HENRICO COUNTY, Va. – As talk about a new baseball stadium for the Diamond Districtgrabs headlines, Henrico County is moving forward with the first of their two sports entertainment properties.
The Sports and Events Center, which is on the site of the former Virginia Center Commons mall, is an 185,000-square-foot facility that will have the capacity to host 12 basketball or 24 volleyball courts for all kinds of events and tournaments.
One side of the center will also convert into a 4,000-seat arena complete with a state-of-the-art scoreboard that was not part of the original plans for the project.
The building already has 42 weekends booked for 2024, cementing an economic impact for Henrico County that had been unrealized up until now.
“It was estimated in some studies that were done before construction of this building, that without an indoor facility like this, we were leaving about $30 or $35 million on the table because we didn’t have a facility like this,” Henrico Sports Authority Executive Director Dennis Bickmeier said. “But now the popularity is there.”
The center is on track to open later this fall, according to Bickmeier.
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