Company with previous ties to Charlottesville hired to developer Parks and Rec master plan

The first few minutes of every regular meeting of the Charlottesville Planning Commission gives a lot of insight into what’s happening across the regional and within city government.

Chair Hosea Mitchell is also a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee and he reported that the city has awarded a contract to a firm to produce a master plan for the parks system. 

“And it’s been awarded to the organization that did the work for the county as well,” Mitchell said.

That company is Pros Consulting of Brownsburg, Indiana, according to the Notice of Award sent out on August 17, 2023. They completed a needs assessment for Albemarle County in 2018. (download that document)

Pros Consulting has a tie to Charlottesville in that the company’s principal was the city’s Parks and Recreation Director in the mid 2000’s. Mike Svetz appeared before the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in early 2018 to talk about the needs assessment in that locality according to an uncategorized story on Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

Tree planting mortality rate lower than expected

Commissioner Karim Habbab is a member of the Charlottesville Tree Commission and relayed information about how the city’s planting efforts are faring.

“An inventory of trees planted this spring was completed and we found about 12 percent mortality rate which is actually great given our expected 20 to 25 percent due to extreme weather conditions this year,” Habbab said. 

Habbab also noted that Parks and Recreation seeks input on where to plan 160 trees this November. Learn more about that in a previous story I wrote. 

“Lastly, Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards is installing over 20 trees at Rives Park,” Habbab said. 

Mitchell is also a member of the Land Use, Environmental, and Planning Committee, a closed-door group of staff from Albemarle, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia. He said he was not present at the most recent meeting of the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee, but he said he sent copies of the agenda and the presentations to the other members of the Planning Commission.

That group last met on July 21, 2023 and these are those presentations:

• An update on the Fontaine Research Park (download the presentation)
• An update on the Karsh Institute of Democracy (download the presentation)

Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular story comes from the September 14, 2023 edition of the program. It was updated with new information before being posted here. To ensure this work can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.