Originally published in the Winter/Spring 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 76, printed March 26. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Ana Edwards

$33 million has been committed from the city of Richmond and the state of Virginia for the launch of the Shockoe Project, the working title for the 10-acre memorial park to be constructed on the site of what once was the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade.

An initial design concept, with a total projected cost of $256 million, was announced at the beginning of the project in February 2024 under the design and planning leadership of Burt Pinnock, a Richmond African-American architect and chairman of the board of Baskervill, the architecture and design firm leading and coordinating the project. (For an artist’s rendition of the memorial park, see this link.)

One significant challenge facing the design team is addressing what can be built in or near “floodplains” (some construction) and what cannot be built within “floodways” (nothing that could cause the water level to rise at all, not even a tree.)

Whether it is landscape, a pavilion, memorials, retail space, a museum, public art or walkways, “every step of the way, the floodplain work must be included,” said Pinnock.

A year after the initial announcement, the Shockoe Project designers have refined the plans to the point where the original cost estimate is actually expected to come down, at least for the phases being realized for the next two to three years.

The South (of Broad Street) Memorial (honoring the more than 350,000 people sold from Virginia) and the North Memorial (for the 1799 African Burial Ground), originally projected to cost $13 million, may now cost no more than $10 million for the two memorials. The $17 million projected for the Lumpkin’s Jail/Devil’s Half Acre archaeology pavilion may come down to a projected $10 million.

There is no federal funding involved in the project, and given the government funding cuts now taking place at every level, we probably should not expect any additional monies from the state or city. For now.