Vernon council is reimagining plans for Kin Race Track Park, not all on onboard

Photo: Castanet file photo

Kin Race Track Park photographed in 2021 when the land housed a temporary sani-dump.

Vernon city council has given the go-ahead to develop a new vision for Kin Race Track Park – instead of a large-scale athletic park the area is now being considered for a passive park.

The new directive comes after a city staff report submitted to council ahead of its Monday meeting found the original athletic park plans would cost about $50 million. For context, the current value of all existing city park assets is approximately $54 million.

Typically, passive parks have elements like trail systems and interactive programs, but not recreation facilities like playing fields or gyms.

At this time the Kin Race Track Park Reserve has just under $4.5 million available – both councillors Kari Gares and Akbal Mund questioned whether those funds could be better used elsewhere. Gares wanted council to pause plans for the park to revisit at a later date, adding people already use the area as a passive type park.

“If we use that $4.5 million dollars to turn this into a passive park, where are we going to get that money to reinvest back into recreational sporting fields, which is really what the issue is,” said Gares, pointing to reinvesting the funds into things like field improvements, grass fields or lighting.

Gares said she knows the limitations of Vernon fields first hand from her own experiences running a league. She said some fields were off limits, weren’t user friendly and/or teams were prohibited from playing on some fields for fear of damaging grass.

Mund echoed Gares sentiments, with both elected officials saying fields in Vernon have a capacity issue.

"We don't have the capacity to run tournaments here, we just don't,” said Mund.

“I would rather see that money spent on recreation and say, ‘Hey, how much is it going to cost to light up MacDonald Park? Can we put some lights on other fields in our community?’ Rather than say, ‘Alright, let's go back to the taxpayer try to find more money.'”

Coun. Brian Quiring flip flopped his opinion, but ultimately decided he’d like to see the funds go to the race track even if the vision has changed.

“I think finishing this site is the right idea, and right now what we had wanted was significantly overpriced and we can't afford it,” said Quiring.

“Maybe that's a takeaway [for parks planning], ultimately maybe we would like some field there, so consider that in the overall plan. But right now, we have just over 4 million bucks this time, and let's do something nice for the community.”

While coun. Kelly Fehr noted that the park could still have recreational elements like a skating trail or a pump track.

Ultimately, council passed the staff recommendation to rejig the area into a passive park. Staff will report back to council at a future date with new suggestions for council on the park.