The Richmond Civic League was established in 2019 originally in opposition to the planned boondoggle called Navy Hill. It was a $1.5B downtown project which principally would have benefited its mega investors, Tom Farrell of Dominion Power, Bill Goodwin of hotel fame, C. T. Hill formerly of Suntrust, and Marty Barrington of Altria.
 

That ill-fated project was promoted by Levar Stoney and his inadequately trained CAO, Lincoln Saunders. These foolish men, partly or completely untrained in finance, schemed to have the entire deal financed by pledging real estate tax and business tax revenues from 80 blocks in downtown Richmond.

The effect of that reckless financing, if approved, would have been devastating to Richmond’s general fund budget, caused by all those taxpayer funds being subverted essentially for the private investment of the mega wealthy gentlemen named above.

Fortunately with Richmond Civic League’s 700 followers on Facebook at the time, in addition to the citizen group, ‘Richmond For All,’ we were able to have the project killed, averting a near certain financial disaster for Richmond.

Richmond Civic League hired a New Hampshire based professional polling firm in December 2019 to measure public sentiment regarding Navy Hill. A resounding 82% of citizens opposed the project. We shared the poll results with various city council members, and in early January, against Stoney’s pleadings, the project was defeated. It was great news, because in this very important case, the will of the people prevailed.

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