Proposed Centre
Commentary: Originally published Jan 30 2012
Have you ever received a gift out of the blue? You know, that well intentioned present from someone you know, a present you didn’t expect and aren’t sure you want, but will accept with polite kindness your mother taught you to show in these circumstances? Well that’s how quite a few Cowichan Bay Village residents are feeling after work began this week on the new Cowichan Bay Estuary Nature Centre at Hecate Park.
Hecate Park, is our community’s one and only green grassy space. It’s where you go to have a picnic, run your dog on the beach, sit in the sunshine, fly a kite… well you get the picture. It’s also one of the largest parking spaces in our tiny community, as well as the place where sports fishers from the area and locals alike launch boats into the Bay itself. Parking for their vehicles and boat trailers is provided, but isn’t in abundant supply. Occasionally, our summer visitors bring motor-homes and campers, and while it’s not exactly allowed, they do stay overnight from time to time, a use the parking area is certainly big enough for unless the practice becomes more widespread. This isn’t a WalMart parking lot we’re talking about.
Enter the Cowichan Community Land Trust and their plan for a 1000 square foot $300,000 dollar Cowichan Estuary Nature Centre. The figure is correct by the way, the Centre will cost around 300k, not including the land it sits on. The land is free after all.
The speed with which this project has been bulldozed through is remarkable. On March 14th, 2011 the Area D Parks Commission conducted an “Interpretive Centre site meeting”. The Nov. 23, 2011 minutes for the Electoral Area Services Committee show that the Cowichan Estuary Interpretive Nature Centre was to be constructed on Wessex Road. At the Dec. 14, 2011 CVRD board meeting a motion was passed to grant Cowichan Land Trust permission to construct a public nature centre and viewing platform in Hecate Park. The construction site moved from Wessex road to Hecate park within the span of three weeks, and with no local input. None.
These comments gleaned from letters to the Editor in our local Newspapers: “The Centre will be a new attraction in the village both for children and adults and will generate more business for local stores and restaurants.” and “Economic support, interactive education and a place to expend some energy and expand your horizons – what’s not to like? “
Most of the wildlife, is across the water far from Hecate Park. This however, will be the view from the new Centre
Actually, there’s quite a lot about this project that’s not to like, besides the fact that nobody who lives close to the park was consulted prior to it’s commencement. The Centre takes up no fewer than eight, possibly as many as ten parking spaces, including one handicapped parking space. Access to the picnic table reserved for those less mobile has been blocked. Much of the grassy area where last year we could sit in the sunshine to read a book or fly a kite, (tiny though the space was) will be covered over by the board-walk and viewing station. What open grass remains will become the front lawn of the Centre. In effect, the public green space is gone.
Gone too, is the area where the yearly Cowichan Bay Dog Show is held, an event by and for the local people of the village, and of course visitors as well.
And what about the traffic? Cowichan Bay Village is well on it’s way to becoming a summer madhouse. We’re becoming a victim of our own success in effect. It’s such a nice little community and so enjoyable to visit, that people are coming in droves. It’s come to the point that projects seen to “generate more business for local stores and restaurants.” are being touted as a huge negative, not a positive.
Those have their businesses in Cowichan Bay Village may well support increasing growth, but it’s beginning to cost everyone who actually lives here, degrading our quality of life. Our village is being crushed by those who come to visit. In the summer when the parking wars are in full swing, local businesses put up “Customer’s Only Parking” signs, laying claim to roadside easement they have no right to. There’s talk of limiting locals from parking on the roadside altogether, so fierce is the desire to squeeze every visitor into the bay, and every dollar possible out of them.
But wait, there’s more!
The Nature centre is being built as a portable structure. It’s built to be movable. Says Kerrie Talbot, Chair, Area D Volunteer Parks Commission in a letter to the Editor of the Cowichan Valley Citizen: “(The)Cowichan Estuary Nature Centre, a fully accessible building, is being constructed as a movable structure, veranda and all, should a more expansive location become available to us.”
That can mean only one thing: They plan to put move the Centre to the old log dump as soon as they can kick the current leaseholder off the land.
Historically, the log dump was the place where truckloads of wood from local forests met the sea in preparation for water-borne sorting and ultimately a trip to the lumber-mill. Currently, the log dump site is being used as a boat storage and repair facility, a traditional way of making a living in this part of the country. The land is leased from the government and as last I heard, that lease comes due near the end of 2013.
With an entire interpretive centre ready to lay claim to the land, I for one sincerely doubt that the current leaseholder, West Coast Flotation stands a ghost of a chance of having that lease renewed.
No wonder there was such a rush to get this project steamrollered through. No wonder nobody in the village was consulted.
No wonder.
Post Script: It appears as of February 2013, that the Nature Center is there to stay. The CVRD has taken over the old log dump, the space where the Nature Centre was proposed to go, and turned it into a small park and Kayak launching area. Again, Nobody asked anyone from the local community for input.
