Below are excerpts from the Trust for Public Land’s “Bracing for Change, Fort Monroe and the Need for Parkland in Hampton Roads.”

“… Even more striking is the deficit of public parkland along the shoreline in the Hampton Roads region compared to the three other port cities. Hampton Roads has almost twice as much city shoreline as New York City and more than nine times as much city shoreline as either Boston or the three San Francisco Bay cities. ... Both New York City and the San Francisco Bay area have double the percentage of parkland along the shore, while Boston has almost three and a half times as much waterfront parkland.

This shortage deprives the region of many benefits that parks bring -- from recreational opportunities to natural preservation, from enhanced property value to greater tourism revenue, from improved human health outcomes to increased community cohesion thanks to volunteerism in parks and the increased competitiveness of the region to businesses considering relocating to the area, especially those with a significant number of white collar workers.”

(Excerpt from the Trust for Public Land’s study “Bracing for Change, Fort Monroe and the Need for Parkland in Hampton Roads.” Link to full study: http://cloud.tpl.org/pubs/ccpe_va_hamptonroads_parkdeficit.pdf )

The Wherry Quarter and the South Waterfront area need to be parkland to help fill this deficit of public parkland along the shoreline.