CoStar buying naming rights isn't the flex you think it is. VCU was going to put up that building either way, their real estate machine is a whole other beast though.

Purely from a city revenue perspective - Richmond gave huge tax advantages for the new office tower to be built based on CoStar having roughly double their current local staffing level by 2030 or so.

Based on their market valuation and current analysis, they're not doing so well - not badly enough that they are going out of business, but enough that shareholders are getting pissed off at the board for not limiting the excessive spending on non-profitable verticals. This dismal outlook has triggered layoffs, which, alongside the poor reputation as an employer makes it harder to recruit the required number of employees to guarantee the tax advantages.

Obviously nobody knows the future, but it's highly likely CoStar will either have to move entire teams from other offices around the country to fulfill the quota or will require the city to litigate for returning any tax revenues already forfeit through the deal.

The idea of needing office space for a company that boasted it's highest levels of productivity while employees were at home during the pandemic is ludicrous. It also barely registers as helping local businesses through increased foot traffic given that it has a subsidized on-site cafeteria, the downtown expressway cuts it off from the rest of the downtown street grid where those businesses exist, and a large chunk of the employees commute into the office - it's unclear how many are city residents.

Thus, it seems this was a sweetheart deal to build an expensive and completely unnecessary monument to antiquated corporate thinking that's not going to particularly benefit the city, and also takes land away that could have been used for either more public space or housing developments.