Victoria is launching a $45,000 design competition in the hope something can be built at Ship Point that might help make the waterfront parking lot more, well, interesting.
But Coun. Geoff Young says the exercise is “money badly spent that should be spent on proper planning for the site.”
The decades of using Ship Point as a parking lot is a real “indictment of public ownership,” Young said.
“We seem to be satisfied to collect the revenue from parking year after year and don’t feel any impetus to move forward with proper planning for the site.”
Instead, he said, the $45,000 should be spent on a planning process that would “recognize economic realities; recognize the value of the site; encourage development that would produce employment and residential benefits for the city as well as public use.
“That’s the kind of way you get proper development, that you get vitality in the downtown, instead of having idle parking lots on the prime sites within the city.”
Despite Young’s concerns, councillors last week endorsed the idea of hosting a design competition to see what teams of interested artists, design and architectural professionals might come up with if given the opportunity to design, build and install a temporary or “pop-up” public space at Ship Point.
The aim of the competition is to inspire an amenity that will make the space “a more vibrant, unique, memorable and welcoming space that will encourage people to socialize, explore and wander,” says a staff report.
Mayor Lisa Helps is thrilled about the idea she calls “planning by doing” and says she can’t wait to see what the teams come up with — even though she has no idea what “it” might be.
“No one knows [what might come out of the competition]. It’s the amorphous ‘it’ that will come forward from the very creative architects, landscape architects, artists and whoever else might be so inclined to apply,” she said.
“We’ve got a community of arts-orientated, public space-orientated, placemaking-orientated people, and I think we’ll see something compelling and significant down there.”
Ship Point is the waterfront parking lot immediately north of the Inner Harbour. The area is regularly used in the summer months as a performance venue for such events as the Blues Bash, the Buskers Festival, JazzFest and the Dragon Boat Festival.
In 2014, the city approved the Harbour Vitality Principles, which envision the area as a location for year-round special events and festivals, with venues, fountains and a plaza.
“There’s been talk about Ship Point for years and years and years, plan after plan, and it still looks like a parking lot,” Helps said. “So this is an opportunity to say let’s start planning by doing. Let’s canvas our very creative community and see what comes forward.”
The funds will be drawn from the downtown core area public realm improvement reserve. The plan is to have something installed by mid-July and in place until at least October.
The budget is hoped to cover materials, fabrication, installation and de-installation cost as well as a small award for the winning team.
The competition opens Thursday and closes May 13.
Entries will be judged by a panel of design professionals based on social interaction and connection, esthetics and originality, function and context, sustainability and feasibility.
