Monroe Park master plan to make park safe, inviting

A master plan for Monroe Park will be taken to
Richmond’s Urban Design Committee this month
for final review, revitalizing the park’s layout, said
Alice McGuire Massie, Monroe Park advisory council
president.

The vision, Massie said, aims to make the park a
safe place, inviting place.

“The goal is to make it a park for the majority of the
public,” Massie said. “To make the park appealing for
anybody at any time . so that it becomes the place
to be or a destination to go to.”

The master plan for Monroe Park, modeled after
Bryant Park in New York City, includes not only
aesthetical landscaping changes but projects that will
create an arena where people can gather for events. This
includes food vendors, a stage for live performances, a
carousel and a place for book sellers or farmers-market
vendors.

Massie said the plans will be executed according to
how much money is raised. Two projects are already
approved to begin early in 2008.

The Monroe Park Advisory Council is made up of
appointed volunteers who represent surrounding areas,
including Oregon Hill, Carver, the Fan, the Monument
Avenue area and VCU’s campuses.

The park hasn’t always been the most inviting place
for student pedestrians, said junior Amber Anglim.
“It’s not really a place that people would go to sit
and hang out,” Anglim said.

But, according to members of the Monroe Park
Advisory Council, this is going to change.

“Sometime late winter or early spring you will see
a lighting upgrade,” Massie said. “They will get better
and brighter light poles. . It will be more efficient in
how they put the light out.”

Massie said the park’s lights, which have not been
upgraded since the 1950s, will be doubled.

For many students, this lighting project is reassuring
for their personal safety.

Denise Limrick, a senior psychology major, said she
walks through Monroe Park to class and has noticed
the lighting isn’t sufficient.

“It’s dark at night and not very well lit,” Limrick
said, adding that the new lighting plan is excellent.
The second project is recreating the pathways to
raise them so the grass and the paths are at the same
level. Massie said the council sees this as a safety issue
for those walking through the park.

“We are going to (raise the level of the paths) .
with stone dust,” Massie said. “It is historically correct.

. We have tried to go for the best of everything, how
to be historical but how to be contemporary.”

For some students, the main issue of the park is
not the lighting or the paths but the many homeless
who congregate daily in the park.

Massie said the council is aware of the issue. The
main problem is the park is used as a feeding area for
the homeless, she said.

“Monroe Park has become a known amenity for a .
weekend feeding place,” Massie said, adding that some
people come from great distances, even from as far as
Charlottesville, to feed the homeless in the park.

Massie said the main goal is to actively work
to relocate the homeless by offering them a better
alternative. The Conrad Center, about two miles from
Monroe Park, which includes a kitchen, bathrooms, a
place for laundry and an on-site counselor and medical
help, is the alternative the council is trying to offer
the homeless.

“If you can give them a better place to be . then who
would not want to be somewhere better?” Massie said.

Jardena Richardson contributed to this article.

—

The Monroe Park master plan can be
viewed at fandistrict.org/monroe. Select
the link for the Oct. 18 presentation
or, to see the lighting plan, select
lighting options. Tell us your opinion at
commonwealthtimes.com.