It’s considered to be possibly the city’s worst park: the Yaletown at Nelson and Mainland – here.
Intellectually one can guess the rationale: a contrast to the traditional soft spaces that dominate our Garden City – an urban, more European design. But if the jury is the number of people (and dogs) who use the space, its emptiness is an indictment.
However, over time, nature cannot be denied.
I have always thought this space made no sense. If you are going to have a stone paver finish, at least make it flat and usable. The park is usually empty, except for the benches.
Originally it was supposed to be programmed space – with markets and other activities.
I suspect that the architects forgot to allow underground height for the depth of planters for the trees, thereby requiring that dirt be placed above grade.
But the design disaster can still be fixed by pouring regular above-grade straight sided concrete planters and leveling the ground.
I have always thought the treatment of this park resulted from a kneejerk, ‘genius moment’ light bulb of an idea, which of course dims quickly when you start to apply a typical activity program. It utterly fails on long-term maintenance. Obviously it was not thought through on basic site analysis and programming, and maintenance was laughed off at best, sneered at worst.
But I bet the LA still charged a big fee.