The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Council eyes $3M plan
Coun. Waye Mason still remembers the hundreds of emails he received, within a week of being elected in 2012, about a rumoured four-pad ice surface going in Gorsebrook Park.
“Some of them had a tone of, ‘Not only will you never get re-elected, but you will never be able to walk down the street again if you let them build on the toboggan hill,” Mason said with a laugh in an interview Sunday.
So when the Gorsebrook Park plan was put together, Mason made sure the toboggan hill and other areas important to the community remained intact.
The plan is to be presented at Tuesday’s regional council meeting.
“Being bracketed by Point Pleasant Park and the Common means that Gorsebrook is often overlooked by people who don’t live here,” Mason said.
“But it’s a great park. It doesn’t need massive changes, but it hasn’t been looked at in 40 years in terms of the programming and design.”
In the proposed plan, the park would be opened up for more lawn space by relocating the tennis courts and eliminating one of the baseball fields.
The tennis courts would be moved next to the ball hockey court, leaving room to put in climbing boulders and hammocks.
The St. Francis baseball field would be removed, leaving the Gorsebrook field to be expanded.
With the restructuring of the sporting areas, a “great lawn” space for recreational sports, family outings and other events, surrounded by a walking loop, would be placed at the heart of the park
As requested by the community to keep some parking on Lundys Lane, it would be reduced to a single row with an area to turn around and drop passengers or equipment off at the end.
In the final phase of the proposed plan, public washrooms and a changing facility would be added to the park.
“(Gorsebrook Park) has one of the best playgrounds in HRM now and there's no washroom,” Mason said.
“So it's really time-limited if anybody needs to pee, so that kind of change in the long run will let both sports and recreational users enjoy the space much longer.”
Mason hopes if the plan is approved, the washrooms would be partially funded by the regional washroom strategy.
The plan comes with an estimated price tag of $3 million.
“I think those numbers aren't intimidating because that's what we're spending on all our regional parks,” he said, giving Graves Oakley Memorial Park and Beazley Field as examples.
What Mason is more worried about is how the community will react to the elimination of the ball field and the paved walkway.
“I have to check in with the softball and baseball folks,” he said, “and I just need some reassurance that there won't be a lift (at the bottom of the toboggan hill) and we won't have kids flying all over the place.
“Other than that, I think they pretty much nailed it and that the trade offs are good, but I have to hear from the community to make sure that we've nailed it.”
If the proposal is approved, “the production of a detailed design would be the next step to fine-tune program areas and project phases.”