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Garden Plotting 101.

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Garden Plotting 101. Hidden away in the outskirts of Strathcona are two peace-inducing gems that have delighted the neigh-bourhood, many passers-by and every citizen that has encountered them since 1985 known as Strathcona Community and Cottonwood Gardens. Over the years, their members have overcome many challenges and obstacles that have been thrown their way and that doesn't include bad weather, theft and various diseases. Shortly after its inception, the gardener had to fight to save one acre of the original site to construction of a seniors' housing project which, as anyone can now see, they lost. That's all water under the bridge now and we have co-existed side by side - if not in harmony, at least in leaving each other be. Having gone through that struggle, nothing could have prepared them for the stunning news coming at them from the City of Vancouver recently. As an add-on to the Georgia Viaduct removal project, and in a supine effort to appease some Strathcona residents who want the traffic removed from Prior street and have it turned into a bucolic cow path or something like it, the city has proposed a new "roadway extension" (which is not the same as a freeway) down Malkin avenue from Clark Dr. to Main St. This presumably will divert all that traffic to some new feeder system that will get the motoring public downtown and back each day much as the viaduct has done for years. (So, you see, they don't really plan to demolish the hated viaduct as much as move it). That's where the gardeners come in. This new roadway system will require that perhaps half of the Cottonwood garden site and a portion of the Strathcona site be bulldozed away. Not only does this directly destroy the existing land, it makes the rest of the gardens virtually unusable. Who will be interested in trying to cultivate a gardening environment with freeway strength traffic roaring directly past you spewing enumerable amounts of toxic deposits accross it as it goes? This has so far sneaked under the radar of the general public as no consultation over this proposal has been undertaken; (but for the Strathcona residents who are day by day calculating the increases in property values should this go through). What they perhaps don't realize is that when you remove any substantial traffic corridor from the system, nobody can predict how and where it will re-appear. There's a good chance that a lot of it will begin shortcutting down Pender St. again to get downtown. Some benefit. Another question comes to mind: I went to the open house dog and pony show at Woodwards the Planning department presented some months back detailing how the removal of the viaduct could work. The estimated removal cost was around $100 million. Nowhere did they present any information about this Malkin freeway (sorry) diversion. How much will this cost? Currently Malkin is a dead end street at both ends and an overpass would have to be built over the CN tracks to connect it to Clark Dr. Has this been budgeted for? Before the greener than green Vision team gets much further along with this bizarre project, we all better have some decent community wide consultation--who knows, maybe city wide--as community gardens are a unique and treasured resource throughout the region, before the heavy machinery starts to rev up under the cloak of secrecy. Is there enough space adjacent to the city hall's little community garden to accommodate the about-to-be-evicted at these two sites? Hope so. Ian MacRae

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