Blues Armory

Spring 2023 Update:

The City of Richmond is in the midst of a solicitation process to select a development partner to purchase and redevelop approximately 9.4 acres of EDA-owned property in Richmond’s City Center Innovation District (“City Center”), including the stunning and historic Blues Armory. The City’s vision for City Center is to redevelop the area to become a mixed-use, mixed-income urban innovation district destination anchored by a headquarter hotel supporting the Greater Richmond Convention Center along with commercial, educational, and residential development to create a dynamic downtown.

On March 10, the City issued a Request for Offers, which included as a Development Component the “Creative adaptive reuse of the historic Blues Armory building” and featured the following assumptions:

• The glass atrium structure that is connected to the Blues Armory and the small building that is on the other side of the former 6th Street Marketplace must be demolished.
• The Blues Armory building most likely qualifies for the Commonwealth’s historic renovation tax credit program and the federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit program. RFO Respondents should indicate in the response whether the RFO program includes utilizing historic tax credits.
• The adaptive reuse of the Blues Armory could be hotel space, entertainment space, residential, office, live-work space, or a combination thereof. If you are proposing an entertainment use, please show your market analysis supporting the entertainment use you are proposing.

Four teams were invited to respond to the RFO and were interviewed by the Evaluation Panel. Each team submitted a one-pager and a description of their vision for the site. The one-pagers can be viewed here. We are pleased to see the desire to preserve the Blues Armory explicitly included in this process, and we will be eagerly awaiting next steps!