Some Kelowna residents are running out of patience with the city and are proposing to fast-track a park project that has been sitting idle for 20 years.
They want to raise the funds to make the park happen, but critics say paying for parks is the city’s job.
Cedar Avenue Park includes a small chunk of lakefront property near Lakeshore and KLO roads that was bought by the city with the intention of expanding the park by tearing down city-owned houses on both sides.
But despite the city’s good intentions, there are no plans to expand the park for another 10 years.
In order to get the ball rolling, a local neighbourhood association is proposing to do something out of the ordinary: fast-track the park by raising the funds to build it.
“The proposal was that taxpayers would have paid for it until waiting until 2027. We just didn’t want to wait that long. We thought that we could get things moving along,” Joe Uhearn, of the KLO Neighbourhood Association, said.
The association says it would cost a little under $1 million to build a basic park. The city says it will cost more than $1.5 million and all the money would have to be raised by the association.
Not everyone is crazy about the idea of fundraising to pay for public parks. Area resident Al Junasas says the city shouldn’t be relying on neighbourhood associations to do its work.
“I don’t think that’s realistic and kind of Mickey Mouse for a city of over 130,000 people to have bake sales to build parks. It’s ludicrous that we’re being asked to do this,” Janusas said.
Meanwhile, the neighbourhood association says if it’s successful in raising the funds, the new and improved park could be ready in a year or two.
“We have all of 2018 and we would expect that the demolition to begin in 2019,” Uhearn said.