Yet another Davies Orchard cottage is set to come down.
Metro Vancouver Regional Parks, which owns the orchard as part of Crippen Park, is planning to demolish Cottage #12 – the cottage immediately behind Tuscany and below a large Douglas fir.
“It's in such poor condition, it's simply not restorable,” Jeffrey Fitzpatrick, manager of design and development at Metro Vancouver Regional Parks told the Undercurrent. “There's really nothing left to restore.”
The building’s location under the large tree also contributed to the demolition decision, indicated Fitzpatrick.
The cottage is one of six remaining Union Steamships era cottages in an orchard once dominated by the simple bungalows. Despite local outcry, Metro Vancouver demolished four of the buildings in 2018, and had a plan to restore the rest, though the plan was set aside due to lack of funding.
The cottage is also on Bowen Island’s recently established heritage register.
Metro Parks received a $450,000 grant earlier this year for the orchard project (it had asked for $1 million), which has allowed the Davies Orchard revitalization project to advance. This means moving forward in restoring the surviving cottages, including one in use cottage in need of significant repair and another non-occupied cottage in need of repair, said Fitzpatrick.
The matter of the cottage to be demolished came up at the June 14 Bowen municipal council meeting, but councillors largely accepted Metro’s assessment that the cottage needed to come down.
“Any demolition is not imminent,” Coun. Maureen Nicholson noted at the meeting. “Nothing is going to be moving particularly quickly regarding demolition.”
Judi Gedye, a former resident of the orchard cottages and one of the vocal opponents to the other cottages’ demolition, resigned from the municipality’s Heritage Commission over issue.
When the cottages came down in 2018, one of the cottages torn down had been stabilized but Cottage #12 had not. “[Metro has] left it for another three years, they've done nothing to stabilize it,” said Gedye. She joined the Heritage Commission to get the remaining cottages on the heritage register, which happened with no pushback from Metro, according to Gedye. When council didn’t refer the historic building's fate back to the commission, to engage with the regional district on Bowen’s heritage, it was the last straw for Gedye.
As it's been three years since the Davies Orchard concept plan was approved, Fitzpatrick said there'd be a public workshop and engagement in coming months about other design elements (paths and such) to come in the orchard.
