ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997 TAG: 9703100090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Problems in the parks a special report
SOURCE: DAN CASEY THE ROANOKE TIMES
Is a park a park when it's a brush dump? Does park acreage given over to schools count as park land? In the city's inventory, the answer to both questions is yes.
The 1996 Virginia Outdoors Plan suggests that a locality have 10 acres of park land for every 1,000 people.
On the surface, Roanoke - with one acre of park overall for every 678 people - more than meets this yardstick. But a closer look calls that number into question.
For example, the city's inventory of 67 parks within its boundaries counts Shrine Hill Park on Grandin Road as 100 acres, the largest in the Southwest quadrant. But the park property contains Patrick Henry High School, Raleigh Court Elementary School, a city branch library and the Governor's School.
What's left looks like about 10 acres with three well-maintained tennis courts, a patch of woods and a small gravel parking lot. There is also a running track behind Patrick Henry and a locked baseball diamond.
Shrine Hill is not the only park that counts school property as park land, said Lynn Vernon, the city's park planner. Similar questions can be raised about some other parks.
Memorial Bridge Park is listed as one of five "Roanoke River" Parks. But the secluded 4.5-acre lot around Memorial Bridge is an overgrown brush dump littered with tree stumps and branches. At its entrance is a locked gate and a sign inviting people to pick up free mulch and firewood.
Valley Avenue Park, at 10th and Hamilton streets in Southwest, consists of a 3.1-acre grassy hillside.
Woodlawn Park, listed at 6 acres, is an inaccessible, thickly wooded gully behind Shenandoah Life on Brambleton Avenue Southwest. Once considered a "bird sanctuary," it doesn't have a sign. Neither does Yellow Mountain Park, 84 acres of woods off Yellow Mountain Road across from Valley Pike Road in Southeast.
"It's open space," Vernon said.
The city has added a few parks since 1981: two in Northeast along Tinker Creek that total 14 acres; and Horton Park in Northwest, a 4.2-acre playground on Salem Turnpike that was paid for by the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
But in the late 1980s, City Council gave away an undeveloped 17-acre tract next to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Northwest Roanoke.
A 1981 citizens advisory committee report on parks had recommended $373,000 worth of improvements for the land, once known as Veterans Park. It took an act of Congress for the city to give the land away, because the federal government had donated it to Roanoke with a deed restriction requiring that the land be used for recreation. It is now the site of a state-owned nursing home for veterans.
In 1995, City Council gave away another undeveloped parcel - Spotswood Park - so Habitat for Humanity could erect homes there.
Jim Crawford, whose backyard abuts the former park, protested the giveaway, although he's sensitive to the need for affordable housing that Habitat provides.
"I don't have any problem with who my neighbors are," Crawford said. "It's just that it was city park property and should remain so. The issue in some ways is quality of life for everybody. Just having a green space is beneficial to the neighborhood in general. You don't want to just cram a neighborhood full of houses, taking up parks and other vacant area."
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