Just a short post this week on the perennial problem of the harbour parking lots. What got me thinking about them again was a conversation about their potential on Twitter recently. One user, @maxcsvictoria aka Parking Lot Appreciator asked what I would do with the parking lots, well I am glad they asked. As you might guess, I have written about the harbour lots before. You can read a post here, and the follow-up that I did to that post here. That said, while I do get a little bit into what I would like to see in those posts, my thoughts have shifted in the last five years and I have never actually drawn it out before.

Looking back at those posts from 2017 and the plans the city had at the time, I indicated in the title that I didn’t think we would see anything come of it. If you are looking to make an easy bet in Victoria, saying nothing will change on the harbour parking lots has to be one of the safest. Indeed, as I mention in the first post, Dorothy Mindenhall’s wonderful book, Unbuilt Victoria has a whole chapter on the harbour lots and the Reid Centre, and that book was published in 2012. Soon she could possibly add a whole new section for all the plans that have occurred since then.

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As I said, I was asked what my plan with the space would be and so here it is in map form. Please keep in mind, I am not a great artist, an architect or a city planner. Hopefully my basic drawing still gets my point across though.

There are four large elements to it:

• The Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations

• The Rain Park

• The Pedestrian Shopping Plaza

• Bastion Stairs Park

There are a couple of other bits that I will describe as I walk through them. I also tried to make it easier to understand through colours. The purple portions are buildings, the grey is plaza space, green is park space and red is the harbour walkway.

Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations

For the largest and most prominent parcel, I believe that it should be returned to the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. I believe that one of the parcels here has already been returned, but I am fairly certain that it is one of the more northern ones. They would have to be consulted on the whole plan for the lots, but for this gateway lot and the largest one on this map, I believe that it should be designed and developed on whole by the city’s original people. It also provides an opportunity for Victoria as a city to move forward into the 21st century with a hopefully bold new building that would compete for the attention now given to the Empress and Legislature. It would be up to the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations on how they would use it, but my hope would at least be for something iconic and big that would define the harbour skyline.

Rain Park

As I went on about extensively in my previous blog posts, (and in about 20 other posts on the blog) I would really not want all of the space along here to be simply turned into park. I think that would be a disservice to Old Town and a long term planning mistake. Changing something into a park is the easiest change possible and mildly palatable to a large portion of the electorate. It isn’t bold though and I think that the changes we try to put in should be bold and meaningful. This doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t portions of the lots that are parks, just not all of it.

The next portion of the lots to the north I think would be great to have a park. If you are going to put a park in such a prominent place, especially one open to the elements of the harbour, I would like to see something a little daring and new. Apart from Gothenburg Sweden, few cities around the world have attempted to embrace rain, and while Victoria is really not a rainy city when you look at it from an annual perspective, from October to March it does tend to be a little wet. To make the best use of a new recreation space, I would love to see some form of rain park. The one that I have included in my map would have a bioswale running down from Wharf Street to the Harbour that would likely fill to a small creek in the winter. I would then include as many sitting areas on concrete pads as possible, surrounded by greenery. Over each of the sitting areas would some form of sculptural rain cover. In my mind I am picturing a grand and coordinated version of Illarion Gallant’s Stande in White Rock except on a much larger scale. The park would start level with Wharf Street and end in line with the Harbour Walkway. There would be at least two walkways over the bioswale as it flowed down into the harbour. I would love some sort of interactive rain play area for kids as well, to encourage it to be a rainy day destination for families as we really don’t have enough of those in the city, especially outdoor ones.

Shopping and Food

Just across from the rain park and north of the Harbour Air terminal, I would like to see a waterfront restaurant space that could take advantage of the location and the curve that the property currently has. For a harbour city, we still have a very small amount of waterfront dining and it is something that will certainly be attractive to tourists and as we have seen with Boom and Batten, locals as well.

Just to the north of the Customs House building is a wonderful little rocky cove and as it is the only truly natural portion of the waterfront left around here, it would make sense to turn that portion back into a park area as well with some green space to the east and north of the little cove. That would be the last piece of green park space along here. To the north I would like to see something urban.

I will admit that I am taking a lot of inspiration here in the d’Ambrosio Architecture plan for this space. I am just losing the parking and really shifting the buildings around. But a big market would work here too. Have a look at that design here. In the plan that I have drawn up, I would add three buildings. Along Wharf Street, I would add a single building that would rise up about two storeys to the street level and then at the north and south end of the building it would rise a further two storeys above Wharf Street. Between the two taller portions would be a plaza space at Wharf Street level that would look down onto a little urban pedestrian plaza. The plaza would sit on top of a portion of the roof of the building below. To the west of the larger building would be two smaller two or three storey buildings. The base of all of the buidlings would be small scale commercial and food spaces. At the centre of the pedestrain space between the three buildings would be a fountain. I would want the pedestrian space activated with shopping and food carts as well. As the upper portion would be right next to the Wharf Street bike lanes and also really close to a lot of downtown. I could see an indoor bike parking lot being part of the upper portion for downtown commuters.

Bastion Stairs Park

When you look at the d’Ambrosio design one of the most interesting and engaging parts is the Harbour Steps Park. Building on that idea and actually I think, making it a little bit larger, the last section of this plan would be for a large urban staircase. I think it would be a great way to expand on the benefits of Bastion Square and also create a unique connection between the city and the harbour. A little mini-Spanish Steps for us in Victoria. I would want there to be an accessible portion that would allow for those using mobility devices easy access to the space and the harbour through here. Due to this I think it would be have to be much wider than was envisoned in the d’ambrosio design but I also wouldn’t have the Fort Street stair park in my plan.

So there you have it. My thoughts on how we should be re-inventing the harbour space. What about this do you like or not like? What are your grand ideas for the space? Let me know in the comments!