By Darcy Knoll
Centretown’s Piece Park advocates want city council to help keep Ottawa’s public school board from selling a multi-million dollar property that houses one of the city’s only legal graffiti walls.
“There’s a lot of need for this [green space]…specifically because we’re in an area that is the most highly densely populated in Ottawa,” says Pat Thompson, project manager of the Piece Park Community Initiative.
Nestled among developing condominiums and apartment buildings, the Piece Park sits at the corner of Bronson and Slater streets.
The space contains a large grass field beside a basketball court with three decrepit nets. Behind the nets lies a bouquet of spray paint – a kaleidoscope of designs, faces and letters on one of Ottawa’s only legal graffiti walls.
But this is not city owned land.
The lot is part of the former Ottawa Technical High School and owned by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. In November 2002 then-supervisor Mervyn Beckstead announced the board should consider selling the property in order to gain extra revenue.
“It’s definitely a major piece of property,” says Joan Spice, trustee for Somerset-Kitchissippi. “If it actually was surplus to our needs we [the school board] obviously would sell it.”
According to Spice, independent estimates of the property range from $10-$25 million, but the board still hasn’t decided whether to sell the space at all.
“There are different proposals that people have talked about. One is having the school board retain part of the property, the city gets part of it for a park and part of it would go for residential use,” she says.
To stop the sale of this space a group of local charities, organizations, artists and community members have gotten together to ask the city for its support.
“We want the city to put pressure on the school board and we want the community to rise up and show the school board and the city that [selling the property] is not what they want,” says Thompson.
The group has the support of the health, recreation and social services committee who will recommend city council support to preserve the park.
“There’s very little green space and public space in the downtown,” says Elisabeth Arnold, councillor for Somerset Ward. “We certainly have some green space around the fringes if you think of the canal and the waterfront, but in the actual core… there is not a lot of opportunity for public activity in a particular green space.”
Ultimately though, says Spice, it’s not up to the school board to build a park. “The board is not in the business of establishing parks or donating money for parks or making use of the property for parks, it’s not part of our mandate,” she says.
For Thompson, the property is worth more than dollars and cents.The 25-year-old has honed his artistic skills on the graffiti wall for the past 12 years and he says this space is a symbol of both art and community.
“The idea of knocking this place down and putting up condominiums and relocating everyone to a new space, an artificial space, would be a shame because when places like this grow organically they have to be appreciated,” he says.
Park organizers wish to make the park more wheelchair accessible, improve the basketball courts, add soccer nets and a small amphitheatre for acoustic performances or poetry readings, and connect it to a community garden behind the park.
“I really admire the maturity of this group that is concerned about creating a park because they’ve got something else on their mind other than just fooling around and wasting time,” says Rosemary Tayler, the garden’s volunteer coordinator.