RDCK, city officials kick off phase 2 of recreation engagement and dispel misinformation

Photo: Timothy Schafer photo

Coun. Kate Tait speaks to people at the Prestige Lakeside Resort Thursday night on affordable housing and recreation.

Like Area 51 in the southern Nevada desert, Lot 8 in the roster of the Nelson recreation campus has generated much talk and speculation.

Like Area 51, the existence and possibility of a development on Lot 8 — the empty lots at the corner of 824 Front St. — is immaterial as it relates to the Nelson recreation campus engagement process.

Since the Nelson recreation campus conversation began in early November with phase one of the engagement process — assembling first thoughts on what recreation comprises in that area — the affordable housing project proposed for Lot 8 has dominated the talk around the table.

On Thursday night at the Prestige Lakeside Resort, the public meeting that launched phase two of the engagement process was no different, albeit with a much smaller crowd. Less than 100 people assembled to listen to Regional District of Central Kootenay staff, R.C. Strategies (consultants) and City of Nelson elected and unelected officials speak about the hot button topic of sustaining and maintaining recreational facilities.

Although some grasped the purpose of the process — to ascertain which, or all, of the campus facilities were important to people of Nelson and area — many were concerned that the vacant, city-owned land in the southeast corner of the campus could be given over to affordable housing, not reserved exclusively for recreation.

Concerns were not assuaged even when city chief administrative officer Kevin Cormack told people that, if the project proposal was to be realized down the road, one third of it could be for recreational use.

On the other side of the court there was also no indication from the people assembled what the property should be used for instead of affordable housing, with a hint that it could be contained in the tabulated results of 425 initial survey responses still waiting to be unlocked from phase one.

But the engagement process needs to extract some sense from the community of what to do about all of the recreational assets it has, said R.C. Strategies consultant Rob Parks.

“As we’ve gone through this process we are asking about activities that are occurring there that you are participating in, but other activities that you might like to see there,” said Parks.

“In terms of the housing component, there has been some information out there about that … but in terms of our process it is asking about the campus, it is asking about recreation needs on the campus; down the road it will be determined what those base needs are.”

With one third of the proposed affordable housing project available for recreation — around 5,000 square feet — one lady asked what might be missing on the recreation campus that could fit into that space.

“You might find that community buy-in for a missing piece of recreation — whether that’s basketball courts or volleyball, or arts space. It might have a lot more support than, say office space,” she said.

The phase two questionnaire — which was available online as of late Wednesday — is designed to get what is important from people about the campus space, said Joe Chirico, RDCK general manager of community services. He pointed to a report on recreation needs from 10 years ago as a starting point.

“Part of this process is to see if (needs) still match that, or is it different than that or are there new needs and should we be thinking about that,” he said.

One lady said she was struggling with only 30 per cent of the proposed project set aside for recreation.

Cormack said council made a decision to support the affordable housing project, since it met multiple goals with possibly more indoor recreational space.

“Any project the city looks at tries to meet multiple goals,” he iterated.

Cormack said there was a whole campus of recreation space that should be focused on.

“The 30 per cent for recreation is not a given at this moment, is that what you are saying?” one man blurted out. “Is this whole meeting, for us to be here, to try and see what we will do with 30 per cent of that space?”

“No, it’s what we are trying to do with that whole campus,” Cormack replied.

The city calls the recreation regeneration process for the campus long-term care of the community, said Coun. Kate Tait, adding that the city has had a housing crisis for over 10 years, as well as an affordability crisis.

“Do we have any other public land that may be suitable for housing and that is also part of long-term community health?” she said, answering her own question with a ‘no.’

The maintenance and capital expenditure piper for the recreation campus has to be paid after going for many years without any support, said Chirico.

“If our priorities as a community are to have facilities, our priority needs to be to fund those facilities so that they are here for the long term. So that is really the crux.

“As a community, over time, we have not funded those in-store facilities adequately to keep them in a state that they are functional today.

“It’s not that we can’t have it,” he said about the recreation campus. “We just need to be prepared to invest in it. And that’s important.”