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Vancouver — Vancouver's oldest, largest and most popular park – an urban green space that is known as a national treasure – is in for a major face lift after getting pounded by a series of winter storms that blew down 10,000 trees, flattening whole sections of forest.
In addition to the existing signs that guide visitors to the tranquil waters of Lost Lagoon, or to the mute totem poles that stand near the seawall promenade, officials may soon have to put up notices of a very different kind in world famous Stanley Park.
“Renovations under way. Sorry for the inconvenience,” signage will be in order this summer when a major project to restore the storm damaged park gets under way, mixing the whine of chain saws with the trill of bird song.
In a briefing yesterday, Vancouver Park Board officials laid out a $9 million plan to remove most of the uprooted or shattered trees, to relocate a road and parking lot that has contributed to slope instability above the seawall promenade, and to plant some 20,000 trees to regenerate the badly damaged forest.
Debris continues to block the path along the Stanley Park Seawall Tuesday March 27, 2007 as ships sit at anchor in English Bay. (Chuck Stoody/CP)
Power saws and heavy equipment will be active at times in various parts of the park once the reconstruction work starts. Logging crews are waiting for the ground to dry out this spring, but are expected to begin work in several weeks.
“Yes, there is going to be some noise and some sights that we're not used to seeing in the park,” Park Board Chair, Ian Robertson, acknowledged after releasing the Stanley Park restoration plan.
But Mr. Robertson said the reconstruction work will be focused in specific, damaged areas, so the peace and quiet that makes 391-hectare Stanley Park a green refuge in the heart the city, will still be there in places.
“Your sights and sounds will be quite different, depending on where you are,” he said.
Mr. Robertson described Stanley Park, which was established in 1888, as “the collective link to our past and our future,” and promised that in 100 years from now the park will still provide “the green solitude,” it is famous for.
He said the provincial government is expected to announce today that it will be contributing $2 million to the project, and matching funds have already been promised by Ottawa and the City of Vancouver.
Donations from the public, from corporations, and the sale of some of the $1 million in timber knocked down by the storms, will provide the balance.
“We are fully funded,” said Mr. Robertson.
One of the biggest changes will be at Prospect Point, where a road and parking lot will be moved back from the escarpment overlooking the seawall.
Jim Lowden, director of special projects for the Park Board, said the changes at the famous view point are needed because run-off water from the parking lot contributed to the destabilization of the cliff face that towers over the seawall walk at Prospect Point.
Falling mud, rocks and trees have made the seawall unsafe since the last of the three storms that swept through in December and January.
Mr. Lowden said it's unclear when the seawall, a popular walking, roller blading, biking and jogging route, will be fully re-opened, because the escarpment can't be evaluated until all of the downed trees on the cliff have been removed. A detour route will be established so that people can still circumnavigate the park, a popular activity with many of the eight million people who visit the park each year.
Mr. Lowden said the goal is to restore the mixed coastal forest that covers most of the park, so that in time Stanley Park will look much as it does in pictures taken a generation ago.
He said although heavy equipment will be used and a lot of downed trees will be cut up and hauled away, the essential nature of the park will not be changed.
“We will not add to the gravel surface and we will not add to the paved surface in the park,” he said.
He said that as heavy equipment is pulled out of certain areas machine tracks will inevitably left behind. The public will be consulted to see if any of those temporary roads should be developed into trails, but if they are, other less popular trails would likely be closed, he said.
The plan will go to the Park Board for approval at a special public meeting next Monday.
