Oregon Hill neighbor had the Letter of the Day in the Times Dispatch this morning:

Renovate Monroe Park carefully

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

Monroe Park is Richmond’s first and most historic municipal park. Once the site of an agricultural fairground, the city’s first baseball games and concerts by Bruce Springsteen and Jerry Lee Lewis, the city’s upcoming $6.2 million historically sensitive renovation is cause for jubilation as the park has fallen into deep disrepair.

As we improve the physical aspects of Monroe Park, let’s not forget its essence which should also be preserved and celebrated. As a forum for free speech over the years, the grounds have echoed with voices supporting civil rights, reasonable gun control, anti-war sentiment and other just causes.

Its beautiful old-growth trees have shaded generations of Richmonders and deserve protection, care and augmentation to re-establish the lush greenery of its historic era circa 1900. A conservation easement such as the one placed on James River Park is strongly advised to define that protection.

The park also needs a zero impact policy with enforcement regarding bringing large amounts of trash in for feedings, etc. Too often groups come in and leave huge amounts of garbage on the ground, which eventually gets blown by the wind into surrounding neighborhoods. It should be a group’s responsibility to remove what it brings into the park. The city must step up, enforce these rules and provide requisite supervision. Richmond Parks Division simply can’t cover this job.

What the park doesn’t need is to be transferred via lease to a third party, establishing VCU as the operating agency. This could destroy its essence as a free gathering space and homogenize it into something very different. Monroe Park is not Maymont; it is a 7.5-acre green space well within the city’s capacity to manage.

The renovated Monroe Park should welcome all residents, students and visitors with open arms. It can truly be Richmond’s gem.

C. Todd Woodson. Richmond.

(ed. note: This letter comes after VCU recently placed a metal billboard sign up in Monroe Park but then removed it after the City declared it illegal. There is another controversial VCU sign at the corner of Belvidere and Cumberland that has not been acted on yet.)