With 400 years of history and a front-row seat in the nation’s evolution, the Central Virginia region has a legacy like no other. Six of Virginia’s eight U.S. presidents were born amid the rolling Piedmont region between the Chesapeake and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Old Dominion State continues to build on its 40-year-old slogan, "Virginia is for Lovers." Virginia Tourism Corp.’s new marketing campaign carries the tagline, "Live Passionately."
In March 1809, one Virginian returned to his passion. After two terms as president, Thomas Jefferson was back at Monticello, his Charlottesville mountaintop plantation. With a new $43 million visitor and education complex, 200 years later Monticello continues to make history. The facility has opened up to meetings and events for the first time and is also developing a corporate retreat.
Bicentennial events have also been under way in another Piedmont city: Lynchburg. In November 1809, Jefferson paid his first visit to his new retreat built there in his neo-classical design: Poplar Forest, now restored.
Richmond, the state capital and the region’s largest city, also has much to celebrate. New meetings-equipped properties continue to open, packing metro centers along interstates 64 and 95. But its headliner is a transformed East Broad Street Corridor, its downtown convention hub.
Richmond
As summer wound down, projects planned years ago came together, thrusting the one-time Confederate capital on the James River more squarely onto the national convention stage.
"We’ve undergone huge changes. We’ve got the history of the country here: a capitol designed by Jefferson; a canal developed by Washington. Now we also have the facilities—a great package," says Cleo Battle, vice president, sales and services at the Richmond Metropolitan CVB (RMCVB).
Covering more than five city blocks, the 700,000-square-foot Greater Richmond Convention Center, which can take gatherings of 15,000, is across from the Richmond Coliseum, home to concerts and minor-league hockey.
Connected by skywalk, the 410-room Richmond Marriott celebrated the completion of a yearlong, $14 million renovation in August. Across the street, the new 252-room Hilton Garden Inn Richmond Downtown opened in February with 6,000 square feet of meeting space in the remodeled and expanded former Miller & Rhoads department store.
A block away, the $73.5 million Richmond CenterStage performing arts center held a September grand unveiling. Incorporating the former Thalhimers department store, it features the restored, 1,800-seat Carpenter Theatre, two new performance venues with 150 and 200 seats, a visual arts gallery and an education facility. Across from it, the National, a 1,500-seat historic music hall, reopened in February 2008 after a restoration.
"There is so much energy downtown. We have new unique spaces at CenterStage and the National, and we can now commit 500 rooms adjacent to the convention center," Battle says. "We generated more leads in the first half of this year than we did for the whole of last year."
According to Michael Meyers, convention center general manager, the center finished the fiscal year ended June 30 with a record 341,000 attendees.
"Our numbers are holding up well," he says. "In summer we added an executive boardroom and upgraded to provide clients with the industry’s highest levels of dedicated bandwidth."
Within a 10-block radius are 1,800 guest rooms in 10 properties, including The Jefferson Hotel, with Mobil Five Star and AAA Five Diamond awards, 262 guest rooms and over 26,000 square feet of function space.
Delegates on foot can take in such attractions as John Marshall House, the Richmond History Center, and the Museum and White House of the Confederacy. Or they can walk through the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol, which completed a $73 million facelift in 2007, then head down to the restaurant-packed riverfront, the Canal Walk and farther along, the American Civil War Center in the old Tredegar foundry. New Segway tours cover these sites.
Renovated last year and featuring new exhibits, downtown’s Edgar Allen Poe Museum is the focus of special bicentennial events held this year for the author’s 1809 birth.
Neighborhoods include the museum district, where the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is planning a May 2010 grand opening of a 165,000-square-foot expansion to its existing 380,000 square feet, including new space holding up to 500 for functions. Main galleries are currently closed, but meeting and event space are operating.
In February, the RMCVB opened a visitor center at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, which debuted last October off Interstate 95 in Ashland. Also with event space is the New Kent Winery, which opened off Interstate 64 in May 2008 in New Kent.
The region welcomed nine new hotels last year, adding more than 1,000 rooms and bringing the total to 17,000-plus, with another 1,300 under construction.
The Westin Richmond opened in January with 250 rooms and more than 10,000 square feet of meeting space off Interstate 64 eight miles west of downtown.
Seven miles farther west off Interstate 64 is Short Pump, a 1.3 million-square-foot upscale mall. The area recently welcomed three hotels with meeting space: a Wingate Inn, the Hotel Sierra Richmond West and the Aloft Richmond West. Opening in December, the Hilton Richmond Conference Center & Spa/Short Pump will boast a 10,800-square-foot ballroom.
In the Richmond International Airport area, new properties include a Hampton Inn, a Hilton Garden Inn and a Holiday Inn.
Charlottesville
Amid the Blue Ridge foothills northwest of Richmond, Charlottesville is home to the University of Virginia (UVA) and Jefferson’s Monticello, which in April unveiled its new 42,000-square-foot, LEED Gold-certified Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center and Smith Education Center.
Ash Lawn-Highland, James Monroe’s Virginia plantation and Michie Tavern, circa 1784, are close to Monticello. Downtown’s Court Square and The Lawn and Rotunda, the Jefferson-designed core of UVA, round out the prominent historic sights. James Madison’s Montpelier is 45 minutes north in Orange.
"Jefferson’s influence is very much visible today. We have a tremendous number of off-site venues, including wineries, and it is very exciting that Monticello is open for special events," says Allie Baer, interim director of sales and marketing, and marketing manager at the Charlottesville Albemarle CVB.
"We’ve had a change of policy. We’ve opened up for site rentals, and we’ve had lots of interest," says Natasha Sienitsky, associate director of planning and facilities for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, whose department was formed in summer.
Located on the mountain’s lower slopes, the new center comprises five pavilions around a central courtyard with welcome, exhibition and retail areas; a theater; a cafe; and an education center. According to Sienitsky, available venues include not only those in the new facility, but also existing ones such as the Jefferson Library and gardens at the mountaintop home.
The foundation also has renovations under way on a 1905 mansion on Montalto, an adjacent mountain, which was part of Jefferson’s original estate, slated for a summer 2010 completion.
"It will be a high-end retreat for corporate, government and educational conferences like Camp David, and it will have guest rooms in a second phase," Sienitsky says.
Charlottesville has the 235-room Doubletree Hotel Charlottesville, with 16,000 square feet of meeting space, and the 208-room Omni Charlottesville, with 12,000 square feet of meeting space.
Minutes west is the university’s 170-room Boar’s Head Inn, featuring a golf club. Last November, it unveiled a new $10 million pavilion with 9,000 square feet of function space, bringing its total meeting space to 22,000 square feet. To the east is Orient Express Hotels’ 48-room Keswick Hall, with golf and 7,000 square feet of meeting space.
The city’s heart and visitor magnet is the Downtown Mall, its old Main Street made into a pedestrian mall in the 1970s, now entirely Wi-Fi accessible and rededicated in May following a $7.3 million restoration that included new bricks and lighting.
Anchored at one end by the Omni and at the other by the Charlottesville Pavilion, an outdoor venue for live performances, the 10-block area offers more than 120 shops and 30 restaurants (a third catering to groups), plus the 1,000-seat, restored Paramount Theater, which has event space.
UVA’s facilities include the 3-year-old, 16,000-seat John Paul Jones Arena, featuring basketball and concerts.
Of almost 140 Virginia wineries, 21 in and around Charlottesville make up the Monticello Wine Trail, and several have event facilities.
The area also boasts the new Brew Ridge Trail. There is South Street Brewery off the Mall, and entering the market in the last two years, Starr Hill Brewery’s free weekend tours and tastings, and the new Blue Mountain Brewery and Devils Backbone Brewery, both with restaurants.
Southwest of Charlottesville in the Blue Ridge, the 11,000-acre, four-season Wintergreen Resort delivers 300 condo units, skiing, 45 holes of golf, 40,000 square feet of meeting and event space, and for retreats, luxury homes with up to nine bedrooms.
Lynchburg
Lynchburg, located on the James River 70 miles southwest of Charlottesville, is also in the Blue Ridge foothills.
The "City of Seven Hills" is home to five colleges and universities, more than 2,000 hotel rooms and downtown’s James River Conference Center, with 15,000 square feet of rentable space.
Downtown is also home to the 2-year-old, 44-room Craddock Terry Hotel and Event Center, with 4,000 square feet of meeting space, and the 241-room Holiday Inn Select Lynchburg, with 12,000 square feet of function space.
Its newest hotels, both in the Liberty University/Lynchburg Regional Airport area, are a 126-room Hilton Garden Inn, with 2,880 square feet of meeting space, and a 106-room SpringHill Suites, which opened in April. Also near the university is the 168-room Kirkley Hotel & Conference Center, with 10,000 square feet of meeting space.
Among other area properties is Mariner’s Landing Resort & Conference Center at Smith Mountain Lake, with 7,500 square feet of function space.
"We have a great central location, lots to do and exciting things happening," says Courtney Hunter, group sales manager at the Lynchburg Regional CVB. "We get lots of religious groups, state organizations and some government business—a good mix."
Amtrak’s long-awaited daily Lynchburg-Washington, D.C., service, which stops in Charlottesville, debuted in October. Lynchburg and Charlottesville are also stops on its daily New York-New Orleans Crescent run.
Grand opening celebrations were held Aug. 29 for Liberty University’s year-round Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre, an artificial (snowless) ski destination on its 5,000-acre mountain. It includes a 500-foot slope with intermediate and advanced runs for skiing and snowboarding, facilities for beginners and tubing, and a lodge, and it can handle groups.
Major attractions, Hunter notes, are close by. Poplar Forest and the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford are 15 minutes from downtown. Appomattox Courthouse National Historic Park, where Lee surrendered to Grant, is 30 minutes away. Additionally, the Bedford Wine Trail features five wineries.
After retiring from public life, Jefferson stayed at his new plantation retreat, Poplar Forest, for the first time in November 1809. Jefferson’s last visit was in 1823, when he was 80 years old.
With special events under way in the bicentennial year, visitors touring the facility this year can see the fully restored exterior and interior of the octagonal home and office wing for the first time following years of renovation.
Danville
Once a hub of tobacco and textile industries, and the "Last Capital of the Confederacy," a rejuvenating Danville on the Dan River across from North Carolina has been climbing out of its past while preserving it.
"Our warehouses are being renovated as lofts and apartments," says Heather Vipperman, the city’s assistant director of tourism. "We have a small-town feel. It is easy to get around, and we have something for everyone. We get associations and lots of sports groups."
Danville’s meetings claim-to-fame is the high-tech Institute Conference Center at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, which has 20,000 square feet of meeting space, including the 8,400-square-foot Great Hall, a 135-seat auditorium, an atrium holding 30 exhibitors and computer classrooms.
Downtown features the Crossing at the Dan, a community focal point and former railroad yard that includes a farmers market, a pavilion that can accommodate 1,000 for events, meeting rooms and a train station for Amtrak’s daily Crescent service, with a portion containing part of the Danville Science Center complex.
In addition to the Science Center, the city has two other standout museums: Danville Museum of Fine Arts and the AAF Tank Museum, billed as the world’s largest international tank and cavalry museum. All three offer facility rentals.
The fine arts museum is in a mansion that for a week in April 1865 housed an escaping Jeff Davis and his cabinet, one of many stops today in a self-guided Civil War site tour. Millionaire’s Row, with the mansions of textile and tobacco barons, provides another historic district to tour.
For car racing fans, South Boston Speedway and Martinsville Speedway, each with two annual NASCAR races that sell out the area’s 1,000 hotel rooms, are both 30 minutes away, and within 20 minutes is the Virginia International Speedway.
