Visitors to Cuthbert Holmes Park, which is set to lose land to the partial cloverleaf section of the McKenzie interchange, expressed mixed feelings about the plan Tuesday.
The province plans to carve 1.4 hectares from the northeast corner of the 25.6-hectare park to improve safety and congestion at McKenzie Avenue and the Trans-Canada Highway. The intersection was ranked the most crash-prone on the Island in 2013 with 79 collisions.
But Saanich council voted Tuesday to ask the province to halt its plans and pursue a different design, because of the way it encroaches on parkland, after residents argued that its ecological value needs to be protected.
On Tuesday morning, traffic could be heard zipping along the highway, from the sunken mix of paved and green space that is to be part of the interchange. The area includes a small parking lot, paved walkway and trail connectors. It also hosts ecological assets like firs and trembling aspen, as well as migratory birds.
Retiree Glenn Young was walking in the park as part of his daily routine. He said sacrificing the small, “ugly” part of the park for the interchange was a worthy plan.
“I’m happy with it; I don’t mind. They’ve got to do something,” Young said. “You can’t say, OK we can’t build it because we have a park here. You’ve got to move traffic.”
Ian Thomson, who walks his chihuahua-dachshund Cory in the park five days a week, said he has enjoyed seeing owls, regular dog-walkers, runners and other park users in the area.
He said traffic on Admirals Road makes it difficult to access the parking lot. He said retaining or replacing the parking lot should be a priority.
“I can come here any day of the week and [cars] are lined up all the way to Tillicum Mall,” he said.
“It’s hell now getting in and out of here. At peak times of the day, you’ll wait two- to three- lights just to get out of the parking lot.”
Melissa Francis moved to the area in July from Vancouver. She regularly walks in the park with her daughter, Emma, 2. “If we don’t have access to this from our house anymore, that would be horrible,” she said.
The fir trees have been the nesting, roosting and living quarters of red-tail hawks for 20 years, said Dorothy Chambers, a Colquitz River and Cuthbert Holmes Park advocate who was at the Saanich council meeting Monday night.
“And there is a very significant part of the estuary that runs right up to the parking lot and is one of our most sensitive mud, sediment and feeding areas for the migratory and resident birds,” she said.
The cloverleaf would bring the road 100 metres closer to the estuary, which she said includes dense bush and canopy for birds to nest.
The province acknowledged that birds could be disturbed by the project in its environmental assessment, prepared by McElhanney Consulting. These include species listed under the Species at Risk Act and the provincially listed great blue heron, birds protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act, and birds and active nests protected under the provincial Wildlife Act.
