Questions remain about infrastructure investments for Rupert and Renfrew neighbourhood

In July, city council approved the Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan, which would allow for significant new housing and mixed-use development around those two SkyTrain stations and the surrounding neighbourhoods. 

Vancity Lookout’s managing editor Geoff put together an overview of the plan at the time. It’s a good starting point for understanding the changes coming to the area, especially around housing, in a part of the city that’s still mainly made up of detached homes. 

But it’s also an area with unique geographic and ecological features, including the city’s only remaining ravine and an important creek. Still Creek runs through the Renfrew Ravine, around the Renfrew Park Community Centre, and down past Grandview Highway and Rupert Station. 

Protecting and enhancing the stream is a key part of the plan, according to the city. It’s a culmination of the extensive work the city has done in the past few years in the Still Creek Watershed. A study of the watershed identified an area for daylighting (letting the water flow above ground rather than in pipes) of the creek and expansion of surrounding habitat between Renfrew St. and Boundary Road. That guidance has been incorporated into the broader area plan as a way to improve the stream’s ecology and reduce the impact of flooding.

The plan also includes a groundwater protection area, with limits on the underground footprint of new developments.

“I feel like it's one of the first times where the watershed has been front and centre in the planning process for the different neighbourhoods that have been happening. So that part, I'm very pleased about,” said Carmen Rosen, the founder and artistic director of Still Moon Arts Society.

Still Moon has led artistic events and environmental stewardship in the Renfrew Ravine and around Still Creek since 2003 when they put on the first Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival. It’s a tradition that’s still going strong – the festival’s 23rd edition will take place this fall. 

“We're on to our second generation, like some of the kids that helped out [early on] are now parents and are bringing their kids to the festival. [It’s] very exciting to see that. So we have 23 years of families and communities being involved in the festival, and every year it brings people to the banks of Still Creek,” Rosen told Vancity Lookout. 

The festival usually involves lantern and art displays throughout Renfrew Park and on the trails next to the ravine, with different music and dance performances happening within the ravine itself. This year’s Moon Festival will run for nearly a month, starting on September 8. The main event day will be on Saturday, October 4th.   

Rosen, an artist who has lived in Renfrew Heights for 25 years, attributes the group’s success to its persistence – something that paid off in a major way when chum salmon returned to spawn in Still Creek in 2012, 80 years after they disappeared from the area. It’s currently one of the only salmon-bearing streams in the city. 

“We’ve watched them spawning down behind Canadian Tire on Grandview Highway,” Rosen said, explaining that the salmon haven’t yet been able to make it up through the underground piped portion of the creek along Renfrew to the park and ravine area.  

“We still have big goals… We would like the creek to be daylit and healthy enough so that eventually we could be hanging out [in Renfrew Park] and the ravine and watch the salmon there,” Rosen said, adding that the expanded creek habitat by the SkyTrain stations is a good step in that direction.  

The area plan also gestures at the possibility of a greenway or multi-use path on the south side of the expanded creek area between Grandview Highway and the SkyTrain line. However, that would require funding and land deals between the city and the existing landowners in the corridor, making it far from certain at this point.

The focus on improving the ecology of Still Creek, while further integrating it into the neighbourhood, is a highlight of the area plan. However, community leaders see the lack of money for social and recreational infrastructure as a significant weakness. 

Renfrew Park Community Centre (RPCC) sits just steps away from where Still Creek flows out of the ravine, where the waterway runs beside and under a series of paths and boardwalks in the park.

“The building is 60 years old and we're at capacity… all our classes are booked, all our courses are pretty much full… Even [with] just the regular growth in the area, not including the [projected 18,000+ people moving in due to the area plan], we would start needing more rooms,” Renfrew Park Community Association president Anthony Mehnert told Vancity Lookout. 

Renfrew-Collingwood already has some of the lowest community centre access in the city. With only one community centre and over 50,000 people already living there as of 2022, the neighbourhood falls far below the city’s goals for community centre space per person. 

The city’s area plan doesn’t come with any actual funding for the community centre Mehnert said, despite a 2022 park board strategy that ranked RPCC as the second highest priority for renewal. 

In the new area plan, staff put “planning/design for the renewal and expansion” of the Renfrew Community Centre and Pool as a 10-year priority, estimating it would cost about $19 million, with about 65 per cent of that coming from the city and the rest from developers. 

But that’s probably not realistic in terms of long-term investment. “A community center at 60 years old, you can't really do much with it. [The whole thing] would need to be replaced, including the pool,” Mehnert said, estimating it would cost just under $100 million right now, based on similar projects in Marpole, Burnaby, and Coquitlam. 

However, with aging infrastructure all over the city – including 11 community centres in need of renewal – and shrinking development contributions due to provincial legislation, community services are in fierce competition for a shrinking funding pot.  

Rosen agrees that the plan’s weakness is the lack of funding for infrastructure, such as artist spaces.  “I think the vision is good, but the muscle behind the cultural and social amenities is not there,” Rosen said. 

Still Moon Arts Society has survived by doing everything outside, Rosen said. Still Moon partnered with an artist from Denman Island to build a cob house on a sliver of parkland on the northwestern edge of the ravine, but other than that, the society has no dedicated space to operate out of. 

“People are working out of their garages… we don't have a hub for arts and culture,” in the neighbourhood, Rosen explained. 

The area plan includes consideration for increased height and density for new buildings in the industrial area around Grandview Highway if they expand or create artist studio space as part of redevelopment. 

“I’m hopeful the words they've said in there will actually turn into real things,” Rosen said, “But [the plan] needs a bit more muscle behind the nice words.”