Passionate public space proponent Julien Thomas has a new pet project underway on Commercial Drive. Two curbside parking spots located outside the busy Prado Café in the 1900-block will soon be transformed into a new “parklet” after a Kickstarter campaign to raise $3,500 to help finance it met its target last week.
The spot is the newest kid on the block from a pilot project launched this year by the city-run VIVA Vancouver, which aims to add semi-permanent platforms with free seating built for public use across the city. Other examples can be found at the corner of 14th Avenue and Main Street, the corner of East 44th Avenue and Fraser Street and formerly at the 1000-block of Robson Street. But while major landscape architecture firms built the others, the Commercial Drive parklet — expected to be completed by March 2014 — came as a result of collaboration between residents of the neighbourhood.
“Ours was the first crowd-funded public space in Vancouver,” said Thomas, a construction worker and artist whose previous collaborations include the recent Gather Round, which transformed a Mount Pleasant traffic-calming circle into a public meeting place, and Park-a-Park, a transportable platform on wheels that popped up at different locations across the city this summer and is currently parked beside a housing complex near the Beatty Street Armoury.
While only one of the two spaces was metered parking, Thomas said the city deserves credit for giving up a source of revenue.
“This is actually a city initiative and they are looking at how they can scale this kind of thing up and across the city. We pay the city some fees, from program fees to service fees, and that includes taking up one of the parking spots, but that is fairly expensive real estate for them to give up.”
He added that the space is available for everyone, not just Prado Café patrons, whose owners kicked in $5,000 towards the project.
“The city of Vancouver is quite strict that there can’t be any logos or branding,” said Thomas, who lives a few blocks away. “It’s a public space. Even thought it is developed partly through Prado funding, everybody is welcome to use the space.”
BCIT ironwork students will build the steel platform, while Britannia secondary shop students will take care of the wooden benches and tables.
Tracey Chan, a computer science student at SFU who regularly frequents the coffee shop, said she thinks it will be a great addition to the neighbourhood.“I love this place and it’s a great place to work because of the free WiFi, but it would be nice to be able to sit outside when it’s sunny,” she told the Courier. “The Drive is obviously pretty awesome but the fact that there aren’t really a lot of patios that get the sun is kind of its dirty little secret.”
Thomas added additional donations are still welcome and will allow the campaign to meet “stretch goals,” including training local youths on laser etching and cutting, as well as painting a new street mural in the neighbourhood.
