Harris Green - How to Make an Empty Downtown Park Useful
There is a constant drum about the lack of park space in the downtown core. A couple of years ago I wrote about that issue specifically here. As I said in that article, there is actually a lot of public space around downtown, it’s just not being used for recreation. What I didn’t get into very much in that article specifically is why. But don’t worry that is what this article is for, at least in part. To illustrate this I am going to focus on potentially the best park in downtown Victoria, Harris Green.
This beautiful park stretches from Quadra on the west end to Chambers in the east. It is an unusual space in that it is a triangle that follows Pandora Avenue for these three blocks. The park is wide at Chambers and tapers to nothing as it gets to Quadra. The park is likely the product of road realignment or possibly, as I have heard before, an error is planning, though that seems quite unlikely. If you look at a map of Victoria streets, you can see that they all change their alignment at this point. It was likely that Harris Green was just some left over land that it was decided should be public space. The park has been around since the beginning of the 20th century and it is named after Thomas Harris, Victoria’s first mayor.
Harris Green, especially the eastern portion is very traditional and regal with large London planes (I think) which in the summer cover over the entire park with a beautiful canopy of green leaves. There is a great view looking up the hill of the park in the arch of the trees to the neo-classical Church of Christ Scientist. There is theoretically everything you need here in a downtown public space. Lots of trees and grass for everyone to enjoy, the thing is that no one is ever there.
As I have said previously, we need public spaces to be dynamic and able to provide a reason to go there, even on a rainy day. Those parks need to be a draw to those that live nearby and from further away in the city and accessible. Accessibility means two things, first that those with mobility challenges can access at least portions of the space and that the park has easy access from sidewalks. One of the best examples of how to improve a space remains the park across from the Christ Church Cathedral and next to the courthouse that housed the infamous “tent city”. The park there before was almost always empty, yet following the the encampment, the new park is almost always busy. There were two essential changes. The first necessary change was the addition of a vibrant and attractive playground to draw families and the second was that there is a good mix of hard and soft surfaces. The playground and a memorial seating area are both hard surface and can be used year round. .
Harris Green shares a lot of commonalities with the old courthouse park. The biggest problem with the space is that unless you really want to walk on the grass you don’t have any options. Well, there is one exception, at the north east corner just across the street from the church there is an odd little piece of sidewalk that is not obvious as to why it is there. Apart from that exception the entire park is without even sidewalks along the road. During the dry summer months the lack of sidewalks is not too much of an issue if you want to cut through though but few use it even at that time of year. In the winter it is totally different, as the grass gets wet, especially the areas at the bottom of the hill, become completely saturated and impassable unless you want to be two inches deep in mud.
Given the continued requests for more park space and the lack of use of this massive space, Harris Green seems like an excellent candidate for a redesign. The key of any redesign of the park would be to improve the space in a way that keeps its most special aspect, the large canopy trees. From that I think the second most important aspect would be to keep a large amount, though not all, of the grass field beneath the trees.
I did up a plan of one way the park could be rebuilt to increase its use. Sorry I am not an amazing sketch artist and my microsoft paint skills are limited. The first thing I would add is a sidewalk around the entire perimeter of the treed space. This gives you options to walk around the space even when it is rainy. Having sidewalks also invites people into the space from the edges. Along the south side, I would accommodate the sidewalk by removing the angled parking and return it to regular parallel street parking. It would mean there would be a few less parking spots in the area, but at least on my recent walk through it seemed to be mostly construction workers from the nearby project and that building is almost complete. Apart from the sidewalk I would leave about two thirds of the park exactly how it is now which would allow for some casual frisbee games or picnics to occur in the spring and summer. At the Western end I would make some more dramatic changes but as this is the portion at the bottom of the hill it is also the space that is most unusable in the winter and also since it is next to North Park Village has the potential to be the most well used.
In this space I would first slow down the traffic lane that cuts a semicircle through the space by adding some bollards, paving stones and leveling the road with the park so that it appears to be a part of the park and not an off ramp from a highway. Along Cook Street, I would widen the sidewalk and pave a section in the centre that would flow up into the middle of the park. There would be a plaza space across the traffic lane that would have a water feature and a simple set of benches under the first couple of London planes. For the water feature I think it would be great if something similar to the fountain at Uptown Mall could be added. Having something that was a regular fountain most of the time but in the hot summer could be a draw for neighbourhood kids as water play park.
This is a pretty simple change to the space that is already there but I think it would dramatically increase the use of the space and become that park that we have heard downtown residents ask for. It is already here, just people aren’t seeing it.
This is of course is just my idea, I would love to hear any ideas you have had for Harris Green or other spaces around the city that could use a boost in use.
