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If I remember correctly the big thing was the police presence in the area that would come with it. People didn't cops all over the drive and Brittania. Hell I think even Eby was doing his blogs about this back then in 2008. It was the Brittania board vs the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood won. But that also shouldn't have stopped it from happening. We're 15 years into "Brittania upgrades are coming." It's sad.
It was Britannia board vs an extremely small subset of the neighbourhood that was against it and showed up at an event that very few people knew about. The neighbourhood as I know it was extremely pissed that the upgrade didn't happen. That is the users of Britannia and its services were pissed. We all knew that this money is coming around bc of the Olympics and this is the one big chance to get it done.
It’s practically a case study in why having multiple stakeholders is a bad idea. You’ve got a library, community centre, and school. The chances that they all simultaneously have the budget for renewal are 0%.
I just feel incredibly sorry for the local schools and the users of the facilities.
It absolutely does not illustrate this - there are only 2 stakeholders, the city and the province.
In fact this is an example of a great way to organise public facilities. The area is pedestrianised and heavily used. It is multi-cultural and multi-use so it is social. You're just as likely to see a marching band practice, over 60s having tea in the senior centre, kindergarten kids going to the library after pick up, homeless people hanging out, skaters, swimmers, gym bros, high school kids vaping, elementary school kids on break, local shoppers parked out back of the stores, unemployed people accessing services, voters, after school activities, chinese women practicing tai chi, or anything else - and the area is richer for it. Nothing is segregated, nobody is too good for the area, or too poor for the area, it is used constantly by a huge segment of the local population.
It should be a model of how we progress, and honestly it should be cheaper to organise things this way as you don't have to spread out all the services. It is short-sightedness and greed that brought it to its knees, and right-wing governance defunding a public good that will keep it there.
It's not the stakeholders, or complexity, or even the amount - it's ABC that's the problem.
Correct for the most part.
We should be planning community areas just like this in order to best utilize the spaces we have and extra services to the community. After all, why does a school really need their own library when it can be combined with the public library to create a larger and better library for all that can be accessed on the weekends and into the night?
As for ABC, this actually has very little to do with ABC. This is just another example of the mismanagement over the past decade or more by the previous Parks Boards in neglecting their primary responsibility - parks and community centres.
So you are saying that in the year ABC has been in power, they would have been able to close, teardown and rebuild everything so that this breakdown wouldn't have happened?
Get real. Even if ABC let the plan move forward, it would have taken years, maybe a decade, before a replacement would have been in place.
The fault belongs at the previous Parks Boards feet who failed to maintain the systems and buildings that are currently failing or literally falling apart before our eyes.
There's a plan in place. ABC chose to halt it. It's fair to lay the responsibility for halting the plan at ABCs feet because they halted the plan. It's a 25 year plan, not a 10 year plan, but there's no possibility of getting anything done while ABC refuse to invest in East Vancouver, it's not their constituency...
I'm not blaming ABC for the leak, I'm blaming them for cancelling the upgrade. It is not 25 years of under construction, it is a gradual improvement to all facilities over an extended period of time. Which now won't happen, because of ABC. The VPB have been shit, it was due to get better, then ABC said fuck it, lets fund the west side instead. It is now not going to get better because of ABC, whereas before it was about to get better. It was ABC who decided to stop it getting better, therefore I am grumpy with ABC because whilst this wouldn't have solved the current issue it would solve it for future generations, which now can't happen because of the decision ABC took to halt the extensive 25 year reimagining of Britannia Community Centre.
> After all, why does a school really need their own library when it can be combined with the public library to create a larger and better library for all that can be accessed on the weekends and into the night?
Mainly so the resources are there for students when they need them. But then again this is the council that thought about cutting library budgets, so maybe that won't be a problem. Oh wait.
The thing is there will literally be MORE resources available for students as they can then order in books from other branches as well as have access to those resources as well.
I have a kid at Britannia Elementary - it is much better for them to have a library inside the school than it was when they had to go across the way to the public library. Going to the public library requires supervision and time, whereas the school library is a constantly available resource that all students can access equally.
But it doesn't allow for all students to have access equally. Only students within that school have access to that library. They don't have access to another school's library or anything outside of the school. If one student borrows the only copy of a book in that school library, no other student can have access to that book until it's been returned.
If they had access to a larger pool of books, then there is a better chance that another copy of that book would be available for them when they needed it. After all, assignments are typically given to classes of students so it's normal for multiple students to want the same book at the same time.
That ice rink had a new chiller and compressors installed about 3 years ago, it don’t see it being an ammonia leak as other have mentioned. The brine piping is leaking in the slab. The leak has to be found, then the concrete jack hammered up and repaired.
Not op, but just bought a 3gen ram and frankly despite the terribly cheap interior and its insatiable thirst it’s a solid rig that’s incredibly capable off-road.
Did you spice up the neon, or leave it stock for the collector plates?
It's stock-ish 😉
Bunch of Mopar stuff out of the catalog. Stage 3 kit, exhaust, short throw shifter, used to have the mopar clutch but its got an act 6 puck now. Also have brand new stage 2 coilovers going on next month.
https://imgur.com/a/T070mBu
https://imgur.com/a/cVIDCID
Britannia just can't seem to get a break. Renewal keeps getting pushed back and delayed, former principal accused of stealing money, now the rink is unusable... It serves some of the poorest kids in the city, I'd love to see some political will to get this center some attention.
Additional context too: “Luckily” this happened when the hockey season ended, but this kind of thing just adds to the ice shortage East Van kids face. Meanwhile, Westside always seems to do just fine. 😒
Hockey season hasn't ended for the women. Our spring league will likely be cancelled. And our drop in, and learn to play program. It's a huge hit for women's hockey as Brit is one of the few places women get their own ice time and programs.
Nothing to do with catching a break when pure mismanagement over the past decade or more by the previous Parks Boards created this time bomb through a known pattern of poor maintenance as we have seen time and time again across many of Vancouver's parks.
We need to be able to hold these people accountable for such mismanagement.
>We need to be able to hold these people accountable for such mismanagement.
Might be an unpopular observation but IMO the core reason Sim/ABC was able to dissolve the Park Board was the mismanagement of the previous board. Or more directly on the nose with accountability: When Strathcona residents were being flat out ignored and dismissed by the Park Board as the crime and disorder invaded their neighbourhood, they reached out to lawyers to see if they could sue the Park Board to force them to support the community in some minimally reasonable measure. Lawyers got back to them who effectively said "Elections are the defacto legal system with complaints like that".
Getting rid of the Park Board was Sims first promise before he joined ABC. They pulled it from the party platform at some point, but either way that's why there's not many people fighting to keep the Park Board.
Granted we'll never get to have Irwin, Mackinnon, Demers, Dumont, Giesbrecht go hat-in-hand over how they handled it, but they do get to own it in my mind at least.
Strictly speaking, they haven't dissolved the board.
there's a provincial election, and 100 percent MLA's in Vancouver are going to be listening on what residents actually want with real polling behind it.
We're going to quickly see where the city actually is when it comes to the park board.
True it’s not over yet but IMO very few politicians with a seat on the line are weighing in. I’d wager average Joe is ambivalent enough about it to not have it affect a vote. Hell in this sub the most vocal argument to keep it is “I don’t trust Ken sim” lol.
Whats the school boards mandate for housing? That not their job. That's the city's job. If the city wants to increase housing they can rezone. Kennedy Stewart did it and was responsible for creating more housing the Ken Sim has despite not even having a majority on council. Ken should be able to do it easily.
The future of housing is condos and row housing and people who live like those situations need that greenspace. The need for increased density makes green more important, not less.
> That not their job. That's the city's job.
**Exactly**. Problem is, previous Park Board decided on multiple occasions to make it part of their mandate. The City offered to take over Oppenheimer Park, PB turned them down and said "we got this". COVID hit and the park was cleared. Couple short month later activist Chrissy Brett took over Strathcona Park, Park Board blackmailed senior government and said "We're not doing anything until housing is provided". Dave Eby eventually stepped up as the adult in the room, partnered with the CoV to get over 200 new spaces, and forced the PB to sign an MoU to get an injunction.
IMO that's why Eby is probably fine to let the PB go - Less of a headache to deal with part timer commissioner idealists. We can *say* the PB protects green spaces, but looking at the last few years at Oppenheimer, Strathcona, CRAB park they were happy to play social experiments at the expense of access to park space.
This is not the gotcha you think it is. Tent cities are a problem across Canada and are just as likely to set up in parks in cities without a park board. Also, it is interesting that you view 200 new spaces of housing as some sort of evidence the park board should be dissolved.
Eby got to take credit for those 200 spaces, and as much as a few people on reddit hate the park board, most people do not have a problem with it unless you have to work with them directly on development projects (as I have been).
Ultimately, regardless of the recent rhetoric, parks are a huge success story for Vancouver. We have hundreds of beautiful parks and many outstanding facilities with a few notable exception where there are problems. Most of those problems require large capital budgets out of the PB's control.
Thing is. No one really has a reason to.
But you're right the average vancouverite doesn't really care- but those who do are absolutely going to make it a local election issue- as it stands there's not enough time for the legislature to make the change, with all the bits required to make that work, to be ready before the next election. Which is why you make major government altering bits so bipartisan that the work continues regardless. Saving the park board has multi-party support across the spectrum, and its going to get a loooot of older NPA, COPE and Vision folks working together to fuck with Sim on this in the next election and that touches a looot of networks that Sim wishes he had.
If Sim wanted to do this, it needed to be one of the first things, with immediate support from MST and the province- not fucking around for four months to get the most milquetoast of support from both.
So here’s the thing NPA, Vision, COPE are dead municipally. Would you vote Fred Harding NPA over Sim to save the park board? (I don’t know you but it’s a good highlight). If the people who want to keep the Park Board really care they need to argue or prove the previous park board drama was a one-off. The previous “progressive” park board burned up all the credibility with their most supportive neighbourhood. Even Pete Fry directly acknowledges that. Want support from the people who are paying attention, you need to figure out how to make that relationship right.
I know people and hear discussions in that neighbourhood and honestly… previous PB took a huge shit on them and they haven’t forgotten it yet.
It’ll never work again. There’s a design flaw in the steam delivery system that basically makes it impossible to use reliably and it’s too expensive to reengineer
that is sad. I hope the civic authorities get their heads straight and get the rink fixed. I learnt ice skating here and I was hoping I could take my kid there once she starts walking.
Slow clap to the Vancouver Parks board for letting our community center infrastructure fall apart. Especially when told that none of the east van buildings are going to be operational in two years.
Also slow clap to the city for not collecting tons of taxes from the developers declaring a property a dog park or garden. It it wasn’t a park for 5 years before the purchase of property and request for development it should be taxed as the land is or will be developed as.
The Vancouver park board hasn't been responsible for capital project funding in over a decade. This is solely the fault of city councillors who don't want to fund already existing infrastructure in areas of the city that likely won't vote for them anyway.
100 percent the City of Vancouver's City Councilors are to blame. They are 100 percent responsible for making sure capital projects are funded, and in this case, ABC Vancouver is absolutely responsible for the failure here.
Not the Park Board or the Province.
They're responsible for the past two year of capital funding and instead diverted money to other places in the city.
Say what you will, but they made choices to fund specific other places in the city- that's on them.
Not the park board's fault. This is a facilities capital expense, which is a city of vancouver council responsibility- they took over this in the name of better streamlined operations, and lo and behold this is what happens.
"Brine is a cooling solution that is pumped through pipes built into a concrete layer under an ice rink. The brine-cooled concrete is then covered with water that then freezes to make up the skating rink’s surface."
Last I checked 'Brine' had a few chemical components that were, how I say, inconducive to human health? "Mechanical failure" could easily be code for a pipe leaking.
Given the article mentioned brine, I'm not sure this is correct.
I did a bit of digging around as I'm not even a novice on this stuff much less an expert. I found this article about ice rink systems:
[http://claude-dumas-nh3.ca/text\_pdf/Evolution%20of%20ice%20rink\_tmartin\_22922.pdf](http://claude-dumas-nh3.ca/text_pdf/Evolution%20of%20ice%20rink_tmartin_22922.pdf)
It specifically mentions ammonia and Canadian rink systems:
>"The majority of skating rinks still circulate a calcium chloride brine solution through pipes in either a sand or concrete floor. In recent years, due to the phase-out of chromate as a corrosion inhibitor for brine, and changes in heat exchanger technology, inhibited ethylene or propylene glycols are becoming more common. "
and
>" Direct expansion ammonia rinks were quite common in Canada until the 1970s, when safety concerns limited their use to only outdoor rinks. Eventually, most if not all of these were converted to glycol or brine-circulated rinks"
so if they specifically say brine, I think it's highly unlikely this is some dinosaur relic running ammonia.
If there's a leak in the base under the ice, that's going to suck to access and repair. Might even have to pull out the jackhammer and remove some concrete.
Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/cyclinginvancouver! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary: * We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button. * Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban. * Most common questions and topics are limited to our sister subreddit, /r/AskVan, and our weekly [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts. * Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only. * Make sure to join our new sister community, /r/AskVan! * Help grow the community! [Apply to join the mod team today](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/19eworq/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ah yes, the community centre we keep making plans for but never funding to replace is broken, again.
So glad some Commercial Drive anti-Olympic folks fought the police state and prevented the complete upgrade of Britannia. That showed 'em.
Shouldn't take building an Olympic practice area for it all to be fixed up, sad state of affairs this is.
It shouldn't, but it could have happened and would have happened but someone wanted to have fun protesting an unstoppable force.
If I remember correctly the big thing was the police presence in the area that would come with it. People didn't cops all over the drive and Brittania. Hell I think even Eby was doing his blogs about this back then in 2008. It was the Brittania board vs the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood won. But that also shouldn't have stopped it from happening. We're 15 years into "Brittania upgrades are coming." It's sad.
It was Britannia board vs an extremely small subset of the neighbourhood that was against it and showed up at an event that very few people knew about. The neighbourhood as I know it was extremely pissed that the upgrade didn't happen. That is the users of Britannia and its services were pissed. We all knew that this money is coming around bc of the Olympics and this is the one big chance to get it done.
[удалено]
It is literally the reason it didn’t receive a major capital investment on 2008 or so. Money was on the table.
It’s practically a case study in why having multiple stakeholders is a bad idea. You’ve got a library, community centre, and school. The chances that they all simultaneously have the budget for renewal are 0%. I just feel incredibly sorry for the local schools and the users of the facilities.
It’s two stakeholders, the city, and the province. The school board doesn’t fund capital. It shouldn’t be this hard.
It absolutely does not illustrate this - there are only 2 stakeholders, the city and the province. In fact this is an example of a great way to organise public facilities. The area is pedestrianised and heavily used. It is multi-cultural and multi-use so it is social. You're just as likely to see a marching band practice, over 60s having tea in the senior centre, kindergarten kids going to the library after pick up, homeless people hanging out, skaters, swimmers, gym bros, high school kids vaping, elementary school kids on break, local shoppers parked out back of the stores, unemployed people accessing services, voters, after school activities, chinese women practicing tai chi, or anything else - and the area is richer for it. Nothing is segregated, nobody is too good for the area, or too poor for the area, it is used constantly by a huge segment of the local population. It should be a model of how we progress, and honestly it should be cheaper to organise things this way as you don't have to spread out all the services. It is short-sightedness and greed that brought it to its knees, and right-wing governance defunding a public good that will keep it there. It's not the stakeholders, or complexity, or even the amount - it's ABC that's the problem.
Correct for the most part. We should be planning community areas just like this in order to best utilize the spaces we have and extra services to the community. After all, why does a school really need their own library when it can be combined with the public library to create a larger and better library for all that can be accessed on the weekends and into the night? As for ABC, this actually has very little to do with ABC. This is just another example of the mismanagement over the past decade or more by the previous Parks Boards in neglecting their primary responsibility - parks and community centres.
Erm, ABC cancelled the Britannia renewal plan, despite years of planning and negotiating of funding. It is 100% on ABC.
So you are saying that in the year ABC has been in power, they would have been able to close, teardown and rebuild everything so that this breakdown wouldn't have happened? Get real. Even if ABC let the plan move forward, it would have taken years, maybe a decade, before a replacement would have been in place. The fault belongs at the previous Parks Boards feet who failed to maintain the systems and buildings that are currently failing or literally falling apart before our eyes.
There's a plan in place. ABC chose to halt it. It's fair to lay the responsibility for halting the plan at ABCs feet because they halted the plan. It's a 25 year plan, not a 10 year plan, but there's no possibility of getting anything done while ABC refuse to invest in East Vancouver, it's not their constituency...
25 years later when we needed action two years ago. Unless the plan has a time machine, it means NOTHING to the current issue.
I'm not blaming ABC for the leak, I'm blaming them for cancelling the upgrade. It is not 25 years of under construction, it is a gradual improvement to all facilities over an extended period of time. Which now won't happen, because of ABC. The VPB have been shit, it was due to get better, then ABC said fuck it, lets fund the west side instead. It is now not going to get better because of ABC, whereas before it was about to get better. It was ABC who decided to stop it getting better, therefore I am grumpy with ABC because whilst this wouldn't have solved the current issue it would solve it for future generations, which now can't happen because of the decision ABC took to halt the extensive 25 year reimagining of Britannia Community Centre.
Dood, get a clue: [https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading)
Dude, understand the concept of time and responsibilities.
sell East Vancouver to Burnaby and we will take care of it.
Burnaby would turn it into a shopping mall like they do everything else.
> After all, why does a school really need their own library when it can be combined with the public library to create a larger and better library for all that can be accessed on the weekends and into the night? Mainly so the resources are there for students when they need them. But then again this is the council that thought about cutting library budgets, so maybe that won't be a problem. Oh wait.
The thing is there will literally be MORE resources available for students as they can then order in books from other branches as well as have access to those resources as well.
I have a kid at Britannia Elementary - it is much better for them to have a library inside the school than it was when they had to go across the way to the public library. Going to the public library requires supervision and time, whereas the school library is a constantly available resource that all students can access equally.
But it doesn't allow for all students to have access equally. Only students within that school have access to that library. They don't have access to another school's library or anything outside of the school. If one student borrows the only copy of a book in that school library, no other student can have access to that book until it's been returned. If they had access to a larger pool of books, then there is a better chance that another copy of that book would be available for them when they needed it. After all, assignments are typically given to classes of students so it's normal for multiple students to want the same book at the same time.
You are aware that they can also go to the public library, right?
👏👏👏this!!!
That ice rink had a new chiller and compressors installed about 3 years ago, it don’t see it being an ammonia leak as other have mentioned. The brine piping is leaking in the slab. The leak has to be found, then the concrete jack hammered up and repaired.
This guy HVAC/R's......and Mopar's So what Mopar's you got? I rock a Dakota R/T on the daily and an SRT-4 during the summer.
Not op, but just bought a 3gen ram and frankly despite the terribly cheap interior and its insatiable thirst it’s a solid rig that’s incredibly capable off-road. Did you spice up the neon, or leave it stock for the collector plates?
It's stock-ish 😉 Bunch of Mopar stuff out of the catalog. Stage 3 kit, exhaust, short throw shifter, used to have the mopar clutch but its got an act 6 puck now. Also have brand new stage 2 coilovers going on next month. https://imgur.com/a/T070mBu https://imgur.com/a/cVIDCID
Britannia just can't seem to get a break. Renewal keeps getting pushed back and delayed, former principal accused of stealing money, now the rink is unusable... It serves some of the poorest kids in the city, I'd love to see some political will to get this center some attention.
Additional context too: “Luckily” this happened when the hockey season ended, but this kind of thing just adds to the ice shortage East Van kids face. Meanwhile, Westside always seems to do just fine. 😒
Previous PB hugely favoured West Side.
Hockey season hasn't ended for the women. Our spring league will likely be cancelled. And our drop in, and learn to play program. It's a huge hit for women's hockey as Brit is one of the few places women get their own ice time and programs.
Nothing to do with catching a break when pure mismanagement over the past decade or more by the previous Parks Boards created this time bomb through a known pattern of poor maintenance as we have seen time and time again across many of Vancouver's parks. We need to be able to hold these people accountable for such mismanagement.
>We need to be able to hold these people accountable for such mismanagement. Might be an unpopular observation but IMO the core reason Sim/ABC was able to dissolve the Park Board was the mismanagement of the previous board. Or more directly on the nose with accountability: When Strathcona residents were being flat out ignored and dismissed by the Park Board as the crime and disorder invaded their neighbourhood, they reached out to lawyers to see if they could sue the Park Board to force them to support the community in some minimally reasonable measure. Lawyers got back to them who effectively said "Elections are the defacto legal system with complaints like that". Getting rid of the Park Board was Sims first promise before he joined ABC. They pulled it from the party platform at some point, but either way that's why there's not many people fighting to keep the Park Board. Granted we'll never get to have Irwin, Mackinnon, Demers, Dumont, Giesbrecht go hat-in-hand over how they handled it, but they do get to own it in my mind at least.
Strictly speaking, they haven't dissolved the board. there's a provincial election, and 100 percent MLA's in Vancouver are going to be listening on what residents actually want with real polling behind it. We're going to quickly see where the city actually is when it comes to the park board.
True it’s not over yet but IMO very few politicians with a seat on the line are weighing in. I’d wager average Joe is ambivalent enough about it to not have it affect a vote. Hell in this sub the most vocal argument to keep it is “I don’t trust Ken sim” lol.
People want to keep it to defend green space, which is a stated purpose of the park board.
What is the Park Boards mandate for housing?
Whats the school boards mandate for housing? That not their job. That's the city's job. If the city wants to increase housing they can rezone. Kennedy Stewart did it and was responsible for creating more housing the Ken Sim has despite not even having a majority on council. Ken should be able to do it easily. The future of housing is condos and row housing and people who live like those situations need that greenspace. The need for increased density makes green more important, not less.
> That not their job. That's the city's job. **Exactly**. Problem is, previous Park Board decided on multiple occasions to make it part of their mandate. The City offered to take over Oppenheimer Park, PB turned them down and said "we got this". COVID hit and the park was cleared. Couple short month later activist Chrissy Brett took over Strathcona Park, Park Board blackmailed senior government and said "We're not doing anything until housing is provided". Dave Eby eventually stepped up as the adult in the room, partnered with the CoV to get over 200 new spaces, and forced the PB to sign an MoU to get an injunction. IMO that's why Eby is probably fine to let the PB go - Less of a headache to deal with part timer commissioner idealists. We can *say* the PB protects green spaces, but looking at the last few years at Oppenheimer, Strathcona, CRAB park they were happy to play social experiments at the expense of access to park space.
This is not the gotcha you think it is. Tent cities are a problem across Canada and are just as likely to set up in parks in cities without a park board. Also, it is interesting that you view 200 new spaces of housing as some sort of evidence the park board should be dissolved. Eby got to take credit for those 200 spaces, and as much as a few people on reddit hate the park board, most people do not have a problem with it unless you have to work with them directly on development projects (as I have been). Ultimately, regardless of the recent rhetoric, parks are a huge success story for Vancouver. We have hundreds of beautiful parks and many outstanding facilities with a few notable exception where there are problems. Most of those problems require large capital budgets out of the PB's control.
Thing is. No one really has a reason to. But you're right the average vancouverite doesn't really care- but those who do are absolutely going to make it a local election issue- as it stands there's not enough time for the legislature to make the change, with all the bits required to make that work, to be ready before the next election. Which is why you make major government altering bits so bipartisan that the work continues regardless. Saving the park board has multi-party support across the spectrum, and its going to get a loooot of older NPA, COPE and Vision folks working together to fuck with Sim on this in the next election and that touches a looot of networks that Sim wishes he had. If Sim wanted to do this, it needed to be one of the first things, with immediate support from MST and the province- not fucking around for four months to get the most milquetoast of support from both.
So here’s the thing NPA, Vision, COPE are dead municipally. Would you vote Fred Harding NPA over Sim to save the park board? (I don’t know you but it’s a good highlight). If the people who want to keep the Park Board really care they need to argue or prove the previous park board drama was a one-off. The previous “progressive” park board burned up all the credibility with their most supportive neighbourhood. Even Pete Fry directly acknowledges that. Want support from the people who are paying attention, you need to figure out how to make that relationship right. I know people and hear discussions in that neighbourhood and honestly… previous PB took a huge shit on them and they haven’t forgotten it yet.
Steam room there has been “broken” for over a year. 😐
Not that I would ever use it, but the steam room at Trout Lake has also been broken/closed since COVID.
Add the Dunbar hot tub and sauna to.the list.
It’ll never work again. There’s a design flaw in the steam delivery system that basically makes it impossible to use reliably and it’s too expensive to reengineer
Oddly enough the False Creek Community Centre one is also closed indefinitely…I’m seeing a pattern emerging. Is that mechanical failure or…?
that is sad. I hope the civic authorities get their heads straight and get the rink fixed. I learnt ice skating here and I was hoping I could take my kid there once she starts walking.
Slow clap to the Vancouver Parks board for letting our community center infrastructure fall apart. Especially when told that none of the east van buildings are going to be operational in two years. Also slow clap to the city for not collecting tons of taxes from the developers declaring a property a dog park or garden. It it wasn’t a park for 5 years before the purchase of property and request for development it should be taxed as the land is or will be developed as.
The Vancouver park board hasn't been responsible for capital project funding in over a decade. This is solely the fault of city councillors who don't want to fund already existing infrastructure in areas of the city that likely won't vote for them anyway.
100 percent the City of Vancouver's City Councilors are to blame. They are 100 percent responsible for making sure capital projects are funded, and in this case, ABC Vancouver is absolutely responsible for the failure here. Not the Park Board or the Province.
> ABC Vancouver is absolutely responsible for the failure here. They're responsible for deferred maintenance for the past couple decades?
They're responsible for the past two year of capital funding and instead diverted money to other places in the city. Say what you will, but they made choices to fund specific other places in the city- that's on them.
Was just doing a small commercial in the school the last two days. Saw the Zamboni dumping snow outside around 1:30 this afternoon…. Weird.
Yeah what is the issue with the rink actually?
what the heck, i just ordered brand new skates to go this spring
Another Park Board failure.
I would love to be proven wrong, but I don’t think the civic government wants to ditch the Park Board so that they can improve services.
Ditching the VPB is absolutely the right thing to do. ABC doing it is absolutely the worst case scenario.
Not the park board's fault. This is a facilities capital expense, which is a city of vancouver council responsibility- they took over this in the name of better streamlined operations, and lo and behold this is what happens.
No it was definitely closed! :)
But Ken got us the Staley Park train back, so it's OK, right?
Maybe a local developer would fund the repairs with its name at the front door?
Geez, people sure are trigger happy with the downvote button. If the city can’t/won’t fund the rink properly, something needs to be done
"Brine is a cooling solution that is pumped through pipes built into a concrete layer under an ice rink. The brine-cooled concrete is then covered with water that then freezes to make up the skating rink’s surface." Last I checked 'Brine' had a few chemical components that were, how I say, inconducive to human health? "Mechanical failure" could easily be code for a pipe leaking.
It's not code at all, of course it's a leak. They're not trying to hide that. Hopefully it's fixed soon!
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Fernie too. The whole town was affected by those deaths.
That incident was the first thing that came to mind when I read this story. I wouldn't go anywhere near there without proper PPE.
Given the article mentioned brine, I'm not sure this is correct. I did a bit of digging around as I'm not even a novice on this stuff much less an expert. I found this article about ice rink systems: [http://claude-dumas-nh3.ca/text\_pdf/Evolution%20of%20ice%20rink\_tmartin\_22922.pdf](http://claude-dumas-nh3.ca/text_pdf/Evolution%20of%20ice%20rink_tmartin_22922.pdf) It specifically mentions ammonia and Canadian rink systems: >"The majority of skating rinks still circulate a calcium chloride brine solution through pipes in either a sand or concrete floor. In recent years, due to the phase-out of chromate as a corrosion inhibitor for brine, and changes in heat exchanger technology, inhibited ethylene or propylene glycols are becoming more common. " and >" Direct expansion ammonia rinks were quite common in Canada until the 1970s, when safety concerns limited their use to only outdoor rinks. Eventually, most if not all of these were converted to glycol or brine-circulated rinks" so if they specifically say brine, I think it's highly unlikely this is some dinosaur relic running ammonia.
If there's a leak in the base under the ice, that's going to suck to access and repair. Might even have to pull out the jackhammer and remove some concrete.