---Save Mill Mountain

Mill Mountain Conservancy

"Don't be afraid to hold on to your best land for the public realm." Joe Riley, Mayor of Charleston

The Zone 1 Summit Area of Mill Mountain

What is there	The summit area holds the Zoo, Wildflower Garden, the Star, the Discovery Center and the Park's popular (and only) picnic area. The Zone 1 area is sometimes referred to as the saddle, since, from the central picnic and parking area, the land rises to the zoo on one side and to the star on the other.
What is Zone 1?	Zone 1, Resource Management Zone 1, is, in the MM Park Management Plan, labelled "Intensive Recreational Development Zone," but the boundaries are not yet technically mapped and include much more than its developments, which consist of the Discovery Center, the zoo, parking lots, a small picnic shelter and the star. The area also includes two pedestrian overlook platforms. (The MM Park Mgt. Plan, a 19 MB pdf file is downloadable here.)
Conservation Easement Issues	The Western Virginia Land Trust (WVLT), the body which will hold a Conservation Easement on Mill Mountain or parts of it when placed by the City, wants to accept only undeveloped land. This, however, does not exclude roads (old and new), trails or walkways, and built features designated as "cultural," so individual cases must be weighed. The WVLT, on its website, comments (Sept. or Oct., 2009) on a Mill Mountain conservation easement, including their position regarding Zone 1:   "This portion of Mill Mountain is not appropriate for an open space easement due to the difficulty of monitoring activity in such a highly developed, intensively-used area." (from <www.westernvirginialandtrust.org/millmountain/index.htm>) On Mill Mountain, the questions regarding Zone 1 were whether it would be excluded from an anticipated Conservation Easement and, if so, just what actual boundary ouldl be set for it, and on what grounds. Following City Council's June 22, 2010, vote, protection of the Park's summit area from commercial development or other changes which would degrade its natural features remains at issue. Although placement of a facility such as a restaurant is prohibited in a Roanoke City park, the ruse of calling a restaurant a "Community Center" because it includes a meeting space was used by earlier restaurant advocates in attempting to circumvent City regulations.
- Mill Mountain Park Resource Management Zone 1, in yellow, is shown in this reduced copy of the original map graphic from the Mill Mountain Park Management Plan. (We have added the white labels for use in this website.) The old Mill Mountain Road, now part of the Roanoke Greenway, is shown in pink..   Parks & Recreation Department presentation graphic displayed at the March 16, 2010, information session on Mill Mountain (with our added overlay).   Following its March, 2010 Discovery Center presentations, the Parks Department changed its online graphic to make the "Option A" (blue) boundary snug the walkway which goes from near the Discovery Center to the first overlook. However, the department then reverted to its "Option A" boundary as seen below in its original presentation graphic, but has since added a dotted-line boundary to represent public response the department received. See the overlaid detail from that graphic below. In the graphic, the red line follows the boundary indicated in the Mill Mountain Park Management Plan. On June 22, 2010, City Council voted to exclude from the easement's protection what is here shown as Option A, delineated by a blue line. This leaves vulnerable the site of Valley Forward's earlier proposed restaurant and, compared with the MM Park Management Plan, enlarges the area around the zoo, including the zoo's service access road and the entire Mill Mountain Parkway road from its intersection with the zoo's service access road to the star.   Roanoke Parks & Recreation Dept. document (with our added inset)     Overlaid tint shows the area of the park's Resource Management Zone 1 (as applied to scale from the Zone 1 shape from the MMP Management Plan graphic). At present, the boundary of Zone 1 has not been formally (i.e., technically) specified by mapping coordinates and therefore, officially, there is not a technical demarcation of Zone 1. The Plan's graphic indicating the zones was done by a consultant according the the Roanoke Parks and Recreation Department. No account is given in the MM Park Mgt. Plan to explain the wide sweep of the boundary as it proceeds from the star around to its intersection with the old Mill Mountain Road. Otherwise, the Zone 1 boundary, according to the MMP Management Plan, lies close to the zoo property and the MM Parkway road.

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