Kate Rutherford, treasurer of the Long Lake Flatwater Training Centre Society, was surprised when she heard the City of Nanaimo was spending $2.2 million to purchase two adjacent properties with single-family houses on them to expand Loudon Park.
The park is home to the local rowing and kayaking clubs, who operate out of an unheated, converted, outdoor picnic shelter and washroom built in 1967 and an aging portable trailer.
This year, there was controversy around a plan to build a new facility for the clubs that would include hot showers, accessible design, a gym for athletes training, indoor boat storage and a community space that would be bookable by the public. The plan would have required cutting down 29 mature trees and reducing the already limited parkland.
Now, the city’s land purchase provides an opportunity to possibly build that new facility for the clubs without removing the grove of trees.
“This [purchase] opens up a whole lot of area, and hopefully we’ll get a functional, economical building that will protect our equipment and, more importantly, our athletes,” Rutherford said.
Speaking at a rainy press conference in Loudon Park on Wednesday, Oct. 1, Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog discussed the conditions of the current facilities for the Nanaimo Rowing and Kayak Clubs.
“As we’re standing here in the cold, and the wet and the rain, not feeling entirely comfortable, thinking it might be better to be someplace warm, just imagine for a moment you’re a 14-year old out here training in January, and that’s the facility you get to go and work out in,” he told reporters.
The purchase “helps address priorities in the city’s Integrated Action Plan, with plans to improve the park and support the Nanaimo Rowing Club and Nanaimo Canoe & Kayak Club, which [have] called Long Lake home for decades,” a press release from the city said.
How much it cost
The city budgeted a total of $2,196,250 for the land purchase. To date, $2,187,563 has been spent on acquiring the land at 4256 Victoria Ave. and 4288 Victoria Ave., according to an email by Wendy Fulla, the city’s director of finance, that was shared with The Discourse.
The properties will increase the park size by 0.48 acres, bringing the total to 2.21 acres, a 28 per cent increase.
Krog thanked the attendees, which included representatives from the paddling clubs as well as the Wellington Action Committee, for “giving council the courage to make this kind of a purchase when everyone is criticizing governments for spending any amount of money on anything.”
In a post to Facebook, the “Save Long Lake’s Loudon Park” group called the purchase “good news.”
Coun. Ian Thorpe, a longtime advocate for youth sports in Nanaimo, said the purchase of the properties was expensive and that “council had to think and debate hard on this” but he thinks it is a “long-term acquisition which will really benefit the community.”
“So I can accept the cost, I think it is a worthwhile investment,” he said, and added that he would like to see improved facilities for the rowing and paddling clubs as well as improved access to the park in general.
Krog doesn’t think the city overpaid for the properties.
“It’s fair market value,” he told The Discourse. “These are lakefront properties. There are not a lot of lakefront properties in Nanaimo that are available.” He said the alternative to expanding the park was expropriation — where the city would take the properties without the consent of the owner.
“Having a willing purchaser and a willing seller is the way to go,” he said.
Krog defended the multi-million dollar price tag for the properties saying that with the population of the city increasing, the need for more parkland is also “increasing substantially” and that waterfront properties are good investments.
“Nobody in the City of Vancouver, to my knowledge, sits back and says ‘oh my goodness, what a big mistake they made acquiring that big chunk of land called Stanley Park,’” Krog said.
Houses to be rented as plans for boathouse and activity centre go back to council
While plans for a new facility will need to go through the city council’s processes, the mayor declined to give a timeline for when that might happen. In the meantime, he said the plan would be to rent the two houses on the new properties.
“There’s no sense having empty buildings in town,” Krog said. “As we all know, the vacancy rate still remains low. So the city will be a thoughtful and respectful landlord.”
Coun. Paul Manly said he made the in-camera motion to direct city staff to look at purchasing a number of properties to add to Loudon Park. That motion ultimately led to the new acquisition.
“The reason I did that is because Loudon Park is a postage-stamp sized park in an area where we’re going to have a transit exchange, and under provincial rules is going to be a secondary urban core,” he told The Discourse.
Manly said he would have liked to see the city buy more of the surrounding land to add to the park but the owners of the two properties were the ones who were willing to sell.
The opposition to the proposal to build a boathouse and activity centre in the park was also a good reason to purchase the land, Manly noted.
“You just saw with the previous proposal how much people love this little park,” he said. “They love the beach, they love the trees and now this gives us an option to put in an amenity space on the waterfront where those houses are.”
