“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Sorry to bring this up again, but I really think Cranbrook city council made a bad decision in deciding to arbitrarily close the Cranbrook RV Park which has faithfully served local residents and visitors for almost a century.

With minimal discussion by council, the city announced closure of the popular tourist facility adjacent to Baker Park in a Jan. 18 press release entitled “Future Land Use Options – Mt. Baker RV Campground.”

Then in a move similar to the old bait and switch game, the release said administration was directing the city to initiate a public process “to solicit expressions of interest on ideas for the future” (of the park site) which had served the city and visitors well since the early 1920s.

Councillor Norma Blissett questioned the speed of the move, but council closed the park anyway even though the city didn’t consult the public. In other words, the taxpayers of Cranbrook were presented with a fait accompli and didn’t get a chance to provide input on whether the RV park should be closed at all.

That’s a rather slipshod way to run a city don’t you think? Asking for expressions of interest on how to use the site but closing the park first. Not very fair in my estimation. But maybe there are other agendas involved.

And sure enough, it wasn’t very long before an RV park user wrote e-KNOW.ca to complain. Patti Phillips chastised council for being so eager to close a facility that had served the city and visitors to the city so well for so long.

“Has consideration been given to the potential number of folks who have stayed at the Baker RV park, explored the area and then decided Cranbrook would be a great place to call home?” she asked. “Or discovered this is a great area to vacation in and made plans to return? What about the downtown retail?”

Phillips said her family stayed in the RV Park much of last summer and saw a large number of visitors downtown laden with (shopping) bags. “What is the lost retail revenue? And what about reputation?” Good questions indeed. I can’t help but wonder why city councillors weren’t raising them.

Instead, councillors seemed to swallow city administration’s explanation that the park was a money loser and needed expensive infrastructure repairs. No doubt there’s some truth to that but I’d be careful about swallowing that line in its entirety.

For starters, I’ve lived close to that park for more than 20 years and I’ve watched it fill every spring as the first buds came out and stay filled through the summer and fall when the leaves turn colour. Quite a difference from the Rec-Plex white elephant a few blocks away that taxpayers paid $21 million to build and is still losing money to this day, almost a million every year.

As for infrastructure, that’s the city’s fault as Cranbrook is notorious for ignoring infrastructure maintenance until the last possible moment.

In the economy we’re in now, tourism and especially RV’ing is more popular than ever. Having a big RV park just off the downtown with a babbling creek running through it and shaded by stately pine trees is an asset – a big asset and not a liability. Would somebody please tell our city councillors that? And what about the claim made in another city release that tourists coming to Cranbrook had other parks nearby to stay at like Norbury and Premier Lake Provincial Parks?  Perhaps we should just direct our tourists to Banff and Jasper and be done with it?

The closer you look at the city’s move the more inexplicable it becomes. In a background briefing to councillors just before they made their decision, the City Engineering Department said the city might get “expressions of interest” from unnamed sources interested in “further housing capacity.”

What did they mean by that? Condos in the park? Is this whole thing just a real estate play? It fairly boggles the mind! As I said in an earlier column it’s time to revisit this decision.

Photos courtesy Gerry Warner

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who likes to ask questions when councillors don’t bother to.

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