Belle Isle conservation and recreation projects are designed to forge a relationship between visitors and the urban river system that defines Richmond. Each project uses Belle Isle’s special characteristics to ignite in park visitors a love for the environment and a desire for outdoor adventure.
Friends of the James River Park and the City of Richmond James River Park System are collaborating to make Belle Isle the welcome-to-James River Park experience that builds a love of nature and an appreciation for this complex and layered place.
Share your Thoughts, Lend a Hand.
Friends of the James River Park and James River Park System invite your comments, insights, and feedback on these project proposals. What do you appreciate? What do you dislike? What would you like to see more of? Please use the form at the bottom of the page to tell us what you think.
Each project will go through a public review process as comments are received and funding is identified. Check this page for updates!
If you’d like to champion a project, contact FOJRP Executive Director Josh Stutz to learn how you can help.
The Nature Exploration Area is a nature-based play area built from driftwood, boulders, milled logs and wood chips, designed to be resilient in floods, easily re-composed by park staff, and inviting to families visiting James River Park System for the first or fiftieth time. Located under the Route 1 bridge in the center of the island, parts of the NEA are protected from direct sun throughout the day. The NEA has experiences designed for kids ages ten and under, with sensory centered and ADA friendly modules.
This project is funded through Friends of the James River Park by the Robins Foundation of Richmond.
STATUS: City approved, and funding committed. Construction timeline: 2025
First built in the early 2000s the Belle Isle Bike Skills Course was an effort to build recreational bike features in the Belle Isle meadow. Twenty years later, the course is worn and torn. FOJRP hopes to work with the James River Park System and City Trails & Greenways team to fully renovate the skills area, pulling the track into a footprint under the Route 1 bridge, which affords some relief from the elements, and allowing the park system to re-vegetate the trail with trees native to the park. The enhanced skills track, designed by bike park construction company DirtSculpt, will offer beginner, hand cycle, and expert level tracks.
STATUS: City approved
The Nail Shed, once a part of the Old Dominion Iron and Steel campus, sits vacant today with its i-beams and rows of skylights inviting visitors to imagine a multitude of uses. The design team envisions this structure to become enlivened with activity, with picnic tables dominating the north side and a beginner level skate plaza on the south end designed to get kids active in the park in a profoundly unique location. The vast covered space will retain its form, allowing rain and light into vegetated planters that punctuate an otherwise concrete and steel structure.
STATUS: Visioning. Public input is encouraged and appreciated.
The historic brick building facade located on the path toward the Belle Isle Hydro-plant has been an industrial relic for over a century. The design of the Rolling Mill Garden aims to open the forested space behind it, where the foundations of the factory are still visible. The wooded factory floor will create an outdoor room, encouraging visitors to explore the history of the many enslaved, liberated, and immigrant people who worked there. Dotted with new-growth forest and teaming with a voracious understory, the Rolling Mill Garden is a Belle Isle archeology site that the park hopes to investigate and interpret as funding becomes available.
STATUS: Visioning. Public input is encouraged and appreciated.
The Belle Isle Quarry is the rare still water pond located in the middle of the Fall Line rapids. This scenic peaceful spot is mostly inaccessible to many users, given the rooty access and dilapidated nature of the cerca 1990’s board walk. The design of the boardwalk is motivated by the desire to create access to a peaceful, scenic place on Belle Isle, and to offer flatwater paddlers an opportunity to test their skills in a calm environment located improbably near to the churning Hollywood Rapids. Accessible paths, reconstructed overlooks, and a destination dock and boardwalk platform create multifunctional spaces for an array of recreational, educational, and social uses at the Quarry.
STATUS: Visioning. Public input is encouraged and appreciated.
Belle Isle, by the numbers: 172,800 annual visitors