Downtown outdoor spaces

[taylortbb]

I think there should be a path along the south side of the railway line all the way from the IHT to the (future) transit hub. The part from the IHT rail crossing to Victoria could be built now and would help the situation in Victoria Park. The part from Victoria to Park would probably have to be done in conjunction with redevelopment of that block. The part from Park to the transit terminal could be done now, possibly with the cooperation of whoever owns those parking lots, but wouldn’t be very useful without the rest and without the transit terminal.

The part from Stewart St to the transit hub is being done soon, as Perimeter/Google is paying for it. The Breithaupt Block phase 3 parking garage is at Stewart/Joseph, so they decided to pay for lighting/etc for the trail to create a good connection over to the office buildings. Stewart St is pretty quiet (effectively a dead-end), and lines up with the trail through Cherry Park. Doesn't quite get all the way to the IHT though.

It will surely get busier as the region grows. It's a shame it can't be expanded in any way. I suppose they could use the Henry Sturm Greenway but that doesn't offer much. There's also a barren lot beside that which seems to do nothing but store dilapidated tractor trailers. If the city bought that, you could make a pretty nice entrance to the park off Victoria and West Ave as well as expand it by quite a lot.

I agree a nice entrance off West Ave would be good, but I think that likely the best way to address overcrowding is to invest in the other nearby parks so they're more desirable destinations. Sandhills Park is quite close, but I didn't know about it until recently despite living here for 10 years. Civic Centre Park could easily be expanded over the adjacent parking lots (which I think the city already owns), and with some investment become far more of a destination for the neighbourhood. Both of those would give some additional options to those living in DTK, and a lot of proposed buildings along Weber-ish are actually closer to Civic Centre Park than Victoria Park.