Tomorrow, July 13th, is the deadline for public comment on the Richmond 300 Draft Plan, which is supposed to be the city’s vision for the next 20 years. Sadly, ‘the city’s vision’ does not include the Oregon Hill community’s.

The last three decades have seen great changes for Oregon Hill. Despite much turmoil, the community has worked hard to try to keep a vision as a real neighborhood where families could settle and live. It has had successful historic preservation and affordable housing programs. It has honored early inhabitants’ abolitionist roots. It has developed its green spaces and connections. More probably could have been done, but much time and effort has been used instead on battling unwelcome, inappropriate development from the VCU administration and unscrupulous developers whose overall goal is to gradually chip and scrape away Oregon Hill’s historic integrity and dismantle it’s residential character. It’s also very telling that VCU is not interested in entering into a written agreement of any type with Oregon Hill – the neighborhood has been asking for a Memorandum of Understanding for over a decade.

Sadly, what Oregon Hill has worked for and fought to become (supplying a great tax base and attraction for the City, we might add), is now terribly threatened.

The number one principle of successful planning is to involve the affected community.

Oregon Hill has participated in the process from the beginning but our input has been ignored. The planning process is illegitimate if the input from the affected community is ignored. We have consistently demanded a residential future land use designation for our residential Oregon Hill Historic District.

Sadly, it’s been to no avail so far. City officials just don’t seem to care. Under the guise of the Richmond300 plan, City staff, with coaxing by the VCU administration and greedy developers, could determine that buildings of eight or more stories are consistent in Oregon Hill. Every block could see demolition of historic housing stock and new development like what happened at 805 W. Cary.

It’s important to recognize the ticking time bomb that the Richmond300 is planting:

As the Richmond300 process heads to its conclusion, we can anticipate some of their positions and responses:

City: “Don’t worry about the future land use designation impacting future rezoning of Oregon Hill because the neighborhood will be closely involved in the process.”
Oregon Hill response: A stated objective of the Richmond 300 plan is to rezone the city in accordance with the future land use plan. The city planning department has ignored the input of the affected neighborhood when preparing the Richmond 300 plan and will likely ignore the input of the affected neighborhood when the city moves to redefine the zoning districts. The mixed use future land use designation is incompatible with the desired R-7 zoning of the Oregon Hill Historic District.

City: “The neighborhood mixed use future land use designation is the closest designation to the R-7 zoning.”
Oregon Hill response: Oregon Hill fought hard for the R-7 zoning which is a residential zoning with a 35 foot height limit. The mixed use designation is not compatible with the R-7 zoning either in function or building height.

City: “The Richmond 300 plan lowered the number of future land use designations, so the mixed used designation is now the closest to fit Oregon Hill.”
Oregon Hill response: The city arbitrarily removed the medium-density residential and single family future land use designations that matched Oregon Hill’s R-7 zoning. With these removed, the “Residential” future land use designation remains the closest match for the form and function of the Oregon Hill Historic District. It’s important to recognize how the City has purposely time taken away any ‘middle ground’ over time. The neighborhood could not even get the urban business zoning it wanted for W. Cary street corridor. City planners blocked that too, less they upset VCU admin and their developer buddies.

City: “Oregon Hill is a mixed use neighborhood, you have two of the finest restaurants in the city and we want more businesses.”
Oregon Hill response: Within the R-7 zoning of Oregon Hill 99% of the 650 buildings are residential dwellings of two story in height. It is inappropriate to set a future land use to match 1% of the building functions within the Oregon Hill Historic District. (It’s also worth noting that if you look at the ugly new development at 805 W. Cary, its been corporate chains moving in. Not to mention that prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Richmond restaurants had oversaturated the city, and now it will be lucky if 50% of the City’s independent restaurants will survive). Yes, there are existing nineteenth century storefronts that could be brought back to commercial purposes, but we are sure that what this Richmond300 plan portends is demolition, not renovation.

City: “The new neighborhood mixed use designation is meant to increase affordable housing in the city.”
Oregon Hill response: Oregon Hill has been a resource for affordable housing since the 19th century. Many residents strongly believe in affordable housing and had worked and volunteered with the Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council and other affordable housing groups in the City, that does not mean we want to see our historic neighborhood demolished. The mixed-use designation will undermine the successful residential function of the neighborhood.

City: “Don’t worry, the Richmond 300 plan has a priority objective for preserving historic neighborhoods.”
Oregon Hill response: The preservation of the Oregon Hill Historic District will be undermined by an inappropriate mixed-use future land use designation with inappropriate function and building height limits.

City: “Don’t worry about the future land use designation because the city will help Oregon Hill obtain the city historic designation.”
Oregon Hill response: Any discussion of an historic district designation is a non sequitor that is not germane to the appropriate future land use designation of Oregon Hill in the Richmond 300 plan. (It should be noted that at one point during the 805 W. Cary discussions, City staff told neighborhood leaders that a non-demolition overlay was possible and would be the quickest way to protect the neighborhood. Of course when the neighborhood association pursued it, they stalled and eventually changed their story and said it was not a possibility. They had thrown us a red herring).

In short, it is not Oregon Hill which is being unreasonable, despite all the efforts to portray it that way.

Again:

The number one principle of successful planning is to involve the affected community.

Oregon Hill has participated in the process from the beginning but our input has been ignored. The planning process is illegitimate if the input from the affected community is ignored. We have consistently demanded a residential future land use designation for our residential Oregon Hill Historic District.

We hope that elected officials and the public understand what is happening here. Please take the time to contact our 5th District council rep Stephanie Lynch to let her know your opposition to the Richmond300 plan: stephanie.lynch@richmondgov.com