City Council approves three acquisitions for parkland and trails including a pocket park for the Meadows

Charlottesville’s elected body took three actions on August 5 to increase the amount of parkland within the city including a pocket park in the Meadows neighborhood. 

“One of my goals when I was hired was to make sure we had geographic equity in our park systems and it occurred to us and actually Locust Grove technically did not have parks,” said Chris Gensic, the city’s trails planner. 

Gensic said there weren’t many lots to pick from in the neighborhood but a 0.22 acre property on Cedar Hill Drive owned by Weber Property Management was identified and available for a purchase price of $100,000 and the source would be the capital improvement program. 

“It’s an empty grassy lot and what we would do with the acquisition is put it in the community’s hands with the purchase, go back to the neighborhood and say, what would you like to see?” Gensic said. “The intention is a pocket park. Do you want a playground or not? Some benches? Some trees? What kind of things do you want?” 

Another acquisition will be a triangular piece of privately-owned land consisting of 0.542 acres to the south of three single family homes on Grove Road at the western end of the city’s centrally-located park.

“The triangle land was not acquired when McIntire Park was created but it is a piece of land that we are looking to purchase to complete the 250 Bypass trail system,” said Chris Gensic, the city’s trails planner.

The city will use $50,000 in grant funds from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation as well as $5,000 in city funds. The VOF gets their money from a $3 fee that comes from most deeds recorded in the state. This purchase will also trigger the fee to be levied in the city because the land and five acres of McIntire Park will be put under an open space easement. 

The third acquisition approved by City Council is a $10,000 purchase of an acre that straddles Albemarle and Charlottesville. The seller is Rialto Beach LLC, the developer of a nearby planned unit development. Gensic said this will help the city eventually complete a greenbelt trail around the city’s borders. 

“The current owner is still the developer and has offered to sell the piece of open space,” Gensic said. “We’re not buying any stormwater facilities. We’re only buying the creekside land and so this one is a $10,000 purchase which is a pretty standard price for pieces along the greenbelt in a floodplain that are not buildable.” 

Gensic said he has been in discussions with Albemarle County about the purchase and there are no objections.

“It will allow us to build an [Americans with Disabilities Act] shared-use path that will connect Belmont Park to the north of this heading west over to Jordan Park where we also just built a nice new bridge heading west toward Food Lion and those places,” Gensic said. 

The funding for this project is also the capital improvement program. 

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 installment is from the August 9, 2024 edition of the newsletter. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.