On Friday November 24, the board of Metro Parks voted unanimously to support the second of the two options it offered to Bowen Islanders for the “revitalization” of Davies Orchard. This Heritage Plan means six of the existing cottages (two of which are in need of major renovations) will remain standing and four will be demolished, as opposed to the Open Space plan which would have seen more cottages torn down. Members of Bowen Island Heritage say this plan still fails to honour the important history of the area and is being forced upon a large group of Islanders who want more cottages restored.
“This is rot by design,” says Bowen Heritage member Hans Behm. “We have tried very hard over 26 years to save those cottages, but in the past decade progress was stalled. Their study stated they were not beyond repair, but their sorry state is the doing of Metro Parks. As for the designs they are choosing for us, well, we never had any input on them.”
Behm, other Bowen Islanders and a representative of the Vancouver Marine Museum attended a Metro Parks meeting on November 8, where Behm intended to present a petition with the signatures of more than 500 Bowen Islanders supporting a plan to keep all cottages standing.
Behm was given the chance to speak, but was cut off before being able to present the entirety of his idea.
“With the $1.3 million they had planned to use to destroy four cottages, Bowen Islanders, with the commitment of 23 local contractors who have volunteered their time, could rebuild the six cottages that are currently in a state of disrepair,” explains Behm, “but I never got far enough in explaining this plan. I was cut off after 5 minutes.”
Jeff Fitzpatrick, Division Manager for Metro Parks, says a copy of the petition was included in the report to “the committee”. “There was a lot of public engagement done on this project,” says Fitzpatrick. “In total, we had 226 surveys completed as part of the engagement process.”
The cost of the project is now stated to be $2.1 million, which Fitzpatrick attributes to having had more in-depth conversations with contractors. He adds that a more detailed design for the Orchard will be released in 2018, but offers no time-line on when construction might begin.
Judi Gedye, also with Bowen Heritage, says she is skeptical about any revitalization plan moving forward: “I think all we are going to see is some cottages being torn down”, says Gedye. “The saddest part is that if Metro would engage better with the community, that kind of money could be leveraged or simply used far more effectively so that more of what Bowen Islanders care about could be saved and put to some really interesting uses. We are losing evidence of several wonderful decades of our resort era which has always been important for Snug Cove and should be for Crippen Park.”
