Lynchburg plans city eco-park

A boarded-up brick warehouse on Rutherford Street is a faint shadow of its industrial past — the roof sags, vines slink through broken windows and the air smells faintly of chemicals.

Starting in the early 1900s, the 16.9-acre site was home to the Thornhill Wagon Company, one of the largest manufacturers of farm wagons in the east. Later it became the Allen-Morrison Corporation, which produced the ubiquitous metal Coca-Cola signs that now populate antique stores and old-time diners.

When Allen-Morrison went out of business in 1996, the company abandoned a cluster of brick and metal buildings. In 2003, the city of Lynchburg acquired the property through eminent domain and developed a plan to transform the industrial wasteland into a cutting-edge “eco-park.”

“Our goal is that this park will model sustainability, and we want to use green building practices as much as we can as we design this park,” said Parks and Recreation Director Kay Frazier.

The project, referred to as “City Stadium Park,” was one of 16 chosen nationwide for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program. The program provides grant money for the redevelopment of property with hazardous environmental issues. The EPA grant, along with money from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, has funded the early stages of the site’s transformation.

For now, the dilapidated buildings remain an eyesore in the Fort Hill neighborhood, which is home to the future eco-park’s next-door neighbors, City Stadium and Lynchburg Grows, an urban farm that grows organic produce and provides outreach programs for people with disabilities, at-risk youth and others.

Soon that will change. The city has secured funding to deconstruct and demolish the buildings as soon as this summer.

The eco-friendly teardown will salvage materials that can be recycled or reused in city projects, such as metal, wood planks and bricks. The aim is to keep the materials out of the landfill, Frazier said.

This spring, the project received additional momentum when graduate students from the University of Virginia completed conceptual plans for the park for their urban and environmental planning class, taught by adjunct professor Karen Firehock.

The plan restores tree canopies and green space to an area that’s dominated by concrete and asphalt. It features a multipurpose athletic field, community center with an indoor gym, playgrounds, trails, picnic shelters and pedestrian access to Lynchburg Grows and City Stadium.

Sustainable design elements, such as green roofs and rain gardens, are central to the concept.

“They really took it to a new level of sustainable practices because they incorporated a lot of low-impact design strategies and were really trying to reduce the amount of runoff that would ultimately leave the site,” said Erin Hawkins, environmental reviewer for the city of Lynchburg.

The plans will serve as a “jumping off point” for the park’s final design, Frazier said, who emphasized that public input will be solicited before anything is finalized. She added that the park’s completion could be years down the road because of the project’s complexity and funding challenges, which have been heightened by the economic downturn.

“It will be at least several years, I think, before the city can entertain putting capital into that park,” Frazier said.

Still, the project has been far from stagnant.

Shortly after the site was abandoned, the Environmental Protection Agency cleaned up the site, removing barrels filled with chemicals like mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (substances known as PCBs that the EPA says may cause cancer).

When the city acquired the property, it worked with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to complete an environmental assessment to identify health and safety issues.

The upcoming deconstruction will constitute the most visible phase of the project to date.

Before it’s time to move forward with construction, city officials plan to work closely with neighboring Lynchburg Grows and the City Stadium, along with community members. Frazier said that the Fort Hill neighborhood is presently “underserved for recreational space and park space.”

Following nationwide trends, Hawkins hopes the park will serve as a model of sustainability in the community by showing that going green can be more than just a trendy buzzword.

“To see it installed, to see it in place, to see it working, that’s a completely different thing,” she said.