Open letter to Kelowna city council:
The Cedar Avenue Park property badly needs a makeover.
Our city “construction crew” has had such great success in approval of office complexes, highrises, mega projects, parking facilities and even a costly “biffy”—it is now time to look in this other direction.
Please, take a break from all of this empire building and give sincere thought to a more balanced development by approving the vision and intent of an earlier council who, years ago, purchased the property for a future lakeside park. The purchase price has, over 25 years, been compensated by rental of the houses on the site.
Because of the high water (and the dumping of rock on the shoreline) it cannot, at the moment, be done, but a walk along this beautiful bay should be sufficient to alarm a discriminating council and all of us to the danger of losing it to even more concrete and steel.
Granted, it has been allowed to become such a mess it now requires considerable vision to see what was once very apparent.
This idyllic viewpoint, which drew so many people here, is so reminiscent of Kelowna before so much lakeside and lakeside views were lost to the general public.
All that is required is the careful demolition of the houses, the planting of grass and the selective preservation of trees.
The water analysis is a mute point—whether or not one could swim there should not be a detriment to the multiple reasons to create the park.
It could in fact be argued that many areas where the public now swim and where the ducks and geese now congregate, could also be suspect.
It is, in fact, the quite derelict east side of Abbott Street, next to the greatly enhanced Southgate developments, that cries out for inclusion.
Views over this beautiful panorama would further create a unique and quite exceptional attraction to tourists and residents alike.
Considering the explosion of new residents city-wide and Southgate in particular, and the mega projects to the south and the present crowded beaches, not moving ahead with this opportunity is beyond understanding—we need our green spaces—build the park now.
J.L. Lambrick,
Kelowna
