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We recognize [it's] a very sensitive topic, says architect for Hong Kong-based developer
By Yvette Brend, CBC News Posted: Jun 04, 2016 7:00 AM PT Last Updated: Jun 04, 2016 8:39 PM PT
A beloved Port Moody park has earned a potential last-minute reprieve from a pave-over despite a 30-year
plan to turn it into a road to Anmore.
A group of Port Moody residents is furious about the plan to build a road linking Port Moody and Anmore that
may ease traffic, but at the expense of splitting a beloved, well-used, off-leash dog park in half.
"It's such a bad tradeoff to take your most beautiful, tranquil nature park and put a high- traffic
corridor through the middle of it." - Hunter Madsen, Save Bert Flinn Park organizer
They say it's a bad plan that needs to change.
"When this plan came through to pave a road right down the centre of the park and divide it in two just so a
developer could build a bunch of houses that didn't really make much sense," said Jeff Poste an IT consultant
who walks his goldendoodle named Dash through Bert Flinn Park daily.
"The choice to me is a no-brainer like Joni Mitchell said 'pave paradise to put up a parking lot?' I don't think
so."
The plan came to light in 2015 and 800 people attended public forums to learn more about the
developer's intentions, many of them nervous.
But a Vancouver architect hopes to nip the fracas in the bud, by preserving the park and even adding wildlife
underpasses and a parking lot.
James Cheng's Hong Kong-based clients, Brilliant Circle Group, bought a 250-acre parcel of the Ioco Lands
lands from the the Imperial Oil company. The land extends from the shores of Burrard Inlet in Port Moody,
north to the Anmore Hills.
"It will not be touched." - James Cheng, architect for the developer.
Port Moody has made it clear to developers there will be no more development up the mountain, unless the
David Street extension is completed, and that's expected to cost upwards of $25 million.
BCG has plans to build the expensive connector and some 200 homes on the pristine hillside.
Just as Port Moody protesters launched savebertflinnpark.ca, gearing up to fight for their dog park, CBC has
learned there is a potential reprieve.
The architect says he believes the right of way is wide enough for everybody's interests and intends to go
public in June with a plan he hopes quiets concerns.
"We have not gone public, because we cannot do this without the city's engineering department saying it's
OK," Cheng said, explaining that his clients listened after hundreds of people came out to public forums in