Councillors’ edict: No loss of park space for new pool

Construction of a new Crystal Pool in Central Park should mean no net loss of park green space, Victoria councillors directed Thursday.

The decision means city staff are to investigate alternatives for providing parking for pool users, including street parking, but most likely by using the parking lot at nearby Royal Athletic Park.

Councillors acknowledged that there will have to be space adjacent to the new pool for handicapped parking and for child pickup.

Current designs called for about 100 parking stalls immediately north of the new facility. But that plan would equate to about a seven per cent loss of green space.

“We see that keeping the status quo, re: parking, means a seven per cent reduction in park space. Is that something that we want in the 21st century when we own a parking lot a block away? I don’t know that that’s the kind of status quo we want to maintain,” Mayor Lisa Helps said.

Coun. Geoff Young, who with Helps proposed looking at Royal Athletic for pool parking, noted that the farthest distance in the Royal Athletic parking lot from the Central Park entrance is about 250 metres.

“Typical walking distances at Mayfair or Hillside [shopping centres] from ‘bad’ parking spaces would be in excess of 200 metres, while even out at single-lot big-box stores distances can be well over 100 metres,” Young estimated.

Coun. Ben Isitt suggested that councillors revisit the idea of keeping open the existing pool facility while the new one is being built, and instead demolish and build on the same site.

“I’ve been persuaded by comments from North Park residents over the last few months that they don’t want to see their park destroyed,” Isitt said, acknowledging that the original decision was made so as not to inconvenience pool users.

“I personally think the balance has tipped for me, that inconvenience for pool users is an acceptable impact and the inconvenience for park users that we’re contemplating, to me isn’t desirable,” he said.

By building on the existing site, the city would save costs by not having to replace parkland and amenities that will be destroyed or relocated if the pool is built elsewhere in the park, Isitt said.

But others said closing the Crystal for 30 months or more for demolition and reconstruction is not acceptable.

“I can’t see us not having a public pool for that length of time,” said Coun. Marianne Alto, noting that in many respects the Crystal Pool is an essential service.

“The amount of people who go to the Crystal Pool and use this facility, limited as they are in comparison to what we’re anticipating, I think that is an essential service to those people. Sometimes it’s recreation. Sometimes it’s very essential to their health for a variety of reasons,” Alto said.

Meanwhile, plans are being made to relocate Central Park’s Steve Nash basketball court to the Royal Athletic parking lot at an estimated cost of $90,000.

Staff will examine issues such as: • The schedules of the pool and Royal Athletic Park to determine if peak usage of the facilities occurs at different times and whether Royal Athletic lends itself better to daytime use, when consultants say not all parking is needed. • How much parking can be kept directly adjacent to the pool entrance for handicapped and other uses? • Whether the parking lot at Royal Athletic lends itself to having affordable housing built over underground parking.