Victoria Greens
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Cridge Park, lawn bowling to stay green In a 7-2 vote, Victoria councillors side with neighbours, preserve park space Friday, January 09, 2009

A lawn-bowling green in the heart of downtown Victoria and a tiny adjacent park will be preserved as green space.

Victoria councillors voted 7-2 yesterday to remove Cridge Park and the adjacent Canadian Pacific Lawn Bowling Club from consideration for development.

Neighbours have been lobbying almost a year to protect the green space in the block bounded by Humboldt, Blanshard, Belleville and Douglas streets.

“I don’t have any interest in removing parks from our portfolio,” Mayor Dean Fortin said after the meeting.

A city report last year had earmarked the park and lawn-bowling land as a possible site for a downtown art gallery and a children’s museum.

Stuart Stark of the Cridge Park Rescue Group said the organization is ecstatic about yesterday’s decision. “It’s something that we’ve been working very hard for since last summer.”

“I’m still on Cloud 9,” said Kris Constable, president of the Pacific Lawn Bowling Club.

Constable said the first order of business will be to try to negotiate a long-term lease with the city.

“One of the things we will be asking for is more leniency in the activities we can do at the lawn-bowling club. We’ve been arguing for a long time we want to offer the likes of croquet and tai chi or yoga out on the greens, so we’ll be asking for maybe a modified lease from the city that allows these kinds of extra activities.”

Assistant city manager Mike McCliggott said yesterday that council might want to look at a consultant’s study commissioned by the previous council on options for a museum or art gallery in the area, since the study is virtually complete.

But Coun. Pam Madoff, who gave notice last month she wanted to see Cridge and the bowling green removed from consideration for development, said there was nothing a consultant could say to change her opinion.

“I think most of us have had ample opportunity to inform ourselves on the issues around Cridge Park and the bowling green — certainly through the election process and before.”

Former mayor Alan Lowe had hoped the city would sell its Apex site — a pie-shaped piece of land currently used for car rentals at the intersection of Humboldt and Douglas streets — for development as an office building.

The thinking was that the city could sell the property for as much as $8 million and that money could be used to build two floors of underground parking near the lawn-bowling green and Cridge Park, with the area above leased to a children’s museum and art gallery.

Madoff said councillors can still use the report for its recommendations on the Apex site.

Councillors Geoff Young and Chris Coleman voted against Madoff’s motion, saying it would be prudent to at least look at the report before making a final decision on the park land.

However, Coun. Sonya Chandler said unlike the Ellice Street green space the city has rezoned for a new Streetlink shelter, there is no other downtown green space that can replace Cridge Park or the bowling green.

“I think in this case what’s really self-evident is there is no place to redesign or relocate this site,” Chandler said.