For at least a decade, Suffolk has been closing in on Portsmouth in terms of population. Recent Census data show it’s finally caught up.
Suffolk grew by 2.3% between July 2021 and July 2022, reporting a population of 98,537, according to Census data. By contrast, Portsmouth’s population hit 97,029, which is down .6% over the same period.
The population changes makes Portsmouth the state’s 10th largest city, and moves Suffolk to the No. 8 spot.
Suffolk Mayor Michael “Mike” Duman said the milestone is no surprise as the city has been booming in recent years. The city’s population has surged by 48% over the last 20 years, according to Census data.
Big projects are on the horizon for the city, including the transformation of the former Elliott Hotel building into apartments. Others have already arrived, like the commonwealth’s first Amazon robotics-powered fulfillment center, for example.
“I think we’re in a very, very enviable position,” Duman said. “And it’s just incumbent on us to manage the demand. And I think we’re doing a relatively good job doing that.”
As a city with around 400 square miles of land to offer, Suffolk “kind of sells itself,” he said. Portsmouth and Suffolk also border each other in a way that allows residents to travel around the tolls.
“A lot of people work outside of Suffolk but they want to live somewhere where it’s not quite as congested,” Duman said.
By contrast, Portsmouth is much more densely populated with only about 30 square miles of land. And around 40% of that is nontaxable land.
Regional trends
Hamilton Lombard, who works for the demographics research group at University of Virginia, said Portsmouth has seen some decline over the last few years. But he said population growth across Hampton Roads in general has been lagging behind areas like Richmond and Northern Virginia, and also the southeastern region of the U.S.
Populations increased by double-digits in the 1980s in Hampton Roads (20%), the Richmond/Charlottesville metro region (14%) and Northern Virginia (34%), according to data Lombard provided The Virginian-Pilot. While the rate of growth remained high in the decades after in the Richmond/Charlottesville and Northern Virginia regions, growth began to slow for Hampton Roads to single-digit increases each decade. From 2010 to 2020, for example, Hampton Roads’ population grew by 5% while Richmond/Charlottesville grew by 11% and Northern Virginia grew by 14%.
“If Hampton Roads was growing at the rates the Richmond area was or definitely the way Raleigh was, Portsmouth would be certainly growing,” he said, referencing Raleigh, North Carolina, which grew 1.4% last year. “But the overall region is very sluggish growth.”
Some of the reasons behind the slower growth, Lombard said, could include cuts to U.S. defense spending over the years and a tunnel transportation system that some economic developers would see as holding the region back, making it harder to have a unified region and target market.
“It used to be up until the end of the Cold War that it really grew at similar rates to Richmond and Northern Virginia,” Lombard said. “But with the cuts in defense spending in the ’90s it’s never really caught back up. You had some of the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan spending, which helped it. Overall, it’s really underperformed those other two big metro areas.”
Suffolk’s growth is despite that regional trend, he added. In Hampton Roads, Chesapeake (.3%) and Hampton (.1%) are the only other two cities that saw population growth from 2021 to 2022, albeit at a much smaller rate than Suffolk’s one-year increase of 2.3%.
Lombard said the population change in Suffolk and Portsmouth seems to represent a trend seen nationwide where more renters are moving out of urban areas and into more suburban areas to purchase homes.
“You start seeing growth shifting out of cities, out of Portsmouth, out of Alexandria, out of D.C., out of New York City into more suburban areas,” he said, adding that the pandemic exacerbated that trend.
Combine that with the challenge in a city like Portsmouth, he said, which has some older housing stock that may not be as appealing for younger families. Suffolk and Chesapeake, meanwhile, have more space for new development.
Doug Smith, president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Alliance — a public-private partnership of local leaders working to attract industries to the region — said Portsmouth shares similar challenges with cities like Newport News and Norfolk that are already largely developed.
That’s why redevelopment has to be the answer, he said. He cited Portsmouth’s work to transform the Victory Crossing area of the city near the casino as an example.
Smith, a Portsmouth native who formerly worked for the city and served a term on the City Council, sees growth on the horizon for Portsmouth, noting that it has the ability to position itself as a world class maritime center unlike any other.
Lombard also said the post-pandemic era raises a lot of questions for how the economy and housing market will look in the near future, and remote work trends can lead to new population trends.
Portsmouth plans
Portsmouth Mayor Shannon Glover said while Suffolk has more land to offer developers, Portsmouth still sits in a good position as the “epicenter of workforce development” in a central location and the arrival of the offshore wind industry.
Glover said providing adequate housing, particularly for lower wage earners, is a challenge for many cities. But the city is making strides. More than 1,000 new single and multifamily homes are under construction in the city. And last year, Realtor.com ranked Portsmouth the best market for first-time homebuyers.
“We continue to encourage young people when they’re looking at Hampton Roads to give us a chance,” he said. “And you’ll find a quality of life for what you pay in the city of Portsmouth is comparable to any other city in Hampton Roads.”
Portsmouth’s population did increase by about 3,000 people from 2019 to 2020, but has declined since then.
Glover also previously said the city has seen $1.5 billion in new private capital investments over the last six years. That includes an estimated $340 million with the construction of Rivers Casino, which opened in January in the city’s new entertainment district, along with an $84 million Lineage Logistics cold storage warehouse.
Portsmouth is also working with $19 million in federal funding for its High Street Innovation Corridor project, which would create a district intended to attract innovative and creative companies and workers.
“We’re not Virginia Beach. We’re not the resort city,” Glover said. “We’re not Suffolk with so much land we don’t know what to do with. But what we are, we’re a historic port city and we have a lot of amenities.”
Glover also said city leaders are working together to bring more workforce development and skills training for students.
“We know we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “The biggest challenge that I see before us is us doing the things we need to do as leaders, making sure that we create the right image, the right environment, and also hold each other accountable for the success that we desire.”
Both Duman and Glover agree that working together regionally is critical to the success of their respective cities and all of Hampton Roads.
“I think regionalism is alive and well in Hampton Roads,” Duman said. “I believe everybody understands that what is beneficial to one of our Hampton Roads cities is going to benefit all of them, especially when it comes to economics, when it comes to addressing the increase in crime and violence. Crime doesn’t really have any borders.”
Glover said the success of the region and its cities are intertwined.
“(A) stronger Portsmouth is a stronger region,” he said.
Natalie Anderson, 757-732-1133, [email protected]
