× Expand BridgePark Foundation President Ted Elmore (right) looks at architectural models with students from Oakwood Arts. (Photo courtesy Ted Elmore)

Picture yourself strolling with friends across the James River, with places along the way to enjoy a picnic or sit on a bench reading a book while listening to the water below. Consider a new connection that links downtown and Manchester, a piece of history reimagined for today’s Richmond.

That’s what the people behind the BridgePark project envisioned when they began looking at other ways to connect the north and south banks of the James, complementing the T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge. Initial planning for the project began in 2012 with ideas for redeveloping the old Huguenot Bridge, which was later demolished.

A year later, Ted Elmore joined the BridgePark Foundation as president, and the focus changed. As conversations and planning for the multimillion-dollar initiative continued, “the favorite idea that developed was to repurpose the Manchester Bridge and connect other existing works,” as well as building more connections between downtown Richmond and the Manchester business district, says Elmore, a former partner with the Hunton & Williams law firm. During the past several years, nearly 30 community entities joined the effort, and fundraising began.

As an example of a similarly repurposed bridge structure, Elmore points to The High Line, a public park built on an elevated freight line in New York City’s Manhattan borough. Elmore says that private funds raised so far have enabled BridgePark planners to hire the “best of the best partners and consultants,” including the international architecture firm Spatial Affairs Bureau, partly based in Richmond (and founded by Peter Culley, with people he met while working on the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts expansion), and BuroHappold, structural engineers for The High Line.

Among the community entities involved is Partners in the Arts, which works with public and private K-12 Richmond-area teachers to “connect artistic pursuits with real-world learning,” and which recently brought in BridgePark’s lead architect to talk to students and engage them with creating their own designs for the project. Robert McAdams, director of Partners in the Arts, says that as the project moves toward development and construction, he envisions apprenticeships where “students will see school-to-work skills actively implemented.”

Beginning Aug. 3, people interested in seeing the BridgePark plans and model can visit Art 180’s Atlas Gallery (114 W. Marshall St.), where they will share space with Art 180’s 20th-anniversary exhibition featuring 20 works showcasing transportation in Richmond. After that, the model will be displayed at the BridgePark Foundation offices in Riverfront Plaza.