Herald Street’s New Pocket Park
Some of you will remember my disapproval of the new park planned along Blanshard between Fisgard and North Park last year. You can read my articles on that here and here. Despite what I said in those two articles, I am not completely against new parks when they make sense. As I have said many times before, a park is like a grocery store, you need to find the places that are in need if you want them to thrive.
One area of Victoria that is in need of some green space is the north end of Chinatown. As it is now, there is really no place for anyone to relax and enjoy some quiet amongst all the buildings and parking lots. You would also think that given the current space that there isn’t anywhere to put some park space, however looking at a new proposal that has come to the City of Victoria, it seems that’s incorrect.
Intracorp Homes is proposing a new development in the 500 block of Chatham and Herald Streets and a part of the proposal is a new pocket park along Herald Street. The space is currently a parking lot on the Herald Street portion between a heritage apartment building and a furniture store (that at one time was a live theatre that I worked in). The idea of putting a small park in this location has been a plan for a long time but this is the first time that it has been proposed along with a project that actually seems like it could be built.
The project itself is kind of a U-shaped building with a central green space for residents with a tunnel like mid-block walkway between the pocket park and Chatham. Despite my usual excitement for mid-block walkways, I am not completely in love with the design of this one. It is more like the one that has replaced Theatre Alley, rather than either of the two great examples of Fan Tan Alley or Dragon Alley which are both lined with commercial spaces. Still, the fact that it includes the creation of a pocket park is quite enticing. I hope that as it goes through the city process, we see additional openings of the ground floor commercial into the walkway. The building is a six stories with ground floor commercial along Chatham.
The park space is lined on the east and west with greenery with kind of some undulating hard space for benches and possibly some cafe seating. There is no playground space, but not every park-space needs to have playground equipment. Instead, I think that the primary purpose of the space will be for local residents and cafe users to have a quiet place to sit down and enjoy it. Given the surrounding area, I have to say that this kind of place is definitely needed.
It is not specifically discussed in the plans, but I would imagine that the space would remain privately owned which does have its own drawbacks over publicly owned park-space especially when it comes to who can use it and how it is used. Still, even with this drawback, I would say that it will be a significant positive for the surrounding neighbours. I have included a couple of the photos from the proposal for you to peruse. I would love to hear your thoughts on what is being shown and how it could be made better as it goes through the approval process. Make sure to leave your thoughts in the comments!
