to include 2.2 million square feet of office space, along with the arena, as many as 2,400 residential units, nearly 300,000 square feet of retail space, extensive green space and trails and two large hotels. Developers are planning it as an ecodistrict, in which sustainability will guide development and operations.

The arena, Hallmark said, will be designed on a net-zero energy basis, meaning that it will generate as much or more energy than it uses each year. It will be powered from renewable energy, and organic waste will be processed on site, for example.

The location of the arena just a few hundred feet from Interstate 95 – the busiest path along the East Coast – means that ASM will be able to attract the top musical and performing acts in the world, Hallmark and Thornton said. And its sustainable design will help, said Hallmark, since many top acts now refuse to perform at venues that don’t meet certain green standards.

“Most arenas in America are not that green,” said Hallmark, himself a former arena architect. “We live in an age now where that is a fundamentally important issue. I’m comfortable being able to say to you that the GreenCity arena will be the definition of state-of-the-art.”

ASM officials on Monday touted the GreenCity arena as part of a nine-arena I-95 Corridor "Arena Concert Tour" between Boston and Miami, suggesting that it will attract shows that stop at places like Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center in New York City, the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., and American Airlines Arena in Miami.

Though the arena will be able to hold as many as 17,000 people, Hallmark said that only five or six shows annually might attract that many but that the arena will be designed to be flexible, so that smaller shows or events will feel intimate to those who attend.

Last month, the Henrico Board of Supervisors approved the creation of a GreenCity Community Development Authority, which will issue bonds to fund the arena’s construction, which then will be paid back over time with revenue generated by the development.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Frank Thornton (no relation to the ASM Global official) told those in attendance Monday that county officials view GreenCity as a development that will benefit Henrico in a number of ways.

“We are in it to win,” Thornton. “The momentum is real and it is growing.”

GreenCity ultimately is expected to support 8,100 jobs at buildout and create an economic impact of $1.4 billion, according to an economic impact study by Magnum Economics commissioned by Henrico County.

“These numbers are simply stunning,” said Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas,. “It’s an absolute game-changer in every respect.