We object to Roanoke City rezoning an acre of Fishburn Park to commercial and selling it for $10.

Roanoke City has signed a contract to sell over an acre of Fishburn Park for $10 and to rezone it to commercial. The city has applied to vacate the public's future use of this important green space. The value of this land if it was to be rezoned to commercial would be around $400,000. Sign now to prevent this economic injustice.

It's not necessary to rezone and sell this much land to have a coffee shop at the Caretaker's Cabin. The Roanoke City Parks and Advisory Board has recommended that the city reduce to lot size to under 0.6 acres.

The local community uses this park land many times a day to walk through to access the park's amenities. Many people who live near the park don't have yards of green space where they can throw a football or kick around a soccer ball or play catch. They need access to this park land for those activities. The rest of the park isn't a good place for those activities.

Fishburn Park is a popular park and when the parking lot is full people use the green space for overflow parking. If the public didn't have access to that land then it would create a public safety hazard for the surrounding neighborhood and the public trying to access the park. 

This park land is part of an artesian spring's ecology that is a tributary to the impaired stream, Murray Run, which is the habitat for the endangered Roanoke logperch.