Group says raising $1.7M for waterfront park doable
An unprecedented fundraising drive to create a new city-owned waterfront park has a lofty but achievable target, proponents say.
The KLO Neighbourhood Association was given the green light Monday by city council to try to collect between $1 million and $1.7 million to begin development of a beach park in the 3000 block of Abbott Street.
“We feel it’s an attainable goal, but it is definitely a tall order,” said Joe Uhearn, a cochairman of the association.
“It’s really a city-wide thing, that people are interested in seeing this waterfront turned into parkland,” said Paul Clark, the other co-chair. “It’s certainly not just the immediate residents of the area that will enjoy the park. It’s for everyone.”
The association hopes sufficient money might be raised within a year from a variety of sources — including individual and corporate donations, grants from other levels of government and charitable foundations — so the city-owned properties north of Cedar Avenue can be opened up for public waterfront access in 2019.
Councillors said it was an unorthodox but intriguing idea to let a volunteer group undertake a major fundraising drive to try to create a new city park.
“I think it’s wonderful that they’re doing that,” said Coun. Charlie Hodge.
“It’s a pretty creative approach,” said Coun. Luke Stack. “One thing we all know is we have a tremendous deficit in (city) resources to develop our parkland.”
Although the city has owned seven waterfront properties on Abbott Street north of Cedar Avenue for many years, the plan is not to create a waterfront park in the area until 2026 at the earliest, at a cost currently estimated to be more than $6 million.
That’s been a sore point for many residents in the area, which prompted the KLO Neighbourhood Association to propose the fundraising drive.
“It’s a way of moving this project forward, because it seems like it’s sort of been buried by the city,” said Bob Whitehead, a former president of the association.
“I would have liked to have seen it be a 5050 partnership with the city, because that would be easier to achieve,” Whitehead said.
Council also approved a staff plan to open up three other city-owned waterfront properties that have limited or no public access.
These are properties at 808 Manhattan Point Drive, the Swick Road beach access in the Mission and Bluebird Beach Park, south of Bluebird Road in the Mission. Total cost of opening these properties for some public use is estimated at $115,000.