Pier Park, Mayor Patrick Johnstone thinks, is emblematic of a shift in New Westminster toward the waterfront.
The balls kept swishing — nothing but net — as Josh Lee took advantage of short-sleeve weather earlier this week to shoot some hoops in New Westminster’s Pier Park, between the river and the rail tracks.
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“This strip of park is lovely, very calm,” said the 23-year-old, who moved to New West in November. “Very peaceful, especially compared to downtown.
“Everyone I’ve met down here has been friendly. It’s just a lovely, wonderful setting.”
The city is asking for proposals from general contractors to extend the park to the west, while collaborating with First Nations on the revitalization of east Pier Park, reopened in April 2021 following a 10-day fire in September 2020.
“Pier Park is the jewel of the riverfront,” Johnstone said.
“I think the model where we actually have more open public green space, where people can share and then meet their neighbours and gather together is wonderful,” he added, pointing to the popularity of False Creek as an example.
Earlier this week, when it was sunny and unusually warm, Pier Park was being enjoyed by sweethearts, young families, and folks reclining above the Fraser River writing in their journals and sipping coffee.
Some of those who remember the old-time big, bad New Westminster Bruins or were at last spring’s Mann Cup to cheer on the ‘Bellies might argue the arena with its famous green parquet is New Westminster’s defining attraction.
But Pier Park, Johnstone thinks, is emblematic of a shift in New West toward the waterfront.
When the condo towers began going up in New Westminster, the focus was on residential housing and density.
“They maybe didn’t think about public space in the same way. Public space was a bit of an afterthought to a lot of that development,” the mayor said.
The western expansion of the park will be predominantly green space, but “with design,” Johnstone said. That includes a spray park for kids, shaded spots, a small dog area, a stage for larger gatherings.
“A lot of people are living downtown, living in high density, living adjacent to SkyTrain, and they don’t really have the backyard that a lot of people have.
“So this, I think, will serve both as a bit of a backyard area for a lot of people living downtown who just want to have a picnic or whatever, and the open space will also provide some public gathering space. So it’s going to be really exciting.”
He gave credit to a former mayor, Wayne Wright, for having the vision and recognition that downtown, a couple of streets and some railway tracks from the Fraser River, needed to connect with the waterfront in a better way, to benefit nearby businesses but also all the nearby residents moving in.
“He put a lot of time and political capital into getting Pier Park built,” Johnstone said, “and I don’t think there’s a better place on the Fraser River in the Lower Mainland quite like it.”
Established in 1858 as Queensborough and renamed by Queen Victoria the following year, the city is the oldest in B.C. Like many of the oldest cities in the world — Rome, London, Varanasi — it was built alongside a river not just for a supply of water, but for trade and commerce.
“It’s industrial land,” Johnstone said. “Part of the challenge of building Pier Park was remediation of the site from almost 150 years of industry on that waterfront.
“It was canneries, fisheries, shipbuilding, it was sawmills. That’s what the waterfront was used for.”
The new urban park to the west, about a city block in total size, will be built on top of a parking lot.
The vision for enhancing Pier Park to the east will take a little longer. After cleaning up from the fire, there is roughly $22 million of insurance money left from a $30 million payout.
The city is collaborating with the Halq̓eméylem, and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking, First Nations on how to proceed.
Besides destroying the 1957 wooden pier, the 2020 fire ruined the Wow Westminster piece of art. The four, 40-foot orange cargo containers that formed a giant W, designed Brazilian artist José Resende, will be replaced by something from an Indigenous artist, whose name has not yet been released by the city.
The public installation will be iconic, Mashig said.
A native New Yorker, she loves that New West’s river, like Brooklyn’s, is a working waterfront.
“It’s a good mix of interesting activity,” she said. “You’ll see all kinds of barges and logs and tugboats going back and forth all day long. It’s like a highway of commerce.
“It’s amazing.”