Richmond’s multi-year journey towards a comprehensive campus in Shockoe Bottom memorializing the city’s role in the slave trade continues to take steps forward.

On Monday night, the city’s Planning Commission signed off on the designs of two projects attached to the larger Shockoe Project initiative, one to memorialize those buried at and near the site, and the other a refurbishment of Reconciliation Plaza, which opened at 15th and Main almost two decades ago.

Right now the overall project has about $58 million in funding, with the goal of $265 million by 2037, the city’s 300th birthday.

“With each step, we move closer to creating spaces that acknowledge the full truth of Richmond’s history and invite meaningful reflection,” said Leo Mantey, who is running the project on the city’s behalf. “These actions mark an important milestone in that journey.”

The larger of the two developments is the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground Memorial, a space for reflection adjacent to what is believed to be the site of Richmond’s first cemetery for the enslaved.

The project will ultimately include a pedestrian bridge over Broad Street, which will allow for access from the Shockoe Institute, located inside Main Street Station, and connect it with a National Slavery Museum, which remains in the planning and fundraising stage.

The Shockoe Institute is not a museum, but an educational space for events and other academic work, with a permanent exhibit space scheduled to open next April. The group is already putting on a series of events, including one on Nov. 20.

The centerpiece of the memorial project is a large stone monument to those interred in the Burial Ground, with carvings illustrating “their legacies of resistance, strength, and resilience.”

The other project the commission signed off on Monday night was a renovation of Reconciliation Plaza, at the corner of 15th and Main Street.

The plaza opened in 2007 in conjunction with identical sites in Liverpool, England and Cotonou, Benin to recognize the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The refurbishment is expected to cost about $2.1 million and would include improvements to the lightning and landscaping, as well as replacing the rotting wood on the current benches, among other improvements.

The city’s vision for the Shockoe Project is to create “a vital cultural platform reminiscent of the Smithsonian” around the known previously as the “Devil’s half acre” for its role in the transatlantic slave trade.

The initial vision calls for a campus stretching from the Shockoe Institute at Main Street Station to the National Slavery Museum, adjacent to Interstate 95.  Reconciliation Plaza would serve as a gateway to the area.

The plans approved by the Planning Committee on Tuesday will now move to City Council, which is expected to give its approval.

Contact Michael Phillips at mphillips@richmonder.org.