Major recreation park in Glenmore step closer
A long-sought major recreation park for Glenmore nudged a little closer Monday to becoming reality.
City council began the rezoning process to change the designation of a 10.5-hectare site at the corner of Valley and Longhill from agriculture to municipal parkland.
Plans also are to spend $2.6 million on the park’s initial development this year, although the work mostly relates to making the site suitable for planned amenities that currently have neither a construction timetable nor budget.
“That’s part of the puzzle the city still needs to figure out,” Terry Barton, a planner, told council.
It could take up to 20 years to make the Glenmore complex as big and active as Kelowna’s three major recreation centres, in Rutland, at Parkinson and at the Mission sports fields, council heard.
Work this year will consist of underground utility servicing, internal road design, fencing, drainage works and establishment of a 15-metre-wide landscape buffer to protect the park from adjacent farms.
By late next year, the city aims to have opened two multi-use sports fields, mostly for soccer, but configurable also for football, rugby and cricket.
Future plans include a skateboard park, tennis and pickleball courts, basketball courts, a children’s water park, open lawns, walking trails and a twostorey indoor activity centre.
Since 1989, the city has had the intention of developing a major recreation park in Glenmore. The idea has been a part of every official community plan since 2000, but it wasn’t until 2011 that a site was settled upon.
“(With the rezoning), some history has been made, finally, on that property,” Mayor Colin Basran said.