Editor’s note: Below find a special report about Church Hill’s ongoing l’affair pétanque. If you haven’t yet, please consider upgrading to keep independent journalism about your neighborhood free for all to read. Here’s how to submit tips, documents, correspondence, etc. with The Lookout for editorial consideration. Check the liveblog for reporting odds-and-ends about this controversy.—Dave.

At Chimborazo Playground, a pair of graded gravel patches have stood half-finished since mid-May, when construction crews halted work in the face of community consternation and a missing state stormwater permit. But while the city has made some efforts to address the former, it’s not clear when it will be able to secure the latter.

Now, a local expert tells The Lookout that obtaining official sign-off on the currently paused expansion of the park’s pétanque courts could take months and cost tens of thousands of additional dollars.

“Based on my experience with stormwater permitting, similar small land-disturbing projects can involve real additional costs for permit application materials and erosion and sediment control work,” Evan Branosky, who served as Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) chief stormwater policy advisor until 2025, told The Lookout via email. “For this project, those additional costs could be roughly $15,000 to $25,000.”

As The Lookout has previously reported, the project is subject to a permitting process because its footprint exceeds the maximum the city allows without a Richmond Erosion & Stormwater Management Program (RESMP) permit. A DEQ spokesperson, Sarah Pentecost, told me on May 15th that it had determined the complaint it had received about the construction fell under Virginia Stormwater Management Program (VSMP) authority and referred the investigation to Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU.) Tamara Jenkins, acting deputy director, public affairs in the Office of Strategic Communications & Civic Engagement (OSC), confirmed that day that DPR needed the permit to continue, but did not address a follow-up question about why it had not applied for one in advance. DPU did not respond to an inquiry sent May 15th; Ross Catrow, OSC’s director, acknowledged receipt of a follow-up email sent June 2nd, but could not provide more information before deadline.

Branosky, a Church Hill resident, previously led the development of DEQ’s Stormwater Management Handbook. He reached out to The Lookout to share his expertise because he wants East Enders to have as much information as possible headed into the city’s public meetings about l’affair pétanque. (The first is Thursday, June 4th from 6-8pm at the Powhatan Community Center; the second is Saturday, June 6th from 11am-1pm art Lucks Field Community Center. See flyers—one of which DPR generated using AI—below.)

“I think the broader public issue is transparency around the full cost of building the courts, including the original construction cost and any additional cost needed to bring the project into compliance with stormwater permitting requirements,” he said.

An all-in price for project, which began on May 5th and was officially halted by the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities (DPR) on May 11th, has been hard to come by. An informal document that OSC’s Jenkins described to me as the project’s “final” layout, circulated by the local group Les Boulefrogs Pétanque Club of Virginia, estimated the total at $17,000, while the DPR’s director, Christopher Frelke said at a Church Hill Association meeting in mid-May that the cost was $8,000, without citing the source of that figure. Neither sum aligns with the vendor contract or city purchase order obtained by The Lookout via public-records request, which priced the work at $36,004.

On May 21st, OSC’s Jenkins reiterated the accuracy of that $36,004 figure in response to a follow-up from The Lookout about comments from DPR’s director, Frelke, and deputy director of capital improvement projects, Nissa Richardson, disputing it. “The attached purchase order is correct—it’s for the installation of two new courts,” she wrote, referring to this document.

Whatever the project was supposed to cost, it could get much more expensive due to the requirements of the permitting process. “Stormwater requirements usually apply in two phases: construction-phase erosion and sediment control, and post-construction stormwater management,” Branosky explained. A project like this, he added, could require site work like:

On May 15th, a crew returned to Chimborazo Playground to install silt fencing. I also noticed what appears to be some sort of mesh silt guard beneath the drain grate at the southern edge of the construction site, though I don’t know if that’s a new addition.

It’s not clear what other steps the city may have taken to get the site into compliance since then, or who is responsible for taking them. Language in the vendor’s contract (which is not countersigned by a city official) places the responsibility for permitting on the client, in this case DPR. Language in the city’s purchase order does not explicitly delegate this responsibility, but states the contractor must comply with “all laws, regulations, and rules applicable to the performance of the contract represented by this Purchase Order.” It’s possible that permitting/compliance costs were baked into the project’s original price, but they are itemized in neither the contract nor the purchase order.

Branosky arrived at his $15,000-25,000 estimated range with back-of-the-napkin math that “assum[es] no permanent stormwater controls are required and no penalties are assessed,” he said. Compliance expenses could also rise from that estimate “if DPU requires more detailed survey work, plan revisions, corrective work, or longer-term site stabilization,” added Branosky, noting that this would in turn inflate the project’s bottom line.

Of course, this all gets more complicated as more friction arises during the permitting process. As Branosky notes, DPU’s guidance allows 15 calendar days to determine whether an application is complete, and another 60 to approve or disapprove the plan. “If comments are issued, the applicant may need to revise and resubmit, which can add more time,” he said. “If the applicant is starting from the beginning, the full process could take several months.” From start to finish, the city’s RESMP guidance document outlines a total period of up to 135 days.

The scale of that timeline differs dramatically with the one Jenkins provided to The Lookout via email in mid-May. “We are coordinating closely with DPU’s Water Resources team and expect to have coverage obtained within a couple of weeks,” she wrote.

The current status of DPR’s application is unknown. At the CHA meeting on May 19th, Frelke, responding to a question about the permitting situation, said simply, “We're working on that piece.”

Check The Lookout’s L’Affair Pétanque Liveblog for the latest reportage.

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