Aragona Village in Virginia Beach has been without a permanent park for its nearly 3,000 houses for a long time.
“We came up in the days when you didn’t have parks,” said Lorraine Samko, the civic league president for one of the city’s biggest neighborhoods that dates to the 1950s. There’s new hope that could change.
The school district will consider in August giving or selling property at the Bayside 6th Grade Campus on Jericho Road to the city. The neighborhood is considered a priority area for open space or a park.
Students at Bayside 6, as it is called, are moving to Bayside Middle School, which means an opportunity to transfer land after using $1.2 million to demolish the Bayside 6 building and cover other costs. Nearby Pembroke Elementary School will stay, with some acreage from the Bayside 6 campus set aside for it. A property line running through the elementary school would shift.
A committee of City Council, School Board and neighborhood leaders strongly recommended the plan, according to School Board Vice Chairperson Carolyn Weems, who presented the recommendation to the board on July 9.
“We know money is involved,” Weems said, describing the group’s conversation, “but we strongly believe that this is the best use, and it is actually the right thing to do for Aragona Village.”
The neighborhood has a park with a playground leased from a church and a smaller park without equipment. In 2016, residents learned of plans to close the smaller park and the possible sale of the Bayside 6 property for multifamily housing in the single-family neighborhood, Samko said.
Both were stopped, and Aragona Village residents then kept an eye on the school property for a permanent park.
“They had a little extra land,” Samko said. “Maybe they could bite off a piece.”
Since then, Samko said they’ve watched and waited. The civic league wrote a 2020 plan for an inclusive park that would serve a range of people, including those with special needs and older residents.
Samko said now the community hopes the proposal will have City Council and School Board support — and that an agreement includes a condition preventing development of that land.
During the July 9 meeting, some School Board members noted the cost, which could be covered by reversion funds, and competing concerns, such as major capital projects. Members discussed giving the city some land while selling off part or asking the city to help cover the cost of clearing the land.
School Board Chairperson Kathleen Brown supported the proposal to give the land to the city. She said part of the anticipated expense for the schools would be to retain nearly five more acres for Pembroke Elementary.
The area’s School Board and council representatives served on the committee and said they support the plan.
“This is what the community wants,” School Board Member Alveta Green said.
“We know it won’t go up right away, but just knowing it would be a dedicated park means a lot to the community,” City Councilmember Amelia Ross-Hammond said.
City Councilmember Joash Schulman, who represents the other council district the area falls into, said a park would fulfill a longstanding community desire while preserving open space.
“This is the right thing to do,” he added. “Period.”
The Aragona Village Civic League encourages citizens to show support for the plan prior to a School Board vote scheduled for Aug. 12.
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