The Scott's Addition Summer Where The Ballpark Finally Changed The Walk Home

For a decade, the center of Scott's Addition was a beverage grid. Roseneath, Summit, West Leigh. You walked west from your apartment, hit a taproom, cut over to a food truck line, walked home. The neighborhood was built around the pull of the breweries and the industrial blocks that held them.

This summer, that pull reversed. The gravity now runs east toward Arthur Ashe Boulevard, and the week reorders itself around a stadium schedule that did not exist a year ago.

The Anchor That Actually Moved

The Flying Squirrels' 2026 home opener at the new CarMax Park drew nearly 10,000 people on April 7, a 3–2 win over the Altoona Curve. The sold-out crowd was 9,585. CarMax Park cost around $130 million and is one of the priciest minor league stadiums ever built. It replaces The Diamond after 40 years of baseball on Arthur Ashe.

Those numbers matter less than what they do to a Tuesday. The Squirrels play most weeknights at home during their homestands, and the team had the highest total and average attendance of all 30 Double-A teams for the fourth consecutive year in 2025. That attendance now empties, six innings at a time, onto the same sidewalks that used to run one direction on a summer evening.

What The First Season Actually Reordered

The best way to see the shift is to map the week against what is now walkable within fifteen minutes of the centerfield gates.

The table is not a directory. It is a scheduling tool. If you live inside the historic district, the useful question this summer is no longer "what's open," it is "which anchor am I leaning into on which night, and how do I miss the postgame crush without missing the game."

The Ring Of Openings That Landed In Time

The restaurants did not arrive by accident. Several opened within the twelve months leading up to first pitch, and they read as a ring around the ballpark rather than a random spray.

The owners of Yellow Umbrella Provisions completed Ballast, a reimagining of the old Blue Bee Cider space in Scott's Addition that brought together a second Yellow Umbrella market, new restaurant Slack Tide Fish Co., and a Cirrus Vodka tasting room. That is three concepts in one building, on a block that used to give you cider and a parking lot. Scott's Addition also gained The Brooklyn in November 2025, a cozy spot with an extensive wine and cocktail menu that's angling to be a date-night default.

A new cafe, Daisy's at Tredegar, opened near the new amphitheater thanks to chefs Matt Kirwan and Rawleigh Easley, giving the eastern edge of the neighborhood a daytime option that did not exist last summer. Still on deck: Pizzeria Delores, a Sicilian-style pop-up that's going brick-and-mortar in Scott's Addition, from Max Sayer and Jacky Welch.

None of this is a coincidence. Operators watched the stadium calendar the same way residents did.

The Event Most Locals Are Actually Circling

If you only put one date on the calendar for the rest of the season, Brews, Booze & BBQ: Backyard Block Party lands on Saturday, August 8, rain or shine, taking over Parlay, the Parlay parking lot, and Strangeways Brewing. It is the kind of thing that used to feel like a novelty in Scott's Addition and now feels like a fixture.

The Veil's own summer signature has already run this year, but it is worth understanding the pattern. Forever Summer Fest, held at Main Street Station, brings together more than 60 breweries, cideries, wineries, distilleries, and non-alcoholic producers from across the country and around the world, from barrel-aged stouts and rare lagers to mixed-culture ales, spontaneous fermentation, cider, wine, spirits, and non-alcoholic offerings. Neighborhood-scale festivals now expect to draw destination crowds, which changes what a Saturday feels like at street level.

Construction You Are Walking Past

The reason the walk home feels different is not only the ballpark. It is what is going up beside it.

Diamond District Partners is scheduled to break ground on an apartment building that's the first of four new structures that will rise beside the ballpark and make up the initial 18-acre phase of the mixed-use development that's planned to ultimately span 67 acres. Eat Restaurant Partners, the local company behind Boulevard Burger & Brew and Fat Dragon, has signed on to open a sports bar and grill in a retail building planned beside CarMax Park's main centerfield entrance.

Then there is the hotel. A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the 12-story, dual-brand hotel that Shamin Hotels is developing at 921 Myers Street, a 1.3-acre parcel that for decades housed a Hardee's off Arthur Ashe Boulevard just north of Broad Street; Shamin CEO Neil Amin put the project cost at more than $100 million and called the hotel a missing piece in Scott's Addition's development pie. Two-year build. That means most of the next two summers include a 12-story crane on the corner you use to get to a Squirrels game.

South of that, on the old Greyhound Bus Station site, Walker & Dunlop arranged a $132 million redevelopment that will deliver 386 Class A residences and over 14,000 square feet of retail, with construction set to commence in the second quarter of 2026.

And behind the scoreboard, the public park is on its own timeline. The project will add over 2.2 acres of green space and include a lawn for concerts, a playground, and a walkway honoring Richmond tennis legend Arthur Ashe. A sculpture by local muralist Mickael Broth was chosen from 15 artist submissions nationwide, and Broth will work with the development team and Richmonders on the final design.

"We've learned that if you don't plan properly for the growth that a neighborhood like ours can see for things like pedestrian and bike infrastructure, it quickly comes into conflict with other community needs like parking."

That quote is from Jeremy Hoffman, president of the Greater Scott's Addition Association, who said the group shared input with design teams and pushed for more green space and road infrastructure. It is the sentence that best explains why the sidewalks near the stadium are being widened and lined with trees while the rest of the grid still feels industrial.

A Working Way To Use The Rest Of The Summer

If you already live here, the practical move is to stop treating a game night and a taproom night as different categories. They are the same night now. A weeknight homestand pulls the crowd east from the breweries around 6:30, then flushes back around 10 for a nightcap. Off-nights are quieter than they were a year ago because the postgame regulars have set new habits.

A few things worth doing before Labor Day.

• Walk the Ballast building at least once, even if you only sit at the Yellow Umbrella counter. It is the clearest picture of where the neighborhood is going as a food block, not a beverage block.
• Pick one Tuesday to try Magic at The Veil. It is the kind of low-stakes, weeknight anchor that will still be here in five years, whether or not the surrounding blocks look the same.
• Put August 8 on the calendar for the Backyard Block Party at Parlay and Strangeways.
• Walk the perimeter of CarMax Park once during the day, without a ticket, to see where the future retail, hotel, and 274-unit multifamily project called The Doma are being staged. It changes how you read every "coming soon" sign in the neighborhood.

The reason to do any of this is not to catch a trend. It is that the character of a place gets locked in during the first summer of a new anchor. What Scott's Addition feels like in August of 2026 is what people will describe when they talk about the neighborhood two years from now.

If you own here and you are wondering what all of this construction means for your home's story when you eventually sell, or if you are watching the ring of openings and quietly deciding whether this is the neighborhood you want to buy into, Iris Hernandez is happy to walk the blocks with you and talk through what the shift actually looks like at the transaction level. Let's Connect.