Yesterday, Richmond’s Planning Commission inched the city closer to adding 18 acres to Larus Park, 106 acres of city greenspace wedged between Huguenot Road and Chippenham Parkway. (If you haven’t followed the controversy over the city’s efforts to take an acre of the park to build a water pumping station for Chesterfield county, click here.)

The commission’s members voted unanimously to support an agreement the city made with a private landowner to purchase 18 acres adjacent to the park for $420,000. City Council must still sign off on the deal, but that looks much more likely now.

As Rosemary Green, Department of Public Utilities deputy director, told the Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson, “the biggest concern was the trees, and now with the addition of this property that can be added to Larus Park, it seems that most of the opposition has subsided.”

City Councilperson Kristen Larson, who represents the district Larus lies in, is expected at the council’s Dec. 11 meeting to introduce a measure placing the existing parkland and this new acreage into a conservation easement.

(Click here to read a great piece about the true value of Larus Park.)