RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) -- The City of Richmond released results from a study that analyzed the amount of money the Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Camp made for the 'Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area.'
The study revealed the training camp generated $10.5 million for the metro area, which includes the independent cities of Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Petersburg, and Richmond, plus the counties of Amelia, Caroline, Charles City, Chesterfield, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, King and Queen, King William, Louisa, New Kent, Powhatan, Prince George and Sussex.
Along with the analysis of tax data, over 600 training camp attendees responded to an online questionnaire that The Center for Sport Leadership at VCU conducted.
About 25,000 visitors came from outside the city and on average spent roughly $350 each (or $7.8 million total).
Buz Grossberg of Buz and Ned's BBQ said business started out slow during the three weeks of Redskins training camp, but eventually picked up.
“We saw five percent increase in sales after the first nine days” Grossberg said.
Grossberg also said he thinks the out of town numbers could be better.
“It’s the people from out of town who are going to stay at the hotels and eat at the restaurants," he said.
The rest of the money came from the Redskins themselves, while they were out spending within the city. That means the team spent more than $2 million throughout their stay during training camp.
Training camp generated $2 million more than Richmond City Mayor Dwight C. Jones originally expected. In his pitch to bring training camp to Richmond, Mayor Jones predicted the camp to generate $8.5 million.
Richmond City Council President Charles Samuels called the numbers good news, but said he wanted to make sure the region defined in the report (The Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area) is the same region defined in the initial economic impact prediction report.
“We just need to make sure we're comparing apples to apples and that we're comparing the same size of the region when we said 8.5 is now 10.5,” he said.
Samuels said the additional revenue could be put to good use.
“Any project within the city could benefit from this kind of cash flow, but there's so many different projects, I can't just give you one specifically it would just be a huge benefit for,” Samuels said.
