The committee that’s trying to come up with ideas for redesigning and updating Winegarden Park in Gibsons could face a tough task sorting through all the ideas coming out of an online survey.
The results were passed on to Council on April 5, following the Winegarden Park advisory committee’s first official meeting.
Kirsten Rawkins, a landscape architect and member of the Town’s Advisory Planning Commission, will serve as chair of the seven-member committee, which also includes Art Philips, a consultant working with the developers behind the George Hotel proposal.
A very popular idea from the survey was extending the waterfront path further along the shoreline (83.5 per cent liked it). Others included picnic and seating areas, a place for musical performances and a play space for children.
A word collage representing things people don’t think work well in the park included references to geese and “goose poo,” the steep slope of the land, few winter use opportunities, and the possibility of the George or other tall buildings nearby.
There were also dozens of specific suggestions about everything from stage locations to playground equipment and water features.
The sheer number prompted Mayor Wayne Rowe to joke that, “having read the surveys, the task [of the committee] is almost impossible… If we tried to meet all of those [suggestions] there’d be no place for people left in the park.”
The committee held a site visit to look at terrain in late March. Its next steps will include setting priorities for the landscape architect to start working on a concept design.
A sum of $100,000 to redevelop the park is one of the potential community amenity contributions being negotiated as part of the development approval process. Town officials
say other funding could also be added through future budgets.
One thing the committee members noted was that not many parents with young children responded to the questionnaire, so they may reach out directly to that group using strategies like sending the survey to preschools.
