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The decision on ranking new community centres (and outdoor pools) starts tomorrow

July 7th, 2010 · 25 Comments

Community centres are among the most popular social centres in the city. They’re all packed to the rafters and the park board/city can’t seem to build them fast enough.

Every three years, the park board gets the unlovely job of deciding which one or two centres will be replaced in the next three-year capital plan. Although they look at factors like age of the existing building and the population that the centre is serving, another factor is how hard the community fights for a centre and what it’s able to contribute.

So the lining up starts tomorrow (July 8) at the planning committee of park board, 6:30 at the park board offices (agenda item attached below).

One of the debates this year is going to be over the whole messy outdoor pool issue. As people who follow this blog know, the Mount Pleasant community is up in arms over the closure of the small outdoor pool at 16th and Ontario. There is a new outdoor pool at the new Olympics-built community centre but 1. it’s not open yet and 2. the pool is just a wading pool, not the kind of pool that allows people to do laps outside or be a cool teenager hangout. (Scuttlebutt in the community is that there was supposed to be a real full-size outdoor pool, but that park planners bowed to opposition from nearby residents, who were worried about the noise that would emanate from a full-size pool.)

At the same time, people in Sunset are also mad that their outdoor pool was closed. For the last few years, the mantra at park board has been that those neighbourhood outdoor pools are passe and too expensive, given that they only operate three or four months of the year. To which irate residents point out that there are three lovely, huge outdoor pools, one recently built, all north of First Avenue in the city, but absolutely nothing easily for the other four-fifths of the city.

I had coffee the other day with park board commissioners Aaron Jasper and Sarah Blyth, who are feeling the heat on this issue and seem to be searching for some kind of solution — possibly digging out the wading pool at the new Riley Park centre and turning it into a full outdoor pool for the central city that could be used by people from Sunset and Marpole as well.

So, if you want something in your neighbourhood, best start crusading ASAP or it could be shuffled aside for other priorities.

As promised, the agenda

Board of Parks and Recreation
Planning & Environment Committee Meeting
Thursday, July 08, 2010 at 6:30 pm
at 2099 Beach Avenue

AGENDA

  1. Approval of Minutes of the May 6, 2010 Meeting
  2. Community Centre Renewal Priorities
     Staff presentation and delegations in regards to the priorities for community centre and other recreation facilities renewal and the identification of feasibility studies for a number of potential projects.
  3. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden Update
     Association presentation on the condition of the facility.

Members of the public will be invited to speak to the Committee on these items. For further information, please contact Hart Nijjar at 604.257.8453.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Stuart Mackinnon

    “possibly digging out the wading pool at the new Riley Park centre and turning it into a full outdoor pool for the central city that could be used by people from Sunset and Marpole as well.”

    Why would we fill in the pool at Mt. Pleasant and then dig out the pool at Riley, especially as they just built a pool across the street? I for one am looking forward to hearing more about this tomorrow night.

  • Dan Cooper

    “Scuttlebutt in the community is that…park planners bowed to opposition from nearby residents, who were worried about the noise that would emanate from a full-size pool.”

    Curious, if true (and that’s a big if, of course). With the noise from the multiple, existing sports fields, not to mention Nat Bailey, I would think a pool wouldn’t make much of a difference. But what do I know?

  • Dave

    can you smell …

    the operative word for these Comissioners who could be going down to defeat..

    Election coming…..

    better look like we are listening and act like we want to do something….

    it’s called make ourselves look good when we try and get re-elected

  • Tiktaalik

    Cool thing ruined by “opposition from nearby residents” sums up Vancouver pretty well.

  • Joe Just Joe

    They need to manage their budget on current facilites more efficiently. The Parks board has just spent a large sum of money in East Van upgrading Trout Lake and Renfrew community Centres, but at the end they will be very similar to what we started with. One has a Rink and one has a Pool while the demand is definetaly there for both facilities to house both just like Killarney does. I’m sure there are similar upgrades to exisiting centres that could be made all over the city which would greatly reduce pressure on exisiting infunstructure.

  • Urbanismo

    Ranking community centres . . .

    http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/thu.future/w.team.html

    . . . leave it to the experts . . .

  • Lizzie

    “For the last few years, the mantra at park board has been that those neighbourhood outdoor pools are passe and too expensive, given that they only operate three or four months of the year.”
    Vancouver Park Board may feel that way, but it’s not the case in other cities. Montreal has “150 or so outdoor swimming pools [that] open in mid-June and drain out in late August.” Closer to home, New Westminster has a brand new outdoor pool at Moody Park.

    Swimming is an outdoor activity. As well as being more fun, outdoor pools are healthier: there have been at least a few studies that have found a correlation between children swimming in indoor pools and developing problems with asthma in later life.

    BOTH Mount Pleasant and Sunset should have outdoor pools. Taking kids to Kits or 2nd Beach on a hot bus (actually, several hot buses) isn’t an option. Nor is it an option for seniors. This should be a no-brainer – if we’re going to minimize car travel, facilities need to be accessible without cars. Outdoor pools included.

  • AnnetteF

    Northeast False Creek is set to have one of the highest densities in the city. Southeast False Creek is a blanket of development applications. Gastown and Chinatown are seeing new mid-rise buildings being added. Yet there is no proposal to add anything but the new Olympic Village community centre for recreation facilities in East False Creek.
    East False Creek needs an indoor swimming pool to accomodate this coming population surge. We can’t all fit in to the Aquatic Centre-its already packed.
    If you feel the same please attend tomorrow nights meeting and speak up about it.

  • Margery

    Digging up a brand new and expensive outdoor wading pool instead of fulfilling the repeated promise to rebuild Mount Pleasant Outdoor Pool would be a giant waste of resources. Mount Pleasant Park has been dug up and is about to be redeveloped. Replacing the facility rather than facing further loss of outdoor pools is where we should start. Let’s not revert to the outdated Aquatic Strategy to centralize pools and eliminate the smaller pools around the city.

  • Bill Lee

    And they should start the greening of Hastings Park, with a cross-over to New Brighton Pool.

    And stop their current expensive plant to titivate with booths the eastern part of the park. Reforesting tho entire grounds is cheaper and what the locals want, if they dare cross 8 lanes of traffic to get there.

    Times and the people have changed.

  • Anita Romaniuk

    I suspect that the objection to a full-size outdoor pool at Hillcrest (Riley) is because it would cause further intrusion into the playing fields that are adjacent to the new community centre and pool, rather than anything to do with noise. The new facility is built partly over where a T-Ball field used to be. The T-Ball field will be replaced on the east side of Ontario, adjacent to the ball diamond there, once the old community centre & pool are torn down. However, the sports teams that use the fields for baseball/softball/soccer would not be happy if they lost more playing field space at Hillcrest. We are short of playing fields in Vancouver, too!

    There is a long list of community centres, pools, rinks, and playing fields in Vancouver that still need upgrading, some of which have been noted by others in this conversation. Parks & Recreation get less than one-tenth of the total capital budget (3 year plan) in Vancouver that we vote on at election time, and it doesn’t go very far.

    Mt Pleasant Pool falls into the category of “unfinished business”. The Park Board in October 2005 voted to retain a pool (meaning any demolition of the old pool, which was in bad shape, would be replaced by another one) at Mt Pleasant. The motion also called for Park Board staff to consult with the community on fundraising. The Mt Pleasant community is willing to do its share and we have recently formed a non-profit society called Vancouver Society for Promotion of Outdoor Pools and people from other outdoor-pool deprived areas such as Sunset are welcome to join.

    The Board of the Sunset Community Centre was desperate to get their aging community centre replaced and was willing to sacrifice the outdoor pool in order to do that (i.e., not enough money for both) – although many people in the community were not pleased with this. Kudos to the Mt Pleasant Community Association and people from the community for putting their collective feet down and telling the Park Board that taking their pool away permanently is not on.

  • karen

    I heard a little something something today on CBC talk that got me thinking …

    Someone was talking about a new skatepark being build somewhere in the city that is supposed to be “most rad” … because it is going to be in the shape of an outdoor pool.

    Let’s ask the goofy powers that control the purse strings of our tax dollars to build US … as proposed at Mount Pleasant … a super rad pool skate park thingie and then let’s all get out there with our hoses (we’d better invite the firemen down the road to assist) and fill that baby up with water when needed.

    Seriously! Sunset should ask for the same, and make sure they put in the boards for totally awesome stunts by said skaters.

    I for one will be at the meeting tomorrow night, regardless of the motivation of the current board. And then I will be voting each of their butts out of council at the next opportunity. I hope you all do the same.

    #1 Kingsway is a sham — has anybody else noticed the costly “art project lights” that hang from the front lounge ceiling and shine right in the eyes of anyone participates in a class in that room while shining old pictures on the windows facing Kingsway?! (I heard it cost somewhere in the 5 digits, and closer to 6.) Anybody taken a child to a program at the centre and then looked for a playground for their other children to play in while they wait?! (Locked on third floor for daycare use only!)

    How this building could possibly replace what existed INSIDE the neighbourhood is a mystery to most of us who are longtime users of the original Mount Pleasant Community Centre. Yeesh!!!

  • Dan Cooper

    Speaking in defense of #1 Kingsway…..almost every time I go there to visit the library (an extra block or two from my office than the old one at Kingsgate, but well worth the walk) the youth room and gyms are packed with kids and adults in activities. Just because the Centre is no longer “inside [YOUR] neighbourhood” does not mean it isn’t inside many other people’s neighbourhood, and highly accessible by bus to yet more people. In fact – in this case – the Centre seems from observation, and reports from my staff informant there, to be serving many more people than the previous location. Does that mean there shouldn’t be services also provided at the 16th Avenue site? Not at all. But neither does a lack of services up on 16th mean that Kingsway isn’t meeting a need or providing real services.

    Cheers!

  • Margery

    Indeed #1 Kingsway is a giant success. It lacks a swimming pool, and that’s one vital recreational facility loss in the inventory of Vancouver’s recreational facilities.

  • Bill Smolick

    Why would you dig out the pool at Riley Park when it’s mere steps from the new Aquatic Centre at Hillcrest Park. It’s a circuitous 1.2km if you walk on sidewalks instead of cutting through the park.

    Margery…wow, you keep on it about that pool. One might think you only had a single thing you cared about.

    The only community centre didn’t have a climbing wall. You lost a pool and gained a climbing wall which was FULL of children when I was in there yesterday.

    Life is funny that way. It’s all about the trade offs.

    New pool at Hillcrest Park is chlorinated. I was hoping it would be ozone.

  • Lizzie

    We’ve traded an outdoor pool for a climbing wall?!?!? What community in its right mind would make such a choice!? I’m sure the kids who are able to use the wall have a wonderful time, but they’re really a tiny proportion of the population. For toddlers, seniors, people with arthritis or other mobility issues, etc, a climbing wall is meaningless. Mount Pleasant Pool could be used by EVERYONE in the community, and all age groups were represented. 2-year-olds learned to swim there, many seniors swam there virtually every day, even on rainy days. For many of the people who used to swim there, a long bus-ride in the heat is not only unrealistic, but likely dangerous. (btw, betcha if there was still a pool to go to, yesterday that wall would’ve been empty!)

  • Bill Smolick

    Well Lizzie, apparently there are SOME people who might have made the choice. I can’t speak for everyone and don’t pretend too.

    Of course, neither can you but you seem to be suggesting that you are (and do.)

    My point is that you might want to consider looking at the whole board, as we say in chess matches. Blindly focusing on a single issue without regard for its place in the entire ecosystem often results in your voice being ignored as an extremist.

  • Bill Smolick

    I’m happy to let you know that I’ve done the seemingly impossible. Yes, it’s true. I’ve forded creeks, dodged poisoned arrows and braves the wilds of Hillcrest Park to check out the new pool there.

    Which reminds me Lizzie…you didn’t lose a pool, it’s just moving. You didn’t trade a pool for anything. The city has the same number of outdoor pools as it always has, save this brief period where the new one has been closed.

    Anyway…I’m HAPPY to report that the outdoor pool at Hillcrest is in fact an outdoor pool. My guess would put it at about 5 feet deep at it’s deepest so you raging yummy mummys will be able to take your kids there.

    You can thank me later. I pedalled over there and walked up to the fence to look. Y’all coulda’ done the same.

    What’s not obvious from looking at it is if there’s going to be an outdoor lap swimming pool. If so it’s certainly not more than 25m in length, so I may be swimming laps indoors. You can come find me and tell me off in person. I’ll be in the medium lane.

  • Margery

    Bill, I do keep going on about that pool as though it’s the single thing I care about. This campaign needed that kind of focus, there were so many twists and turns…The Save Mount Pleasant Pool Committee was formed in 2003, and became the Mount Pleasant Pool Commitee in 2005 when 2 motions were passed to retain the pool at the site and begin to look at rebuilding the worn out pool. In spite of these motions, it’s been an uphill struggle all the way and enourmous community support has been gathering all the wayup the hill. With a third motion being passed in 2009 to replace the pool, we still need to be very activevly engaged. The Vancovuer Society for Promotion of Outdoor Pools has now been registered and will continue on with the promotion of…..outdoor pools and outdoor aquatic activities even after the replacement of Mount Pleasant Outdoor Pool. The society is accepting memeberships now, $5 per individual, $10 per family, and $50 per organization. I hope you will join us one day.

  • Margery

    Also to Bill re : “Which reminds me Lizzie…you didn’t lose a pool, it’s just moving. You didn’t trade a pool for anything. The city has the same number of outdoor pools as it always has, save this brief period where the new one has been closed.”
    RIP Hastings Outdoor Pool (1994), Oak Outdoor Pool (1997), and Sunset Outdoor Pool (2008). As Anita said, Mount Pleasant residents are making it clear that permanently closing another outdoor pool ‘isn’t on” and this will be to the benefit of the entire city in terms of availability of summer recreation opportunities for people of all ages and abilities, for the 50 or 60 year lifespan of the pools.

  • Bill Lee

    @Margery // Jul 10, 2010 at 11:57 am
    And I would add the loss of wading pools like at Grandview elsewhere for “water parks” so that kids won’t drown, and there is no need for a paid life guard.
    Kids should drown as Jonathan Swift said.

    We are making the world too safe for children.

    And Hastings Park (PNE) needs a park plan not a “business plan” that they are not projecting.

  • Bill Lee

    not “not projecting”
    but
    now projecting with booths everywhere.

  • Lizzie

    Actually, we’ve lost a pool & a half this summer, since Percy Norman currently closes at 5 pm Fridays & doesn’t open again till 6 o’clock Monday mornings, & on the days that it is open it’s used for swimming lessons from 10-2 M-F + 2 evenings, so there’s only one lane open to the public for 25 or 30 of the hours that it’s open. Also, the opening date of Hillcrest, which has been moved back 3 or 4 times already – once because the pool needed structural repairs – is still uncertain.

  • Bryan Stewart

    City needs a combination of adequate community centres, indoor pools, and outdoor pools. Real problem lies with the fact that Vancouver seems to want to build “Cadillac Facilities,” when budget only allows for a Chevy Budget. Let’s stop designing ridiculously overbuilt LEED gold facilities and focus on facilities that are still sustainable, but we can actuallly afford. Case in point, #1 Kingsway that cost almost $50 million dollars and took 6 years to complete. Affordable yet safe building designs, tender bids, and get private companies to build these structures. Less consultants and more contractors would also go a long way into freeing up much needed cash.

  • Jon Petrie

    Re: absent pool at 1 Kingsway, Leed Gold etc.

    Many people in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood understood that 1 Kingsway would be a full replacement for the old community center on Ontario … i.e. that 1 Kingsway would include a pool. A large sign on the construction sight circa 2006 listing new amenities coming was at one point amended with a marking pen addition “But NO Pool !”. This addition to the official sign did not last long.

    I suggested at some point that instead of spending money on parking for the community facility — roughly $3.5 million for circa 90 parking stalls that today are rarely occupied by more than 10 cars — a pool go into the basement. One Vancouver planner thought the suggestion was a good joke.

    I Kingsway is Leed Gold certified — an exercise in green wash to a large degree:

    > National Research Council of Canda’s Institute for Research in Construction, … found that LEED certified buildings do not, on balance, perform more efficiently than non-LEED structures, and in many instances actually consume more energy. Furthermore, the correlation between a building’s LEED certification level (platinum, silver, molybdenum, whatever) and its relative energy efficiency was found to be notably weak <

    http://www.greenbuildingsnyc.com/blog/david/good-news-bad-news-for-leed-in-two-recent-studies and http://www.constructionweekonline.com/article-6572-not-all-leed-buildings-save-energy/

    Above 1 Kingsway are 98 city owned market rental housing units. The marketing of the units has been abysmal, which from my perspective is throwing money down the drain — money that could be used for pools.

    And seemingly City policy is to NOT market its new Leed rental units, perhaps an unannounced radical environmentally measure. (No tenants means significant savings on electrical usage.)

    The City owned rental building in the Leed certified Olympic Village complex is completely empty (151 W 1st); there are no signs giving contact numbers on the building; and a call to City Hall produced a statement that a marketing agent has not yet been selected by Council.