The Richmond Fire Department won its fight to replace 2 acres of lawn at the Hickory Hill Community Center in South Side with a concrete pad and a fire training facility where recruits can get experience dousing blazes.

Flouting its own policy goal of expanding green space, particularly in underserved Black and Latino areas, City Council ended the battle Monday night with an 8-0 vote to overturn the Planning Commission’s rejection of the proposal.

The vote was a triumph for 8th District Councilwoman Reva M. Trammell, who backed the Fire Department over a coalition of civic associations who objected to the department’s takeover of space where local youths play soccer and where volunteers from a nonprofit had begun planting trees and designing a community garden.

First District Councilman Andreas D. Addison, a Planning Commission member who led the commission majority that rejected the Fire Department’s proposal, kept mum when the issue was considered and did not respond during the roll call vote.

Fire Chief Melvin Carter told the council that a new facility was needed to replace the crumbling, outdated facility in Eastern Henrico that no longer can pass inspection.

His department secured a $500,000 grant to help cover the cost of developing the training facility. The funding needs to be used within two years. The facility will be three stories tall and be made from stacked shipping containers. Chief Carter said Hickory Hill was chosen after an extensive search for a location for the training center. Along with the training facility, he said the department is using the space inside the center for classroom and other training needs in cooperation with Parks and Recreation.

At this time, the department is training its largest class of 71 recruits, with about half training at Hickory Hill, he said.

The decision was a bitter pill for nearby residents and environmental advocates who had sought to prevent the Fire Department from reducing the green space at the center, which is located next to a nationally certified bird sanctuary that a local family has created on their property.

Speakers told the council there were multiple other locations the new building could go rather than taking a piece of the only large public park in this section of city, which according to the state Department of Health, ranks high for asthma and chronic other diseases and in pollution from industrial outlets nearby.

Though Hickory Hill still has significant green space, the decision is a clear retreat by Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s administration on environmental justice and climate change policies that made the addition of green space a top priority.

In 2020, Mayor Stoney announced an expansion of parkland in South Side and claimed he was correcting the racist policies that had prevented sufficient green space and parks from being developed in that section of the city that has significant Black and Brown populations.

“Regardless of a child’s race, ethnicity, gender, family income or zip code, they should be able to walk down the street and spend a summer afternoon in a welcoming, verdant space,” Mayor Stoney said then. “Due to systemic racism, that’s not how our city was designed.”

Opponents consider him a hypocrite, willing to break his word at the first opportunity.

“This would never have happened in Bryan Park or Byrd Park,” said Monica Esparza, a community advocate who was a leader in organizing opposition to the Fire Department’s plan.

“But it seems to be okay when it comes to a park in a predominantly Black community,” she said. “And now it is Black leaders like the mayor and Chief Carter who say that’s a fine thing to do.”