Waterfront Parks - Some ideas

Project for Public Spaces is a US-based organization that devotes itself wholly to the study of public space across North America, and offers tips and suggestions on how to maximize the best use of this valuable resource. I am a member of this group. The following is an exerpt from an e-mail I received on the issue of car parking within urban parks:

U.S city parks have given over large swaths of green to automobile storage, but not every park is held hostage by the automobile. Cities are finding ways to increase access while relieving pressure to provide parking in parks.

Urban park advocates struggle mightily to create new green space through a precious parcel here and an irreplaceable acre there. But a large swath of existing parkland is given over to the prosaic task of automobile storage, complete with its side impacts - impermeable surface, water runoff and erosion, oil and gas drippings, heat island effect, displacement of trees and meadows, loss of playing area.

A study by the Center for City Park Excellence of 70 major city parks in the U.S. reveals that, collectively, they devote a total of 529 acres to the very technology that many people seek to escape when they head into their local patch of nature. In Chicago, which recently spent $475 million to create 24-acre Millennium Park, almost twice that much land - 46 acres - is given over to auto storage within nearby Lincoln Park.

Download the full report from TPL here.

(http://www.tpl.org/content_documents/Pavement%20in%20the%20Park.pdf)

Flipping through al of the resources on waterfront development on the internet, on PPS, in planing journals and in my own experience have led me to come up with my own preliminary thoughts on the issue of waterfronts:

How to Make a Bad Waterfront:

At all costs, do this:

• Single-use developments (large arenas, hotels, convention centres)
  
• Domination by cars (parking lots)
• Too much passive space (nothing to do but sit and stare)
  
• Private control / restricted access
• Lack of destinations (no centre of activity, no places to be)
  
• Lack of focus
  
• Process driven by development, not the community
• Make the park the destination – full stop.

How to Make a Great Waterfront:

• Make public goals the primary objective
• Create multiple destinations
• Connect the destinations
• Optimize public access
• Fit private development into the vision
• Use parks to connect – not as destinations in themselves
• Design buildings to engage public space
• Make single-use buildings into multi-purpose ones
• Limit cars! Make walking, cycling easy
• Don’t allow an empty waterfront! Encourage year-round 24/7 activities

Applying this to Riverside Park in my town of Kamloops, my thoughts on what we could do are as follows:

• Create a public vision for Riverside Park
• Create a year-round destination plan (skating rink, coffee shop, dog park, indoor market, art gallery, hotel, restaurants etc. where, when & how they fit)
• Make the plan & vision LAW (Riverside Park Plan, Kamplan, Development Permit etc.)
• Link the destination sites (upgrade paths etc.)
• Fix single-purpose destinations – turn them into year-round spaces (Arena, Bandstand, Pioneer Park etc.)
• Get rid of things that don’t work (parking lots!)
• Build nice things that fit the public vision (Public and Private)

In my thoughts, there is room for a hotel and convention centre project associated with the park - IF - it offers some significant benefits to public space, is multi-purpose, and enhances the park as a public space by INCREASING public access and amenity. If we can link into the Arena and enhance its year-round appeal, and create more year-round variety of activity happening there, all the better. What doesn't work for me though is allowing the parking lot to remain as it is - it seems like such a waste of public space, given the plethora of parking options in the area. Maybe the City can look into making the arena area into a special development permit area, and fix the terms and conditions under which development can happen.