Deciding what to do with a 75-acre park in the middle of Charlottesville is no easy task. Monday night’s planning meeting for the east side of McIntire Park, which runs from the railroad tracks to Schenk’s Branch, offered a glimpse at what’s at stake in the debate.
While the desires differed depending on the petitioners—golfers want the golf course to stay; bird watchers want their space; soccer players want more playing fields; and green space enthusiasts want little to no change—the lack of access to the park for bikers and pedestrians was a common refrain.
Len Schoppa, president of the board of the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation (ACCT), said that his group wants to see the park developed “in a way that brings into the park a large number of local residents pursuing a variety of uses."
“As a group that is committed to expanding the opportunities to traveling around our community by bike and on foot, what we see when we look at the current layout of the park is one big barrier,” he said.
For Chris Gensic, park and trail planner with the City of Charlottesville, improving access to the park is doable and is already in progress: A bridge over the railroad that will connect the west side of McIntire Park to the east side is in the design stage; the 250 Interchange and McIntire Road Extended—both part of the Meadow Creek Parkway—will be equipped with bike and pedestrian paths. The only section that has not yet been looked at but that will be part of the planning review process is a possible entrance off of Melbourne Road.
More after the photo.
Because one portion of the Meadow Creek Parkway is planned to cut through the park, opponents of the parkway cautioned the audience to dismiss the lawsuits they brought forth to halt its construction. [For background information about the parkway, click here].
John Cruickshank, who took the stage as a representative of the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club, said the park should be “preserved as a natural area.”
“If the McIntire Road Extended and the Interchange are not built for legal or political reasons, we would recommend that that planned road, McIntire Road Extended, be converted into a bikeway and a walkaway running from Melbourne Road to the Route 250 Bypass,” he said.
In the event that the road is constructed, Cruickshank said the group would still like to see a car-less environment by closing the road to traffic on Saturdays and Sundays, “and that way, the people can have their park back.”
When it came to the uses of the park, different organizations or clubs wanted different things… from athletic fields to a 9-hole golf course to a botanical garden. Bill Mueller, executive director of SOCA, a local soccer organization, pressed for the inclusion of playing fields in the final master plan for the park.
“There are not enough playing fields for all the soccer players,” he told C-VILLE.
According to Mueller, SOCA counts 3,600 youth and 600 adult players from both city and county. Because SOCA players use a limited number of fields in the area, those deteriorate at a faster rate and maintenance can’t keep up. Mueller said that a joint city/county study reports a “deficiency” of 11 playing fields with eight additional fields needed to support the demand.
“We can be flexible and work around other uses,” said Mueller and added that residents should think of McIntire Park as a multi-use space rather than for one exclusive purpose.
Gensic, who said last night’s meeting went “very well,” argued that because McIntire Park is a sizable piece of land, many of the uses discussed could be accommodated together.
The next master planning meeting will be held on December 12 at Charlottesville High School.
