New Mayo Island park ‘on track’ to open in fall of 2026

A plan to turn Richmond’s Mayo Island into a mostly natural park is still on schedule to be completed by the fall of 2026.

“We are on track to meet that goal,” Lisa Richardson, deputy director for the city’s Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities Department, told Richmond’s Urban Design Committee Thursday morning.

The design committee voted Thursday to unanimously approve a conceptual design for the park. The plan envisions demolition and removal of most of the buildings and parking lots currently on the island. They will be replaced with meadows, wildflowers and gravel paths that would add a new destination to the James River Park System.

As project planners presented images of what the future Mayo Island might look like, design committee member Jessie Gemmer called it “the fantasy everyone wants.”

“To be in a meadow and look up and see their city,” Gemmer said.

Last year, the city purchased the 15-acre island for roughly $15 million with plans to turn it into a park. A $7.5 million state grant from the Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund helped with the purchase. Because of the anti-flooding purpose of the project, the city’s plan mostly calls for removing impervious paved areas currently on the island and replacing them with plants.

During the City Council’s recent budget deliberations, officials discussed the possibility of delaying the Mayo Island project to free up money for other infrastructure priorities. The council ultimately decided against that after being told the city had committed to a particular timeline in order to be eligible for the state grant funding. 

The budget city officials approved this week includes another $16 million for the renovation of the island.

Because the island is prone to flooding, the city went with a minimal design favoring nature over built-up features.

“We’re really leaning heavily into the planting plan. The plants are the placemaking here,” said Tyler Silvestro, a landscape architect with Marvel, one of the design companies working on the project along with the TYLin engineering firm. “It’s a place to kind of watch a new ecology emerge, an island that really no one has been able to experience for many, many years.”

Because the island includes some private property that wasn’t part of the sale, an existing building and parking lot on the western side of South 14th Street is expected to remain in place.

The island has been used for a variety of purposes over the years. It’s been home to a sawmill and a baseball diamond, and it occasionally served as an event space for concerts and festivals. In its current state, the island mostly consists of old industrial buildings.

“Talk about taking a real eyesore and making it a beautiful resource,” said design committee member Keith Van Inwegen.

Turning it into a park, city officials say, will create a new amenity for downtown workers, Manchester residents, fishing enthusiasts and kayakers. It’s also near several other attractions like the Richmond Slave Trail, the Capital Trail and the planned Fall Line Trail.

“All of these things we believe will bring thousands of visitors to the island,” said Richardson.

State officials are also planning to replace the Mayo Bridge that crosses the island, but city planners said their goal is to get the park open before bridge construction begins and closely coordinate with the Virginia Department of Transportation on best ways to handle the two overlapping projects.

Advertising billboards on the island will stay in place for now, officials said, but the city is exploring the possibility of getting rid of them when current leases end.

Before approving the park concept, the city’s design committee asked the project planners to look into the possibility of adding a water fountain.

Construction of the new park is expected to begin this fall.

Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org