Richmond has a long history of marginalizing and ignoring the input of its less well-to-do neighborhoods. City planners sent highways through Jackson Ward, Randolph and Oregon Hill. City planners managed to literally wipe some neighborhoods off the map, like Fulton and Navy Hill, much to the dismay of their residents.

A current case in point is the city’s disrespect for the Oregon Hill neighborhood in the Richmond 300 master plan.

The Virginia attorney general called on municipalities to suspend all non-life-threatening business and specifically, land-use issues, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the Richmond Planning Department is racing to get the Richmond 300 plan rubber-stamped during the pandemic while ignoring neighborhood concerns.

Richmond 300, as well as the Pulse corridor rezoning, deserves the same community scrutiny that the Navy Hill project received. They need to represent neighborhood consensus and not just hot spots for developer interests.

Richmond 300 does not foster affordable homeownership, but essentially invites developers to tear down our historic neighborhoods to build large apartment buildings.

Early in the process, our neighborhood civic association insisted on a common sense “Residential” future land use designation that matches the needs of our residential community. Instead, the city planners and the Richmond 300 steering committee denied the neighborhood a say in our own future land use.

Forced upon Oregon Hill is a “Mixed-use” designation that would allow building heights of up to 90 feet that would dwarf the modest two-story homes in our historic neighborhood. This will leave developers salivating with dollar signs in their eyes for the chance to tear down our neighborhood and build not affordable housing, but large dormitories for Virginia Commonwealth University students.

Our historic neighborhoods must be protected. They give character to Richmond and set our city apart from suburban cities like Northern Virginia. Little do developers care about the rich history of our historic neighborhoods.

In Oregon Hill, I have been gratified that the residents now embrace the abolitionist roots in the neighborhood. This history includes the 1817 Jacob House and 1819 Samuel Pleasants Parsons House, both built by anti-slavery Quakers.

Oregon Hill’s housing nonprofit restored the John Miller House. Built in 1854, the Miller House is one of the sole surviving pre-Civil War homes in Richmond that was built, owned and occupied by a free Black family. Oregon Hill also named a park for Robert Pleasants, who was the founder of the Virginia Abolition Society.

To protect our historic neighborhood, we worked hard for our “Residential” R-7 zoning with a 35-foot height limit in Oregon Hill. Of the 650 buildings within the neighborhood’s R-7 zoning, 99 percent are two-story residential dwellings.

The primary Objective 1.1 of the Richmond 300 plan is to “Rezone the city in accordance with the Future Land Use Plan ...” We are outraged that the “Mixed-use” future land use designation with a 90-foot height limit would undercut our appropriate “Residential” R-7 zoning.

Oregon Hill has greatly prospered under our appropriate “Residential” land use that encourages families to put down roots with homeownership. This appropriate land use discourages

speculators from buying up blocks of land for the next big project. The resulting renovation boom also has been a boon for the city’s real estate tax revenue.

Richmond’s moderate-income communities often have suffered from this same “top down” planning that ignores community input.

We ask our elected City Council to amend the Richmond 300 plan and restore Oregon Hill with a “Residential” future land use designation as recommended by our civic association.

As Oregon Hill leader Earl Jenkins stated 35 years ago in regard to an equally insensitive VCU master plan, “We did away with the master in 1865!”

SCOTT BURGER

Richmond