In the week and a half since City Council apparently shut down the dreams for a park at 1900 N. Main St., advocates of the green space have continued working to alert council members to their concerns.

Monette Harrell, who has led the charge for a park, said she met with Mayor Linda T. Johnson, interim city manager Patrick Roberts, and Scott Mills, who is both Planning and Community Development director and acting deputy city manager.

Harrell said the city seemed amenable to endorsing a feasibility study on the best use of the property and even suggested it could participate financially.

“The city is still aware we are continuing to advocate for urban green space, and we will continue to request a delay,” Harrell said.

The citizens’ group hopes the city will put the brakes on a rezoning request for a mixed-use development on the property, which is owned by the Economic Development Authority.

The EDA already is under contract to sell the back half of the 27.5-acre site to Waverton Associates, which plans 224 apartments. Retail is proposed for the front half of the site.

At the May 20 meeting, City Council voted to delay a decision for two weeks to get more information on things like traffic counts and quality assurances.

But the plans have raised a number of concerns among community members.

Geoff Payne said he also met with Roberts this week to express his alarm about the effects of traffic on the already-congested road.

Payne says the lanes are too narrow, there will not be enough room for U-turns, the pedestrian crossing will not be safe and traffic lights will be too close together.

For example, he said, there is 750 feet between two existing lights, at Godwin Boulevard and Murphy’s Mill. There would be 650 feet between Murphy’s Mill and a proposed new signal at Northgate.

But according to Virginia Department of Transportation standards, at least 1,050 feet on a road with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour is the minimum needed. More could increase crashes by about 70 percent.

Another concern is the count of vehicles per day on which City Council members are relying when they make their decision.

A Kimley-Horn report says in the traffic study that only 27,100 vehicles per day travel that portion of North Main Street. But on the same page, it says 12,000 use the adjacent section of Pruden Boulevard, and 20,100 use the adjacent section of Godwin.

“Where did 5,000 vehicles vaporize?” Payne wonders.

The Kimley-Horn report also says in another section — the market study — that 32,000 vehicles per day use the road.

One factor in council’s decision to delay a vote for only two weeks was the developer’s assertion that he’s up against two deadlines — one for financing and one to avoid new building codes going into effect July 15.

John P. Wright of Waverton Associates repeated in a phone interview Thursday his assertion that having to comply with the new regulations may kill his project.

“It’s going to put it in an environment that may not make the project viable,” he said. “It doesn’t cause us to get any more rent. It doesn’t make it a more viable building. It doesn’t make it any more financially sound. At the end of the day, we’re not building a better product because of it.”

Wright said the code changes he’s trying to avoid having to comply with “don’t have anything to do with life and safety.” If that were the case, he noted, everything currently being built is unsafe in some way.

“It requires some things that it has never required before,” Wright continued. “Mostly having to do with air quality is one of the particular things that is running costs up.”

Wright said the new code requirements will allow buildings to “breathe” better to reduce the chance of mold.

Wright also said this week that the park proponents were “at the wrong venue.”

“Council doesn’t have the right to take the land back and rezone it on their own,” Wright said. “The park people should have gotten that message a long time ago. It would have saved them a lot of aggravation, a lot of heartache.”

But to Harrell and the rest of her group, the end result would be worth it.

“It’s a nice, wonderful piece of property everybody would enjoy doing something spectacular with,” she said. “We’re not going away. We’re still really working hard.”