City moves to protect bathers at new West Kelowna beach
City hopes to rope off swimming area at Aberdeen Park to keep boaters out
Confrontations between swimmers and boaters at a new West Kelowna beach park should be prevented this summer, city staff say.
Parks staff hope to get provincial approval to rope off a swimming area at Aberdeen Park with tall buoys attached to a metal wire.
“We want to ensure safe swimming in the area,” parks director Stacey Harding said Wednesday. “Having boats and personal watercraft in there is a dangerous practice when we’re creating a familyfriendly swimming zone.”
Safety concerns have arisen because newly constructed Aberdeen Park is immediately north of a large private dock at the upscale Paradise Estates gated community, which has space for 36 boats.
Last year, Harding said, power boats regularly entered the proposed swim zone, and personal watercraft were also ridden right onto the shore.
Creation of the swim-only zone, which would be about twice the size of the main tank at the Johnson-Bentley pool, reflects the city’s determination to allow for better public use of 29 small, municipally owned properties known as road-ends along the West Kelowna shoreline.
When West Kelowna incorporated in 2008, it inherited the road-ends form the Ministry of Transportation.
Historically, public access to some of the road-ends has been difficult. Adjacent property owners have planted dense vegetation to impede public access, paved part of them for private boat storage, and even extended fence lines onto public property.
Including Aberdeen Park, six of the road-ends have so far been upgraded, at an average cost of $100,000, with park amenities such as play structures, landscaped areas, toilets and picnic facilities.
West Kelowna plans to convert many of the 23 remaining road-ends into full-fledged pocket parks at the rate of about one every two years, but a few will be left in a more natural state because of challenging geography.
All, however, are to be clearly identified as public parks, with such signage expected to be complete this year.
“All these road-ends are public property, and our council has been very clear that opening them up for public use is one of our priorities,” Mayor Doug Findlater said in 2013, when Osprey Park was opened on a road-end in the waterfront neighbourhood of Green Bay.
“We can’t all live on the lake, but people do want to experience the water in a variety of ways,” Findlater said at the time.
The City of West Kelowna now has an application in to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations to get a lease for an enclosed swimming area covering 1,071 square metres at Aberdeen Park, which extends off West Bay Road.
Members of the public can comment on the application at the ministry’s website until April 16. An official opening date for Aberdeen Park has not yet been set, but is expected to be this spring.