The District of Squamish's $500,000 upgrade to its downtown park falls short of at least one Squamish environmental advocate's expectations.
When the municipality announced it was going to revamp Stan Clarke Park, Debra McBride said she looked forward to seeing new children's play equipment. But after attending an open house a month ago, she left with some big concerns.
At the forefront of McBride's worries are the park's mature cherry trees. The draft shows them being chopped down, a move she said doesn't make any sense.
Squamish Arts Council president Krisztina Egyed agrees. Egyed, who is considering starting a cherry blossom festival in Squamish, said she doesn't view scrapping the trees as an "improvement." Over the years, they have been improperly pruned to keep them away from nearby power lines, but re-shaping them wouldn't be difficult, Egyed said.
"Why would we pay to remove such beautiful trees and why would we pay to replace them?" she asked.
The proposal also calls for the cenotaph to be relocated, placing it in a landscaped area. McBride questioned whether the area anticipated by the park designers will accommodate the Remembrance Day and Canada Day crowds.
What the park could use are washrooms, which are not proposed in the plan, McBride noted.
The fate of cherry trees lies in council's hands, said Brian Barnett, the district's general manager of engineering and parks.
"It is easy to keep them or to take them out," he said. "We will let council make that decision. They are certainly not critical to the project."
The new park design creates "a strong central axis connecting the Second Avenue and Cleveland Avenue sides of the park, at a scale that could accommodate additional space for the Farmers Market," noted a 2011 preliminary design concept presented to council.
The draft includes a new "reading circle," an area that provides outdoor seating that could be used by Squamish library programs, the report stated.
In 2010, council allocated $80,000 to upgrade playground equipment in the park the following year. The work was delayed, as the municipality waited to hear if it had secured a $420,000 provincial grant, Barnett said. The application was approved last August.
