Hundreds of people turned out Wednesday to a community meeting regarding a vacant site on North Main Street where the city plans a mixed-use development.

The majority of visitors to the meeting wore badges that said, “I am in favor of a Community Obici Park,” which were being handed out at the door to Elephant’s Fork Elementary School, where the meeting was held.

Monette Harrell was leading the charge of those in favor of a park.

“I think we’ve made our statement,” she said outside the school’s full-to-bursting cafeteria. “Our goal was awareness.”

The city has owned the site at 1900 N. Main St., the former site of Obici Hospital, since about 2005. It has languished for years during many false starts at development.

The Economic Development Authority now owns the site and hopes to have it rezoned to a mixed-use development. It is now zoned for general commercial development.

The EDA is under contract to sell about 14 acres at the back portion of the site to Waverton Associates for a 224-apartment complex. Retail or office space could be built in the front portion, Economic Development Director Kevin Hughes said.

But many of the visitors to Wednesday’s meeting are opposed to any sort of development.

“It will cause so much traffic problems and safety problems that it’s a non-starter,” said Geoff Payne. He pointed out that the draft 2035 Comprehensive Plan shows the roadway as a level of service E — federal guidelines say only level of service C or above is acceptable for urban areas.

“It says the road is so much over design capacity and it cannot be substantially improved, and yet they’re still adding more and more businesses and more and more houses,” he said.

While his main concern was traffic, others simply don’t want the development.

“I certainly do not want another strip mall,” Byron Carmean said.

Sean and Samantha Gilroy said they moved to Suffolk from Greenbrier to get away from development.

“The reason why we moved out here is because of open space,” Samantha Gilroy said. “For them to want to build it up, it seems counterproductive.”

Harrell said a park would be a fitting tribute to Amedeo Obici, who named the original Louise Obici Memorial Hospital after his wife and whose legacy lives on in the Obici Healthcare Foundation.

“We would use the park for health reasons,” Harrell said. “Mr. Obici would be very proud of that.”

But Hughes pointed out that a park exists roughly 1,500 feet away, behind the Farm Fresh shopping center. It features a playground, a dog park, a skate park, tennis courts and more.

“That’s a little park,” Harrell objected. “We want a glorious park.”

Hughes also noted the city wants to recoup its investment in the property. The redevelopment would generate about $250,000 annually in real estate and sales taxes, by his conservative estimate.

“Any new income coming into the city could do a lot for schools and fire and police,” he said.

He also questioned why, after the property has been on the market for about four years in the latest go-round, nobody mentioned putting a park there until part of the property was put under contract for apartments.

“This was a little news to us, to be honest,” he said.

Hughes also said the property is not suitable for water access because it has woods, marsh and a 10-foot drop-off. Other nearby properties would be less challenging, including the adjacent VDOT property, which the city has talked about redeveloping after VDOT moves.

Hughes also said the Obici connection is important to him, too. His grandfather worked for Obici in Pennsylvania, where Obici started Planters Peanuts.

“He made his name commercially,” Hughes said. “It is personal.”