Community members gathered at Hotchkiss Field Community Center on Monday night to celebrate upgrades coming to the sun-baked field.
The community center has been around for decades, featuring basketball courts, baseball fields, a pool and other amenities, plus a two-acre treeless field — but park design ideals have changed and hot days are getting hotter.
“If you lived in Richmond 20 years ago, you probably weren’t experiencing heat the same way you are today,” Mayor Levar Stoney said to the crowd. “Now, we are living in a different time.”
So, when the city and nonprofit Capital Trees talked to community members about what they’d like to see if Hotchkiss Field were renovated, Shelly Barrick Parsons said “one of the big things was shade.”
“Folks like me, who sometimes have to bring kids to practices and games [at the community center], were looking for places that they could walk while they were waiting for their kids to finish things up,” Barrick Parsons said.
Barrick Parsons is executive director of Capital Trees, which partners with the city to construct and manage greenspaces — the nonprofit oversees the gardens at the Low Line and Great Shiplock Park in Shockoe Bottom.
Capital Trees’ next project is Hotchkiss Green, which will bring walking paths, seating areas, a pollinator garden, and 54 shade-casting trees to the currently treeless field.
“Trees are really the powerhouse for mitigating urban heat island effects,” Barrick Parsons said.
Like much of the city, the area around the community center is heat stressed. Built infrastructure like wide roads, paired with uneven shade from buildings and tree cover, can cause hot days to be even hotter and more dangerous.
This heat stress is uneven across Richmond — the hottest areas tend to have a history of redlining and disinvestment, often due to an area’s racial demographics.
According to research from a group of Central Virginia researchers, led by Richmond and Henrico Health District analyst Peter Braun, the area does benefit from publicly-accessible cooling spaces like the Hotchkiss Field Community Center.
As the to-be-planted trees grow and start covering the field with shade, the property as a whole can offer some protection from the heat.
It’s not the only part of town that is in need of more heat-mitigating practices. Braun’s research shows that parts of Southside pair heat stress with a lack of cooling infrastructure and poor walkability, making the cooling centers that are available less accessible.
Near Northside, the concrete-dominated area around the Diamond had one of the highest rates of heat-related health emergencies in the city, with almost no access to a library, cooling center or community center.
Capital Trees is fundraising for the construction and maintenance of the greenspace. The nonprofit has raised over $500,000 so far with an ultimate goal of reaching about $750,000, according to Parsons . That funding would also allow Capital Trees to maintain the space for a few years and share best maintenance practices with community members.
The city is also upgrading the community center building. Workers replaced old A/C units on Tuesday and will continue construction in the coming months.
Most of the new amenities should be done by summer 2025, barring construction delays.
The trees will take more time to grow, so the shade won’t be immediate, but could provide respite for decades.
