REPORTERS, EDITORS: Please announce this event to the public.
News media are invited to cover the reception or prepare stories in
advance. Expected to attend the event are Charlottesville city council
members Maurice Cox and mayor Kay Slaughter, planning commissioner
William Harris, Starr Hill community leaders Patricia Edwards and
Alicia Lugo, and Ron Higgins of the city's community development as
well as U.Va. landscape architecture students. For additional
information please contact Kathy Poole, assistant professor of
landscape architecture, at 804-924 6446. 

NEW VISIONS FOR STARR HILL PARK TO BE OFFERED FEB. 20 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Feb. 14 -- University of Virginia
landscape architecture students, with ideas from community residents,
next week will offer several new visions for Charlottesville's Starr
Hill Park, a neglected city-neighborhood park.
	The School of Architecture's annual Benjamin Howland
Competition in landscape architecture has focused this semester on the
run-down half-acre park off West Main Street. Located adjacent to a
commercial-industrial area, with few clear spatial boundaries and
little connection to the surrounding neighborhood, the park has been
infrequently used in recent years and allowed to deteriorate.
	The public is invited to view the graduate students' design
visions for the park and nearby areas and attend a reception for Starr
Hill community residents, city officials and landscape architecture
students from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20, in the second-floor lobby
at the School of Architecture. Free parking will be available in the
Culbreth Theater lot adjacent the architecture school off Rugby Road. 
	More than a dozen student-team projects, including winning
projects selected by a committee of community residents, city
officials and landscape architecture faculty, will be on display. The
exhibit will be displayed Monday through Friday until March 1.
	The students' design ideas -- including a wide variety of
gardens, nature parks, urban oases, play areas and more -- are offered
as "tools to help the community and city envision possibilities for
the area," according to Kathy Poole, assistant professor of landscape
architecture and competition coordinator. The student teams worked
closely with neighborhood residents and the city's office of community
development. 
	The annual competition is named for the late Ben Howland, a
U.Va. landscape architect and educator devoted to pubic places.
###
February 13, 1997
	Television reporters should call our TV News Office at (804)
924-7550.