An Investigative Comparison of CFG Bank Arena and Every Publicly Identifiable Richmond Coliseum Renovation Proposal
Baltimore and Richmond once confronted remarkably similar problems.
Each city owned an aging downtown arena built during the era of monumental concrete civic architecture. Each facility needed substantial modernization. Neither arena had a permanent NBA or NHL tenant. Both cities wanted to stimulate redevelopment around their convention centers and downtown entertainment districts.
Baltimore ultimately treated its arena as an asset capable of being reinvented.
Richmond treated its Coliseum increasingly as land waiting to be cleared.
Baltimore solicited a private partner, negotiated a long-term operating agreement and oversaw a renovation that transformed its 1962 arena into the modern CFG Bank Arena. Richmond, by contrast, closed its Coliseum in 2019, entertained at least two publicly identifiable renovation proposals, rejected a new-arena redevelopment plan, conducted a planning process that discussed rehabilitation precedents, and then moved toward redevelopment concepts requiring demolition.
The central question is therefore not whether Richmond received a fully developed, Baltimore-style renovation package. The available record suggests that it did not.
The more important question is why the city never appears to have created a competitive process specifically designed to produce one.
The Baltimore Model: Renovation as an Economic Strategy
Baltimore’s arena opened in 1962, nine years before the Richmond Coliseum. It faced many of the same criticisms later directed at Richmond’s facility: outdated concessions, limited premium seating, aging mechanical systems, insufficient backstage accommodations and difficulty competing for contemporary touring productions.
Baltimore had considered replacement for years. Earlier studies warned that the building had reached the end of its useful life and examined constructing an entirely new arena.
The city ultimately changed course.
In 2020, the Baltimore Development Corporation sought proposals to redevelop the arena at its existing downtown site. The process allowed respondents to consider renovation rather than presuming that the old structure had to disappear.
Oak View Group, working with Fundamental Advisors and Thirty Five Ventures, emerged with a plan to reconstruct the arena within its existing structural shell.
The original financing announcement estimated approximately $200 million in combined private debt and equity. The developers agreed to finance the reconstruction and lease the city-owned building through Baltimore Arena Co. for 30 years. Subsequent project descriptions place the completed renovation at more than $250 million.
The renovation included:
removal of the arena’s permanent stage;
a reconfigured seating bowl;
new suites, clubs and premium seating;
wider and modernized concourses;
upgraded concessions;
improved backstage and performer facilities;
new loading and production capabilities;
accessibility improvements;
modern sound, video and building systems; and
a redesigned exterior.
Baltimore retained ownership of the property while transferring much of the financing, redevelopment and operational risk to experienced private venue partners.
That distinction matters. The project was not simply a public works renovation paid for entirely from Baltimore’s general fund. It was a venue-development partnership in which the private team had a strong incentive to book events, attract customers and keep the facility competitive.
Baltimore’s Results
The reopened CFG Bank Arena quickly became a high-volume entertainment venue.
Baltimore’s adopted fiscal year 2026 budget reports that the arena hosted 172 live performances during calendar year 2024, attracting approximately 1.5 million visitors.
That works out to approximately:
3.3 events per week;
8,721 visitors per performance, on average;
125,000 visitors per month; and
more than 4,100 arena visitors per day, averaged across the year.
Those visitors represent more than ticket buyers. They are potential customers for restaurants, bars, hotels, parking operators, retail establishments and transportation services.
The arena’s community program reports that the renovation created more than 500 construction jobs. Project materials also presented the arena as a cornerstone of redevelopment on downtown Baltimore’s west side rather than as an isolated entertainment building.
Baltimore did not need an NBA or NHL franchise to justify the arena.
Its business strategy focused heavily on concerts, comedy tours, family entertainment, college basketball, boxing, wrestling and special sporting events. That is particularly relevant to Richmond because arguments against renovating the Coliseum have sometimes rested on the region’s lack of a major-league sports tenant.
Baltimore demonstrates that an arena can function primarily as a live-entertainment platform.
The Richmond Record Is More Fragmented
Richmond’s history is not a neat contest between one renovation plan and one demolition plan.
Instead, the record consists of formal solicitations focused on replacement, unsolicited preservation proposals, planning studies, council resolutions and later redevelopment processes that assumed the Coliseum would be removed.
Based on publicly available reporting and city documents, two specific private proposals can be identified as calling for renovation of the existing Richmond Coliseum:
Sterling Bilder’s 2019 preservation and redevelopment proposal
Douglas Development Corporation’s 2020 unsolicited acquisition and renovation proposal
These should not be confused with the 2017 North of Broad request for proposals, the Navy Hill plan or the 2022 City Center solicitation.
The 2017 request contemplated a new arena, and the Navy Hill proposal called for replacing the Coliseum. The later City Center process was built around redeveloping the district without an arena and contemplated demolition.
That procedural history is important because it means Richmond never appears to have conducted a Baltimore-style solicitation explicitly asking qualified arena developers and operators:
How much would it cost to renovate this building, how would you finance it, how many events could you book, and what public participation would you require?
Without that process, Richmond cannot convincingly claim that the market rejected renovation.
The market was rarely asked the question in that form.
Proposal One: Sterling Bilder’s Coliseum Renovation Plan
What Was Proposed?
Richmond developer Joshua Bilder, through Sterling Bilder LLC, presented an alternative to the Navy Hill redevelopment plan in 2019.
The proposal was valued at approximately $1.4 billion for the wider district and included a reported $168 million renovation of the Richmond Coliseum. It also contemplated an approximately $8 million hotel conversion in the historic Blues Armory and additional residential development.
The basic concept was materially different from Navy Hill.
Navy Hill proposed demolishing the Coliseum and constructing a new arena as part of a large tax-increment-financing district. Bilder proposed retaining the existing arena, modernizing it and incorporating it into a broader mixed-use redevelopment.
In broad strategic terms, Bilder’s concept resembles the approach Baltimore eventually followed: preserve the arena’s structural and civic value while surrounding it with uses that could benefit from event-generated traffic.
Estimated Renovation Cost
Publicly reported Coliseum renovation cost: $168 million
That figure was substantially below the approximately $250 million ultimately invested in Baltimore’s arena. The difference should not automatically be interpreted as savings, however.
Baltimore’s figure reflected an extensive reconstruction, substantial hospitality additions and the requirements of a major national venue operator. Bilder’s public number may have represented a different scope, pricing year or level of design development.
Without complete engineering reports, escalation assumptions and construction specifications, the figures cannot be treated as perfectly comparable.
Nevertheless, the $168 million estimate was significant enough to warrant serious analysis. It was not a proposal to patch the roof, replace a few seats and reopen the doors. It contemplated a major capital rehabilitation.
Proposed Financing
The publicly available summaries do not provide enough information to reconstruct a complete financing package for the arena renovation.
The larger Bilder development was presented as a private redevelopment alternative, but the available public record does not clearly establish:
the proposed debt-to-equity ratio;
whether arena debt would have been privately guaranteed;
whether public bonds were contemplated;
whether surrounding tax revenue would have supported arena costs;
the proposed lease or management structure;
the amount, if any, of direct city capital;
responsibility for future maintenance; or
the proposed distribution of admissions, naming-rights and concession revenue.
This is a crucial distinction between the Bilder concept and Baltimore’s completed deal.
Baltimore ultimately disclosed a clear basic structure: private debt and equity funding, continued municipal ownership and a 30-year lease to the arena company.
Richmond never advanced the Bilder proposal far enough publicly to produce a similarly detailed term sheet.
Projected Event Schedule
No verified public event projection for the Bilder proposal has been identified in the available materials.
There is no publicly documented schedule showing:
projected concerts per year;
family shows;
college basketball games;
indoor sports;
conventions or general sessions;
graduations;
religious events;
community events; or
total annual attendance.
That omission does not prove that Bilder’s team performed no event analysis. It means that such an analysis was not made broadly available in a form allowing citizens to compare it with the new arena proposed by Navy Hill.
The event schedule is not a side issue. It is the heartbeat of an arena business plan.
A renovation cost without a booking forecast is only half a proposal.
Projected Economic Impact
No sufficiently detailed, independently verifiable public economic-impact analysis for the renovated Coliseum has been located.
The proposal reportedly included substantial surrounding development, which would have generated construction jobs, real-estate taxes, sales activity and potential hospitality demand. But the economic contribution of the arena itself was not publicly separated from the value of the larger $1.4 billion redevelopment.
Richmond residents therefore were not given a clear answer to questions such as:
How many visitors would the renovated Coliseum attract?
How many would come from outside the region?
How much would they spend downtown?
How many hotel-room nights would arena events produce?
What admissions, meals, sales and lodging taxes would result?
How many permanent arena jobs would be created?
How would the benefits compare with those projected for a new arena?
How Did the City Evaluate It?
The Bilder proposal does not appear to have received a full, publicly documented competitive evaluation equivalent to the review of the Navy Hill proposal.
It was presented as an alternative after the city’s 2017 solicitation had produced only one formal respondent, the Farrell-led group that became the Navy Hill development team. The 2017 RFP itself was structured around replacement of the Coliseum with a new arena rather than renovation of the existing building.
No public scorecard has been identified showing the Bilder proposal’s ranking for:
financial capacity;
arena-development experience;
engineering feasibility;
event-market demand;
public financial exposure;
minority-business participation;
economic impact;
construction risk; or
long-term operating sustainability.
That does not necessarily mean city officials ignored it completely. They may have reviewed the materials internally.
The transparency problem is that Richmonders cannot see the analysis.
Proposal Two: Douglas Development Corporation
What Was Proposed?
On February 18, 2020, shortly after City Council rejected Navy Hill, Washington-based Douglas Development Corporation submitted an unsolicited offer for the Coliseum and surrounding city-owned property.
Douglas offered approximately $15 million to $16 million, depending on the description and property configuration reflected in contemporaneous materials, to acquire roughly 14 to 15 acres.
Its proposed mixed-use program included:
renovation of the Richmond Coliseum;
a hotel;
apartments or condominiums;
retail;
Class A office buildings;
a grocery store; and
a transit center.
Douglas proposed reserving 10 percent of the apartments for lower-income housing.
The offer was notable because Douglas Development was not simply proposing that Richmond spend public money to save the building. It was offering to purchase the site and undertake a private mixed-use redevelopment in which the Coliseum would remain an anchor.
Estimated Renovation Cost
Publicly disclosed Coliseum renovation cost: Not provided
The Douglas letter identified renovation as part of the proposed development but did not include a detailed arena scope or reliable construction budget in the materials made public.
That makes it impossible to compare Douglas directly with Baltimore’s $250 million-plus reconstruction or Bilder’s reported $168 million concept.
It also appears to have been one reason the offer could not immediately advance.
A city memorandum stated that the unsolicited submission lacked required information, including projected investment value, tax revenue, job creation and an adequate good-faith deposit.
Proposed Financing
Douglas proposed purchasing the property and developing it privately, suggesting a substantially different framework from the Navy Hill plan.
However, its public letter did not provide sufficient information concerning:
the renovation budget;
identified lenders or equity partners;
arena operating partners;
city subsidies;
requested tax incentives;
infrastructure obligations;
lease arrangements;
construction guarantees; or
long-term maintenance responsibility.
The proposal therefore represented credible market interest, but not a completed financing plan.
Douglas had a record of adaptive reuse and urban redevelopment, which made the expression of interest worthy of examination. Yet an expression of interest is not the same thing as a fully underwritten transaction.
The logical city response would have been to use the offer as a reason to solicit detailed competing preservation proposals.
The record does not show that Richmond did so.
Projected Event Schedule
Publicly disclosed event projection: None identified
Douglas did not publicly specify the number or mix of events expected at the renovated arena.
There was no disclosed commitment from an arena operator comparable with Oak View Group in Baltimore. Nor was there a public booking study showing whether the Coliseum could recover concerts lost to larger regional venues.
Without an operator, promoters, financial projections and a modernization scope, it would have been premature to accept Douglas’s concept as a completed arena plan.
But it was equally premature to treat the absence of those details as proof that renovation could not work.
The appropriate next step would have been due diligence or a competitive solicitation, not silent disappearance.
Projected Economic Impact
Publicly disclosed economic-impact projection: Incomplete
The city specifically identified missing projected investment, tax-revenue and job-creation figures.
This means Douglas’s proposal cannot fairly be presented as a fully substantiated equivalent to Baltimore’s deal. It lacked information necessary for responsible public approval.
At the same time, the city’s response shows that the proposal was incomplete, not that renovation was structurally, financially or operationally impossible.
Those are very different conclusions.
How Did the City Evaluate It?
Richmond officials reviewed the submission for compliance with the city’s process for unsolicited offers.
The city determined that required elements were missing and informed Douglas that additional information would be necessary. City code also required competitive procedures before council could act on an unsolicited offer involving public property.
That procedural caution was appropriate.
Selling approximately 14 acres of downtown public property on the basis of a short unsolicited letter would have been irresponsible.
But the city had several alternatives:
Request a complete submission from Douglas.
Issue a preservation-specific request for proposals.
Invite Douglas, Bilder and national arena operators to compete.
Commission an independent structural and market study.
Compare renovation, replacement and demolition under identical assumptions.
The available public record does not show that Richmond completed that full process.
Other Processes That Should Not Be Misidentified as Renovation Proposals
The 2017 North of Broad RFP
Richmond’s 2017 solicitation required respondents to address a new arena replacing the Coliseum.
It did not establish a neutral competition between renovation and replacement. Only one team submitted a formal response: the Farrell-led development group that became associated with Navy Hill.
Because the solicitation was framed around replacement, the lack of renovation responses tells the public little about whether qualified operators would have pursued rehabilitation under a different procurement.
A request for a new building will generally produce proposals for a new building.
The Navy Hill Proposal
The approximately $1.5 billion Navy Hill plan called for a new arena and demolition of the Coliseum. It was rejected by City Council in February 2020.
Navy Hill should be included in any broader comparison of Richmond’s arena choices, but it was not a Coliseum renovation proposal.
The 2020 Coliseum Framework Process
After Navy Hill’s defeat, council called for planning that could consider redevelopment or rehabilitation.
City planning presentations discussed arena-renovation precedents, including the approximately $127 million renovation and addition to the University of Illinois’ State Farm Center, which reportedly generated new premium revenue.
This proves that renovation was at least discussed conceptually.
But discussing another city’s arena renovation is not the same as commissioning a Richmond-specific structural design, cost estimate, operating plan and financing competition.
The 2022 City Center Submissions
Five development teams responded to the first phase of the City Center process:
Capstone Development;
City Center Gateway Partners;
Lincoln Property Company;
Richmond Community Development Partners; and
Sterling Bilder.
The city later released concepts from four teams showing redevelopment of the Coliseum site without an arena. The proposals emphasized housing, hotels, office space, parks and mixed-use development.
These submissions should not be counted as rejected arena-renovation plans.
The City Center process was aimed at replacing the Coliseum district, not testing whether a modernized Coliseum could serve as its anchor.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Measure | Baltimore: CFG Bank Arena | Sterling Bilder | Douglas Development |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proposal type | Comprehensive arena reconstruction | Coliseum renovation within mixed-use redevelopment | Purchase and private mixed-use redevelopment including Coliseum renovation |
| Arena status | Completed and operating | Not advanced | Not advanced |
| Reported arena investment | More than $250 million | Approximately $168 million | Not publicly disclosed |
| Wider development value | Arena formed part of west-side revitalization | Approximately $1.4 billion | Not publicly disclosed |
| Property ownership | City retained ownership | Publicly available details insufficient | Proposed private acquisition |
| Financing | Private debt and equity | Full structure not publicly disclosed | Full structure not publicly disclosed |
| Lease or operating term | 30-year lease | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed |
| Experienced arena operator | Oak View Group | Not clearly identified publicly | Not clearly identified publicly |
| Annual events | 172 live performances in 2024 | No public projection identified | No public projection identified |
| Annual attendance | 1.5 million in 2024 | No public projection identified | No public projection identified |
| Construction jobs | More than 500 reported | No arena-specific figure identified | No figure supplied in initial offer |
| Public evaluation | Competitive city process and negotiated agreement | No public comparative scorecard identified | Administrative review found submission incomplete |
| Outcome | Reopened in 2023 | Did not advance | Did not advance |
| Current building result | Active arena | Coliseum remained closed | Coliseum remained closed |
What Might a Renovated Richmond Coliseum Have Produced?
No responsible analysis can simply copy Baltimore’s 1.5 million annual visitors and assign them to Richmond.
Baltimore has a larger city population, a denser regional entertainment market, stronger rail connectivity and proximity to the Washington metropolitan area. CFG Bank Arena also received a larger reconstruction and is operated by one of the most influential venue companies in the industry.
Richmond’s arena was smaller, its market is different and its competition includes Charlottesville, Hampton Roads, Washington, Baltimore and potential suburban venues.
Still, Baltimore provides a useful performance benchmark.
A conservative scenario analysis might ask what would happen if a renovated Richmond Coliseum achieved only a fraction of Baltimore’s volume.
Illustrative Event Scenarios
| Scenario | Annual Events | Average Attendance | Annual Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Limited reopening | 60 | 5,000 | 300,000 |
| Competitive regional arena | 90 | 6,000 | 540,000 |
| Strong entertainment calendar | 120 | 6,500 | 780,000 |
| Baltimore’s 2024 performance | 172 | 8,721 | 1.5 million |
These are not projections from Bilder, Douglas or the city. They are illustrative scenarios showing the kind of analysis Richmond should have commissioned.
Even the middle scenario of 540,000 annual attendees could create recurring downtown activity on approximately 90 event days.
At an illustrative off-site visitor expenditure of $40 per attendee for meals, transportation, parking, retail or other purchases, 540,000 attendees would represent approximately $21.6 million in annual gross off-site spending.
At $60 per attendee, the figure would be approximately $32.4 million.
Those numbers would not equal net new economic impact. Some spending would come from local residents who might otherwise spend money elsewhere in the region. Economic-impact studies must account for substitution, leakage and displacement.
But the exercise shows why eliminating the arena without first estimating its potential visitor economy was a consequential decision.
The Cost Comparison Requires More Than Construction Numbers
Baltimore’s renovation exceeded Richmond’s reported $168 million Bilder estimate, but raw construction costs do not settle the matter.
A proper comparison would examine:
Public Capital
How much direct taxpayer funding would be required?
Baltimore transferred substantial redevelopment and operational responsibility to private partners. Richmond never publicly demonstrated whether a similar partnership could be negotiated.
Land Value
Demolition frees the Coliseum site for taxable development.
Renovation preserves the arena but could limit the amount of land available for housing, offices or a convention hotel.
The question is whether the annual economic activity generated by the arena would outweigh the additional property-tax potential of alternative development.
Infrastructure
The Coliseum already had an event floor, seating bowl, concourses, utilities, loading access and nearby parking.
Renovation could reuse some of that embodied investment, but the value of existing infrastructure depends on its physical condition.
No complete publicly released engineering comparison has established how much of the Richmond Coliseum could economically be reused.
Opportunity Cost
A closed building generates little public activity while requiring security and maintenance.
Every year Richmond delayed a final decision increased deterioration and made renovation more expensive.
That creates a troubling cycle:
Close the building.
Defer investment.
Allow deterioration.
Cite deterioration as evidence that rehabilitation is impractical.
Demolish the building because rehabilitation has become too costly.
A city should not be allowed to manufacture inevitability through neglect.
Did Richmond Exhaust the Renovation Option?
Based on the publicly available record, the most defensible answer is no.
Richmond received at least two identifiable private expressions of interest in renovating the Coliseum.
One included a reported $168 million renovation budget.
The other came from an experienced adaptive-reuse developer offering to buy the site and retain the arena as part of private mixed-use development.
Neither became a Baltimore-style, fully negotiated arena transaction.
But that is not the same as demonstrating that renovation was infeasible.
Richmond does not appear to have publicly completed all of the following:
a preservation-specific arena RFP;
an independent structural rehabilitation study released in full;
a modern arena-market and booking analysis;
a competitive solicitation involving national venue operators;
a comparison of private financing structures;
an independently reviewed event and attendance forecast;
a fiscal comparison between arena taxes and replacement-development taxes;
a transparent scoring of renovation proposals;
a public explanation of why each preservation concept failed; or
a council vote explicitly choosing demolition over a fully developed renovation alternative.
Baltimore built a process that allowed renovation to mature into a real transaction.
Richmond received incomplete or unsolicited preservation concepts and never appears to have created a process capable of turning them into comparable, financeable bids.
Richmond’s Evaluation Failure
The central failure was not necessarily choosing demolition.
Reasonable people can conclude that the Coliseum’s site has greater value as a convention hotel, housing, streets and mixed-use development.
The failure was reaching that conclusion without first placing the alternatives on the same scoreboard.
Richmond should have published a comparison containing:
| Evaluation Category | Renovated Coliseum | New Arena | No Arena/Mixed Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital cost | Required | Required | Required |
| Public subsidy | Required | Required | Required |
| Private equity | Required | Required | Required |
| Annual visitors | Required | Required | Required |
| Event days | Required | Required | Required |
| Hotel-room nights | Required | Required | Required |
| Admissions and sales taxes | Required | Required | Required |
| Property-tax revenue | Required | Required | Required |
| Permanent jobs | Required | Required | Required |
| Construction jobs | Required | Required | Required |
| Maintenance risk | Required | Required | Required |
| Environmental impact | Required | Required | Required |
| Cultural value | Required | Required | Required |
| Opportunity cost | Required | Required | Required |
That analysis should have been completed before the building deteriorated through years of vacancy.
Instead, Richmonders were presented with disconnected plans, incomplete offers and shifting redevelopment visions.
The Transparency Problem
The publicly available record leaves basic questions unanswered.
Was the $168 million Bilder estimate independently reviewed?
Did city officials ask national arena operators whether they would finance or manage a renovated Coliseum?
Did the city seek a second opinion concerning the building’s structural condition?
Did officials model a concert-focused arena without a permanent sports tenant?
Did Richmond compare the economic impact of 60, 90 or 120 annual arena events with the impact of a convention hotel?
Were promoters asked what physical improvements would be necessary to return Richmond to major touring schedules?
Did the city calculate the value of the Coliseum’s existing foundation, roof, event floor and loading tunnel?
Why was no renovation-specific solicitation issued after City Council rejected Navy Hill?
The absence of accessible answers does not prove misconduct.
It demonstrates an inadequate public record for a decision involving a major civic asset.
Baltimore’s Lesson
Baltimore’s arena was older than Richmond’s.
Baltimore had also spent years considering replacement.
Its leaders ultimately found a private group willing to invest more than $250 million in a city-owned building without requiring Baltimore to abandon the arena’s downtown site.
The result hosted 172 live performances and attracted 1.5 million visitors in 2024.
Baltimore’s experience does not prove that Richmond could have replicated those exact results.
It proves something narrower but still powerful:
An aging downtown arena without an NBA or NHL team can be renovated, privately financed, professionally operated and returned to heavy use.
That possibility should have raised the standard of proof required before Richmond selected demolition.
Conclusion: The Option Richmond Never Fully Tested
Sterling Bilder’s proposal was not complete enough, at least in the public record, to establish a financeable arena redevelopment.
Douglas Development’s offer lacked required financial and economic details.
Neither proposal should be romanticized as a ready-to-build solution.
But neither should be erased.
Together, they show that private developers saw potential value in retaining the Richmond Coliseum. Baltimore shows that such interest can be converted into a successful renovation when a city conducts a process designed to test preservation rather than presume demolition.
Richmond never seems to have run that test.
It solicited a new arena in 2017.
It considered the massive Navy Hill replacement plan.
It received renovation alternatives outside that process.
It rejected Navy Hill.
It discussed rehabilitation during subsequent planning.
It then launched a City Center process built around removing the arena.
That sequence does not establish that renovation was impossible.
It establishes that renovation never received an equal hearing.
Before Richmond demolishes the Coliseum, city leaders should release every engineering report, market study, cost estimate, evaluation memorandum and communication concerning renovation. They should identify every developer or operator that expressed interest and explain what became of each approach.
Baltimore saved its arena because it recognized that an old building and an obsolete building are not necessarily the same thing.
Richmond may ultimately demolish its Coliseum without ever having demonstrated the difference.
Brian K. Telfair
Publisher & Editor | The Richmond Chronicle
Independent commentary and investigative analysis on Richmond government, public spending, economic development, and the decisions shaping the city’s future.
The Richmond Chronicle
Asking the questions City Hall would rather not answer.
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