Dallas Cunningham, who will be 2 on Tuesday, explores the playground equipment at Diamond Park in Orchards with her mom, Dae. The two try to walk every day, and the planned improvement of a path through Diamond Park is something they are looking forward to. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
About once a week, Alita Mona walks about three blocks to Fir Garden Park. Once she’s there, she takes her chocolate Lab, Tidas, for a walk and lets her 14-month-old son, Charlie, free to roam on the grass.
“Charlie can just have free rein,” she said. “He can just play.”
Mona said she enjoys coming to Fir Garden Park in the Burnt Bridge Creek neighborhood because it is clean and safe, and she’s excited to hear that it will be getting some upgrades — an improved path, new picnic tables and benches, and a half basketball court.
“It might bring in more people,” she said, adding that Charlie would have more buddies to play with. And, she said, “Dad wants him into basketball.”
Fir Garden Park is one of three in the east Vancouver area that will undergo improvements this fall.
The upgrades are a long time coming, said Terry Snyder, park developer for the city of Vancouver. Aside from improvements to Cascade Park adjacent to Crestline Elementary School this summer, Snyder said upgrades to Vancouver parks haven’t happened for about five or six years.
“We are always getting calls about people wanting improvements to (their) parks,” he said.
The same changes that are being made to Fir Garden Park will also be made to Diamond Park in the Parkside neighborhood.
Much-needed changes are also coming to Oakbrook Park in the Vancouver’s Oakbrook neighborhood. In the coming weeks, crews will replace a 3-foot-wide uneven asphalt path through Oakbrook Park with an 8-foot-wide path, a project the parks department has been eyeing for a long time.
“People have been asking for years to do something with the path in Oakbrook, and it’s nice that we’re finally able to accommodate it,” Snyder said.
He said plans for improvements date back to 1999. As part of the Park Legacy Program, some upgrades were made to the parks, but at the time there wasn’t enough money to complete all of the planned improvements.
“Now we have money to finish it,” he said.
The alterations to Fir Garden and Diamond parks cost $150,000 each, which is paid for from the park impact fee program. The improvements to Oakbrook Park will cost $140,000, money Snyder said was approved by the city council earlier this year to come out of the city’s general fund.
All the changes, Snyder said, should be buttoned up by early November.
Though they’re still in the works, the upgrades won’t go unnoticed.
Dae Cunningham, 24, usually walks along the Burnt Bridge Creek Trail with her almost-2-year-old daughter, Dallas, but the two recently discovered Diamond Park.
“We stopped here because she insisted on going to a park,” Cunningham said.
The stay-at-home mother said she tries to walk every day and that she looks forward to when they add a path through the park.
“I like to make loops around the neighborhood,” she said. “It’ll be nice to find a new way and end at the park.”
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