Commercial intrusion not part of Wascana Park’s original vision

Retired educator and University of Regina Senate member Jim Gallagher, who has combed every inch of Wascana Park in his decades in the city, acknowledges the back of the 60-year-old Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) building isn’t the most attractive part of the park.

And were it simply replacing the existing 18,000-square-foot structure with a new or more befitting building on the edge of the park, it wouldn’t bother Gallagher all that much.

But he is very concerned that the 70,000-square-foot, threestorey commercial enterprise — the new headquarters for Brandt Industries, with additional space available for lease to other firms, which will overlook the Legislative Building across Wascana Lake — will now be the second major new commercial development in the park.

It accompanies the 80,000 square-foot Conexus Credit Union headquarters on College Avenue. This week, construction fences went up around the 2.3 acres from College all the way back to Wascana Pool, for the purposes of removing trees and extending Lorne Avenue to accommodate traffic, parking, infrastructure and the new bank building itself.

What has fallen under the radar for many is becoming a reality in the northwest corner of Wascana Park — 150,000 square feet of commercial/corporate real estate in the pristine park.

“I’m not a tree lover, but why are they taking them out of a public park?” Gallagher asks.

“Kiss the park goodbye,” one fellow park user said as he passed Gallagher on the walking path by the construction site. “We’re sure going to lose a lot of trees,” added another who walked past.

For Gallagher and others, it breaches a century-old trust.

When the great Tyndall stone legislature was plopped down in 1913, a lake was hand-dug around it. Around the lake, trees — thousands of them — were handplanted to create the Queen City’s jewel, Wascana Park.

The grandeur of the Legislative Building would be nothing without the beauty of Wascana Park around it — or so the original planners envisioned. It has remained this way for more than a century now ... notwithstanding the occasional intrusion of a few other commercial enterprises that have met requirements of having an educational, environmental, cultural, recreational or governmental component.

Gallagher acknowledges that the new Brandt building will house 4,000 square feet for the CNIB and that the Conexus headquarters is tied to the refurbishment of the old University of Regina campus and Darke Hall on Regina’s College Avenue — good and necessary projects being made possible by corporation donations.

But beyond Regina’s current high commercial vacancy rate, Gallagher said the encroachment of a massive private commercial building into Wascana by companies with political ties to the current Saskatchewan Party government should be unsettling.

Near the end of the spring sitting, the NDP opposition released a list of 53 of the Sask. Party’s largest corporate donors in 2016. These donors received total payments of $105,988,511 from Crowns and executive government — in publicly open tendered contracts.

Included in that list — led by Ledcor Industries Inc. ($50,000 in donations) PCL Constructors ($43,200) and Macpherson, Leslie and Tyerman ($41,760) — were Brandt Tractor ($28,200) and Brandt Industries ($26,100). In all, the two Brandt companies received $3,870,835 in tendered government contracts, the NDP note said.

Gallagher said the problem is the current business-sympathetic government changed the governance structure, and independent-minded entities like the University of Regina don’t have the same voice when it comes to park development. “When they (Brandt) came up with the idea, they didn’t get much resistance (from government).”

Arguments that the park already had “commercial enterprises” like the Wascana marina restaurant or the CBC, or that these new commercial enterprises are on the edge of the park anyway, have gained weight, Gallagher noted.

For many like Gallagher, it’s about more than removing a few trees on the edge of the park. It’s about preserving what Wascana Park is supposed to be.