When the City of Norfolk shortened Lafayette Park's hours to 7 p.m. last Friday, it said the change was meant to keep the park safe, family-friendly and supportive of the nearby Virginia Zoo.
The restriction cuts off public access to the park even as sundown - the usual closing time - stretches past 8 p.m. at the start of summer. Residents have raised questions about the policy change and who it sidelines.
Hours before the new policy went into effect on June 5, the city's official social media pages warned that an unpermitted event scheduled for that afternoon was unauthorized and would be shut down by on-site law enforcement.
Deputy City Manager Debbie George said the city has been monitoring social media for pop-up and takeover events for months.
"We feel the best way to deal with those events is to prevent them from getting started at all," George said. She added that the heavy law enforcement presence at the park over the weekend was preemptive.
During Tuesday's city council session, City Manager Patrick Roberts described a 14 month issue within the park and its parking lots where there are unpermitted parties with illegal alcohol sales, cannabis use and litter, resulting in city staff spending two hours every morning clearing out large liquor containers and trash.
"The staff has heard so many complaints from the adjacent residents, they're asking for some evening reprieve," Roberts said. "The neighbors are asking ‘please, can we have our evenings back?’"
But residents who use the park daily say the blanket curfew punishes tax-paying neighbors for the city's inability to manage targeted parking lot issues.
Aleksandr Karlov, a neighborhood organizer who lives directly across the street from the park, runs Merci Football, a free multi-generational street soccer program on the Lafayette courts. He says the policy caught regular recreational users in the crossfire.
"The rest of the citizens just have to suffer because they don't have any other means to handle it," Karlov said.
The city has pointed to the park's proximity to the Virginia Zoo as part of its justification. George said families with children visiting the zoo were hearing music with inappropriate language. The Zoo’s website lists it closing at 4 p.m. daily. WHRO reached out to the Virginia Zoo for comment but did not receive a response.
"My girlfriend is a volunteer at the zoo, and never once has it ever been a concern about the zoo animals," Karlov said. "Most of these animals sleep indoors. A lot of these animals are nocturnal... that's just an insane claim."
David Brown, a 58-year-old lifelong Norfolk resident, said the curfew disrupts the disc golf routine he built over the past two years as part of a personal health push. Brown said his work schedule often keeps him from getting there until at least 5:30 p.m.
Lakita Frazier, Norfolk's Director of Parks and Recreation, said she began fielding complaints about Lafayette Park shortly after arriving in her role a few months ago. She said the 7 p.m. cutoff is not permanent.
"While there isn't a special magic time to close the park, we feel that 7 p.m. gives us the opportunity to close the park safely," Frazier said. She described a 30-to-60-day evaluation window before considering a return to normal dusk hours.
That timeline isn't moving fast enough for neighbors who brought their frustrations to City Hall during Tuesday's council meeting. Residents lined up at the podium arguing the administration was hiding behind top-down policy instead of ground-level policing.
Norfolk resident Alton Robinson challenged the city's timeline directly at the podium Tuesday, questioning why the administration allowed illegal activity to persist for 14 months before taking action that now affects the entire community.
"I take my grandkids to the park, and I see other children out in the park. What child has violated any laws, but they have to be put out of the park at 7 p.m.?" Robinson said. "I'm not here to defend anyone who's doing any criminal activity, but what I cannot understand is why you allow it to go on for so long, to the point where it comes to a point where you have to do something drastic."
Karlov recalled a sudden influx of police and park rangers using loudspeakers to clear the park last Friday, just hours after the curfew was publicly announced, which he said unnecessarily alarmed neighborhood kids.
When asked what residents should do in the meantime, Frazier pointed them to other facilities.
"We have other beautiful facilities with the same amenities that our residents can still continue to partake in," she said.
For residents who chose their homes for walkable access to a public green space, that answer landed poorly.
"That is not her decision to schedule when I get to go outside," Karlov said. "To tell me to go to another neighborhood when I live 150 feet away? That's pretty bold. We have built a community that recognizes this is our home, this is where we play, this is where we gather."
Frazier said Lafayette Park is the starting point of a broader review, with the department currently pulling permit data and incident reports from the past 18 months across all city facilities. She did not rule out similar measures at other locations.
"This is the park that we received the most resident concern about," Frazier said. "That moved us in the direction of starting here first."
