Kalahari opens in Spotsylvania on November 12 with 13 bars and restaurants and 1,400 people to hire
Virginia's largest single hospitality opening in a generation lands off I-95 in November 2026: 907 rooms, 13 food and beverage outlets, and a hiring target that will pull staff from Richmond to Fredericksburg.
On November 12, a 1.38-million-square-foot resort opens on 135 acres off Interstate 95 in Spotsylvania County, about 45 minutes north of Richmond and an hour south of Washington. Kalahari Resorts & Conventions is putting roughly $900 million into the property: 907 suites, a 175,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, 10 acres of outdoor pools, a 90,000-square-foot indoor amusement park, and 150,000 square feet of convention space.
Alongside the water slides sit the food and beverage, staffing and convention numbers.
Thirteen food and beverage outlets, opening at once
Kalahari’s own fact sheet lists 13 food and beverage venues at Spotsylvania. Four are full-service signature restaurants: Double Cut Steak House, Sortino’s Italian Kitchen, Cinco Niños, and B-Lux Grill & Bar. Behind those sit Redd’s Piano Bar & Lounge, Baobab Social, the Grotto Swim-Up Bar, Cracked Coconut Bar, Café Mirage, Marrakesh Market, MACS Macaroni and Cheese Shop, The Last Bite, and a Starbucks.
That is more licensed food and beverage capacity than most Virginia downtowns add in a decade, arriving on a single day in a county of about 150,000 people.
The staffing number is the story
Kalahari is targeting about 1,400 employees. Going into its first mass hiring event in June, roughly 1,200 of those roles were still open. The senior team is largely in place, and the hires are telling: the food and beverage director had spent 20 years commuting to Washington, and the security director had been driving to the Pentagon. General manager Brian Shanle has said the property has been pulling regional talent back from the D.C. commute.
For operators, that is the competitive fact. A single employer is absorbing roughly 1,400 hospitality workers out of a labor shed that runs from Richmond through Caroline and Spotsylvania up into Stafford. Kalahari is running hiring events in Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, and Caroline through the fall.
A new convention market
The project includes 150,000 square feet of indoor event space, plus 50,000 outdoor, two ballrooms at 30,000 and 19,000 square feet, and 16 meeting rooms.
Kalahari projects 80,000 group room nights in year one, growing toward 140,000. Virginia’s existing large-group inventory is concentrated in Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, and the Washington suburbs. A block of that size on I-95 halfway between Richmond and Washington is a genuinely new competitive position, and it will pull state association meetings, regional trade shows, and corporate groups that currently go to National Harbor or out of state.
The money behind it
Spotsylvania County approved a performance agreement with Kalahari in 2022 that routes future sales tax revenue at the site toward the developer’s debt through Virginia’s Tourism Development Financing Program. The county says Kalahari is responsible for repaying all loans and that Spotsylvania carries no liability in a default.
The county projects roughly $6.8 million in tax revenue in its first year, and nearly $7 million a year in excess of the incentives once the property is running. County officials have said Kalahari receives no real estate tax rebate.
Whether those projections hold will not be clear until 2027. The Tourism Development Financing Program is the state’s main tool for this kind of project, and Kalahari will be its largest test.
The opening
Kalahari opened bookings on January 12 and announced the November 12 opening date in April. Rooms start around $415 a night for two adults and two children, with waterpark access included. Its hiring ramp runs hardest through September and October.
