North Shore Dis-Advantage : Parks

 The City of Kamloops is huge, surrounded by Nature all around. That is a good thing. Proper wilderness is only a few clicks north. But North Kamloops, home to most of the Kamloops residential population, and at its highest densities, likely to get higher, is most lacking in park area. 

North Kamloops is best positioned to absorb the most amount of infill, from the flat land, to the sandy soil, to the river access, existing transit and a large amount of under-developed land. Living on the North Shore is great, and will continue to get better as more folks move to the neighbourhood - more and more neighbourhood businesses will be supported, the parks and streets will get safer with more foot traffic, and the access to all the cities jobs with the shortest possible commute make the North Shore desirable now, and that will only grow.

But in order to maintain the best quality of life for our Cities residents, especially those on and moving to the North Shore, we need to address the Parks deficiency on the North Shore.

To me, in the North American context, there are 3.5 kinds of parks:

• Nature Parks; like Kenna Cartwright, Peterson Creek, Barnhartvale, Valleyview (all south of the river, all very large, all very pretty).
• City Parks; like Riverside Park, Pioneer Park, the quasi-public land of TRU (all south of the River, all well maintained, all very pretty) In the Europe, Central-South American, Asian and African sense, there are many kinds of City Parks.
• Neighbourhood Parks; places where there is a playground, some grass, some shade, etc. In North America these are usually very family oriented, or have strange public food-growing-garden aspects. Providing community garden spaces when everyone in the area has huge backyards already, is strange
• Sports Parks; these are only kinda parks, as often they have exclusive use rights to specialized user groups like tennis, pickleball, baseball leagues, soccer leagues, like the Raleigh Fields or MacArthur Island. 

The type of Park that Europe and Asia have that we do not is:

• The Public Square / Piazza; these are areas which are paved, pedestrianized and feature commercial commerce and or urban amenties as their primary attraction. Plentiful bars, restaurants, patios, retail, playgrounds, fountains, sculptures, monuments and/or seating.

The North Shore has some cool opportunities to pioneer Public Squares, due to existing spots like Spirit Square, and large redevelopment parcels like Northills Mall or Cottonwood - however they will not be the subject of this article.

Let us start first with "City Parks". The South Shore has many fantastic parks, like the continuous park area of Riverside Park along the river through to Pioneer Park - which just within it, accommodates diverse user groups from a massive family splash park, the Bandshell (thus Music in the Park), tennis, pickleball, a rose garden, numerous public art installations, massive shaded lawns and beautiful planting beds, to a pier, to swimming, to massive off-leash dog area, amenities like food trucks, kayak rentals, change rooms and bathrooms. This is the premier Kamloops City Park, no doubt. 

Just across the River is Overlander Beach with a couple beach volleyball courts, a outhouse that is mostly locked, and some grass, which is often dead. The beach is of course fantastic, but naturally occurring. The amount of lawn, trees and landscaping maintained by the Parks department in the berms of the road, to make a drive slightly more 'green' is larger than the size of the park maintained by the Parks.

But; to me the pity here is the opportunity cost, how close these two parks are to each-other, without actually connecting. This is why I have been a proponent of a Pedestrian Bridge across the River here, to connect the two parks into one - and via the Rivers Trail on Schubert in turn making this park much more accessible to families on foot, bike, recreation, not to mention making Overlanders Beach accessible to Riverside Park.

McDonald Park is a pretty solid City Park - and it does host Music in the Park in a small gazebo a few nights per summer, but a bandshell it is not. Mc Donald Park hosts off leash dog area - but where Pioneer is a large area with river access, mature trees, riparian foliage, dozens of benches, bathrooms and a food truck connected to the Rivers Trails - instead McDonald lost its public pool for a dog park with no trees, no facilities and a couple of benches. The bathrooms are open, sometimes.... The splash park is nice, for the couple months per year it is open, but in comparison to the investment and maintenance of Albert McGowan or West Highlands Parks it seems to get just a little less love, despite serving a larger amount of people, and supported by a more dense tax base than those more sub-urban parks. It does not even have a single sidewalk which connects it to the neighbourhood around it.

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Next, because this blurb is short, and example most poignant, is "Sports Parks". MacArthur Island is one of the cities premier sports parks, if not the most. However that also means that the entire island is largely built for the exclusive use of private interest groups from all over the City, Province and Country for exclusive use - not for the use of people from the North Shore. This is why I said Sports Parks are a half-value park. They may have City wide draw, but for only specific user groups to the exclusion of casual nearby users.

I would like to include a note, that the skatepark on MacArthur is the best in the city, despite not ever being a skateboarder. Further skateboarding, is free. Democratic. Available to all at anytime for a low barrier to entry. That is not true of the other facilities at the park. Hockey, Soccer, Lawn Bowling, Baseball, pull from all over the City. North Shore included. But they are not neighbourhood amenities, and they exclude non participants. Where Riverside Park is nearly entirely for the public at large, MacArthur is not - no one would accept the suggestion to convert Riverside to private sports fields in the primary. 

This applies too, to the Singh Street bowl. What a privilege it is for the folks sandwiched between a dangerous goods route on Ord Road, and the CN Rail Tracks, to have their only City Park, Singh Street Bowl  - which is also soccer fields intended for use as such. There isn't a playground, or trees for shade, or other interesting design feature to compel the public at large to use this space. But the very folks in the trailer parks here are likely some of the folks with the most limited access to green space in our City.

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This makes a nice segue into "Nature Parks". To me, this is where the North Shore falls down the most. One of our cities best Nature Parks, especially in shoulder seasons is the BC Park in Lac du Bois, colloquially known as 'Batch' amongst my biking buddies. Closer as the crow flies to most of North Kamloops than Kenna is to most of Dufferin or Aberdeen. But for the North Shore residents so close to Lac du Bois are much much much further in the ability to actually get there and access that park. 

What could be a couple minute walk for thousands of North Shore home is a drive instead.

In the case of Lac du Bois, the solution from a geometric point of view is simple - just build sidewalks and trails from all over the North Shore that plug right into the the park, from where people live, to where they want to recreate. Currently they can drive 10 minutes from their house on Edgemont, bike 39 minutes, or walk 2 hours: just to go walk or bike in the grasslands for recreation. Drive to bike or drive to walk - when one could just walk to walk. No resident of the South Shore lives a 2 hour walk from the nearest Nature Park. Not even close.

The irony to me is while South Shore Nature Parks make up part of every neighbourhood; South Shore residents have the biggest yards, water the most private lawns, have the largest private green spaces, and the highest rates of personal vehicles able to drive to use parks all over the City. Folks on the North Shore have the smallest amount of personal green space, the smallest amount of public green space, and the most restricted access to public greenspace, like MacArthur Island or Lac du Bois.

Are there illegal trails that connect to the Grasslands? Of course!!!! Lots!!! When you live in an area that doesn't provide, people provide for themselves. The same way we have tried to restrict density, and heavily regulated infill housing - the informal (illegal) market just provided basement suites anyways. which led to thousands of people living insecurely in house-share situations, illegal suites, garages and RVs. 

In Lac du Bois, enterprising community minded folks have taken it on themselves to create trails in the grasslands to connect their community to Nature Parks. Especially so in areas like the North Shore which have a very low percentage of private green space. 

While the South Shore gets the Kamloops Bike Ranch, a premier bike facility the envy of any rider in the province, the North Shore teenagers, unable to drive, and unable to access the South Shores facilities built their own illegally (at no cost to the taxpayer). One further note here - as a world destination for mountain biking, areas like the Bike Ranch are often crowded and completely over-subscribed. The success of the Bike Ranch should be replicated on the North Shore.

Environmentally conscious folks, concerned about snake habitat and grassland areas should also be considerate of the pragmatic reality: failure to make these connections and manage them does not lead to more, but rather less, preservation of sensitive habitat. The teenagers building bike jumps and the walkers just trying to get out, don't necessarily know any better, or don't care. Giving them designated areas and trails is true management. Pretending it doesn't happen or shouldn't is not helping. Further for those who can (not kids and teenager and seniors) drive to the park, do, which probably negates the gains from saving that small trail from being built sensitively rather than generating traffic and vehicle trips.

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There is two sides to parks. One is to provide them to the folks living within the area. This is the scenario I prefer: We could do this by improving and re-prioritizing our existing space like I suggest in my article about Schubert Drive. Once upon a time, every school had its all ball diamond, and own ice rink, and own playground - and all their use was open to all. Now we have private playgrounds, and we group all diamonds and ice rinks together - so that each activity requires parents driving across town or the schools bus kids too. 

Instead of 4 soccer pitches at Riverside and 4 at MacArthur, connected by good infrastructure, they all get put on the North Shore. We could spend money and resources to improve the North Shores existing parks for the folks in the area - both the quality and breadth of amenities offered.

Increasing vibrancy and usage of the City Parks we have could also include reducing the restrictions on City Parks - we basically already let any meth-addict set up shop wherever they like, why not let friends head out and slackline with a beer, or have a picnic with the family with a bottle of wine, or allow public events like dance classes without tens of thousands of dollars of insurance or safety management plans - like the free Tuesday night danse classes in Mexico City below. More on rules and restrictions in parks here. 

So one approach is to distribute parks, and types of parks, throughout the city. The other is to provide better mobility to the parks we already have.

We could invest in sidewalks, MUPs and other connections to existing parks like McDonald and Lac du Bois. 

In a previous post - I suggest that Schubert could be the Riverside Park of North Kamloops. A 4km long masterpiece of a park which could include all kinds of amenities. Combined with robust, and quality investments in the cities TMP routes. Like my Schubert suggestions - the TMP routes are almost entirely already on very low traffic roads, which mean giving over a large amount of space for street trees to shade wide sidewalks should be easily possible, without diminishing automobile access. 

After the Schubert Plan, connecting Lac du Bois to the North Shore, also through strong MUP and greenway connections is low hanging fruit. Trail work volunteers would be willing to do, as evidenced by the amount of illegal trail is already constantly developed and maintained up that hillside to the grasslands trails. And greenways from the residential neighbourhood can start cheaply as part of road repaving projects, and improved over time. The costs would be minimal, and city investments in sidewalks and MUPs within the existing neighborhoods would see huge utilization with minimal investment. If you compare the Summit Drive MUP which replaced existing sidewalks and connects nearly nobody, to nearly nothing, on complex hilly terrain - the flat land and simple geometry of  Brock and the North Shore would see much larger impact for far less dollars. 

Further, I expect the Summit MUP will generate almost zero economic spin-off. No new apartment buildings or businesses will open or become viable as a result of that City investment. On the North Shore, this type of investment will help to generate even further hundreds of millions in new private sector investments. Even more with land use reforms.

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That last thing the City could do, as mentioned before, to connect our cities best urban areas, Downtown and the North Shore - with the greatest walkability, the most mature trees, flat land, mixed-use, diverse architectural character, river access and under-developed land with the rest of the city; would be to embark on some large proper infrastructure projects. Like things I have wrote about already: a proper MUP connection from Henry Grube to Riverside. This would make Overlanders Beach as much as South Shore amenity as Riverside a North Shore one, while we wait for SD73 Henry Grube to eventually re-develop.

We could also look at the crazy idea of the Gondola. Or at least create a Right-Of-Way for its future. Connecting Kenna Cartwright to the North Shore, and TRU to housing and parks at both ends. Connecting the two Tournament Capital projects to eachother. Suddenly a huge nature park like Kenna is just a few minutes commute, without a car, to thousands on the North Shore. And for the NIMBYs of the South Shore - those are park users are often currently parking in front of your house, to which my experience suggests, you take much offense. 

Or to Bury Fortune Drive - partly to have the trench do double duty as a flood canal (as Malaysia and other countries have done) but primarily to repair the gigantic, nearly un-crossable auto freeway that runs right through the North Shore splitting it into two distinct halfs, and rendering East-West traffic nearly non-existent. Burying Fortune would allow fast commute time between Brock, the Airport, Westsyde and the South Shore to continue, will also allowing for significant improvement of the Quality life of residents above ground. So too would it facilitate more green space, east-west mobility, and thus as population density continues to increase it will have minimal effect on traffic and mobility for locals, and those passing through.

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The North Shore has lacked public investment since before it was brought into the Kamloops umbrella. Due to its poor infrastructure and ad-hoc construction, that may have been a short-term loss for Kamloops as a whole when unified. Today, the North Shore is THE area with the greatest upside, but it lacks public funded support. It lacks investments that often the rest of the city receives. Lately, some stellar projects have come online. Beautification projects with private support at Clapperton/Knox/Tranquille and Yew/Tranquille have been very successful - but much work is left to do. 

Luckily, most of that work is not very hard - it is just slightly changing priorities in already funded public projects. But we, as North Kamloops, must put on the pressure, and make our voices heard.