The aging roof of the West End Community Centre could bridge the divide between urban agriculture enthusiasts and area residents reluctant to give up valuable park space to community gardens, says park board chair Aaron Jasper.
With the facilitys 30-year-old roof scheduled for repair, Jasper says hes hopeful the revamped structure will be sturdy enough to support a rooftop food garden and pose a possible solution for many West End residents who feel placing community gardens on park land is akin to privatizing public space.
Obviously there have been some challenges with a couple of park locations recently, said Jasper, referring to community outcry last year that stopped two separate proposals for community gardens in David Lam park and Sunset Beach park in their tracks. People set their hair on fire, he says of the backlash.
Jasper said he is optimistic the roof will prove sturdy enough to support the plant beds, soil and moisture required for food production. Going way, way back in the day the roof was used for tennis, so structurally, it was pretty sound.
Earlier this week, the park board received a staff report recommending it award a $500,000 contract to Mack Kirk Roofing and Sheet Metal Ltd. to replace the membrane on the 39,000-sq.-ft. roof. The work is scheduled to begin in July and be completed in August. Jasper said he plans to investigate whether the membrane would be sufficient to support the weight and moisture associated with a garden.
Converting hard surfaces such as roofs and unused parking spaces to urban farms could open the door for greater acceptance of gardening on city property, he added, noting that while the urban agriculture movement has come a long way in Vancouver, there is still work to do on showing people growing food in the city can be unobtrusive and mainstream.
Seeing the push-back that we saw at David Lam and at Sunset, obviously... theres a lot of work to be done to get people up to speed and understand the bigger picture of where community gardens fit into things.
As park board liaison with the Vancouver Food Policy Council, Jasper said hed like to see the board take a leadership role on food security as it works on its next five-year strategic plan by partnering with community-based sustainability initiatives like the Food Policy Council or Village Vancouver. A lot of these great initiatives need a home base and we have these assets like community centres, maybe this a good place for us to have, if nothing else, a demonstration garden to show people how you can do urban agriculture.
Roof-top gardens arent an ideal solution for every neighbourhood, but present a great opportunity to bring urban farming to dense areas, said Vancouver Food Policy Council co-chair Brent Mansfield. In more dense urban spaces, theres greater need but less land. I think roof-tops in downtown, but particularly in the West End are a great option, he said.
Mansfield added that the City of Vancouver identified rooftop gardens as a priority when it created the Food Policy Council in 2004, but not much has been done to reach that goal since. It was something there was a lot of energy around at that time and, not for lack of trying, but it didnt seem to go anywhere, he said.
Compared to New York City, where hydroponic greenhouses have popped up on the roofs of elementary schools, or Montreal, which has a grocery store with an urban farm on top of it, Vancouver hasnt capitalized on vertical growing opportunities, he said. In terms of roof-top gardens, theres other cities that have done some phenomenal things and I think its time that Vancouver could really catch up a little bit on it.
However the surge of momentum around urban food growing and interest in community gardens has had some urban farmers starting to go vertical. The YMCA opened an Intercultural Community Garden on the roof of St. Pauls Hospital last year, and the YWCA has operated a food garden on top of its Hornby Street facility since 2006. In a lot of ways the energy is really there around food right now. Im excited to tap into that, Mansfield said.
City Farmer executive director Michael Levenston applauded Jaspers push to include rooftop gardens on public buildings, citing access as one of the most significant barriers to rooftop farming. Most of rooftop gardens are inaccessible to the public, theyre on private buildings, he said. If the West End Community Centre is able to host a garden, Levenston said he was hopeful other public buildings would follow suit.
For his part, Jasper said hell be advocating for roof-top gardens to be considered in the design of future community centres, adding the park board is looking at building two new facilities over the next five years.
