Charlottesville City Council held the first of two readings on a new Parks and Recreation Master Plan on March 17 after a public hearing, but this story comes from the Planning Commission’s public hearing on March 11.
The city hired Pros Consulting to review the Department of Parks and Recreation and recommend items for the future.
“This is a comprehensive master plan,” said Director Riaan Anthony. “It is a guide. It’s a roadmap with community priorities in mind and foremost.
The project manager from Pros Consulting is Mike Svetz who was the city’s parks and recreation department in the late 2000’s when decisions were made about the future of McIntire Park as well as the city’s pool facilities. He said the document before the Planning Commission was intended for the city and not the rest of the region.
“It is a ten year planning horizon,” Svetz said. “It is based on City of Charlottesville resident need, unmet need and importance as it relates to experiences and opportunities desired.”
Svetz claimed that almost 2,500 people participated in the plan’s development through 33 different engagement opportunities. Increasing walkability is a key component of the draft plan with an emphasis on creating more shared use paths for both recreation and transportation.
“Shared use paths are accessible, paved or stone dust for lack of a better phrase,” Svetz said. “Trails that are intended to be utilized by different folks. People that walk, people that jog, people that ride bikes, people that skate, people that use scooters.”
The total cost of implementation for the plan is $78 million, but Svetz said city taxpayers would not shoulder all of the burden. He mentioned grants, but any time that word is used now it is important to point out that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is planning on review of all grants to eliminate funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
For instance, take a look at this article on Streets Blog that breaks down a memo that went out last week.
Back to planning.
Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg said he was glad to see the shared use paths in the plan but noted that they all seem to be concentrated in the city.
“I mean they’re all important links within the city and to parks,” Stolzenberg said. “But none of them touch the proposed Three Notch’d Trail which I’m sure you know, the county got a 2 million plus grant from the federal government to start planning up to the city limits.”
Stolzenberg wanted to know if the master plan anticipated that in anyway, as well as eventually planning to connect it to a pathway eastward to connect to the Virginia Capital Trail.
Charlottesville trail planner Chris Gensic said he involved with the creation of the Three Notched Trail as a concept and the answer is yes.
“Most of it coming into the city would be woollen mills, up the Coal Tower to the Downtown Mall, Gensic said.
He said from there the pathway would have to go on the street because the railroad continues to resist nearby pedestrian pathways for insurance reasons.
“You have to get out to Ivy Road and you’re basically using West Main University and Ivy with improvements on that side,” Gensic said.
Two people spoke during the public hearing. One of them was a county resident who had a lot of concerns about the plan.
“There’s places like Tonsler Park and they’re making recommendations where they’re saying instead of giving more space to pickleball and tennis, which are both medium priority things, instead they’re adding additional sports to the courts that are there,” said Jackie Temkin. “So they’re squeezing in an additional court that is supposed to happen. And you have more people competing for the same space.”
Temkin also questioned why there’s a suggestion for a cricket pitch in Tonsler Park given that survey research showed almost no demand for one. She also said not enough is in the master plan to correct what she described as gender inequalities in the city’s current offerings.
“There are very few if any other girls programs,” Temkin said. “I represent one program through the [United States Tennis Association] called Girls Rule the Court and it’s supposed to be a girl program. We have consistently had issues trying to reserve courts because there’s not enough.”
Anthony said the cricket pitch is intended to support a population of refugees from Afghanistan who now live in Greenstone on 5th which is within walking distance of Tonsler Park.
The second speaker was with the Piedmont Environmental Council who advocated for more places for people to walk.
Before you go: This story was originally published in the March 17, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. On that same day, Charlottesville City Council had a work session on the master plan as well as a public hearing. They’ll adopt the plan at their next meeting on April 7, 2025. Hopefully by then I’ll have written up the two meetings. There’s a lot going on and my hope is to boost the capacity of this organization to get to more of the details.
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