Five kilometres of nature and multi-use trails, a natural playground and picnic space are among the amenities currently included in designs for the historical Grey Nuns White Spruce Park.
About 50 residents showed up to see concept design plans unveiled for the forest park Tuesday evening and provide input on the design.
The 36-hectare park is located east of Ray Gibbon Drive and south of McKenney Avenue and is known as one of the last native white spruce forests within an urban municipality in North America. St. Albert is making efforts to balance sustainability of the forest – an official municipal historic resource – through park planning while ensuring residents can make use of the forest.
City parks planning specialist Margo Brenneis said feedback from the open house and an online survey running until Oct. 22 would be tabulated by ISL Engineering, which will inform any changes needed to the concept design.
Brenneis said staff got a sense the plan is supported by members of the public, and generally residents focused their questions on the type of trails and their uses, along with what amenities would look like within the park.
“We are at the point where this plan is not confirmed at all, it’s proposed, and we are fairly early on in the process,” she said. “If we find out that we are really off base, and this doesn’t meet the needs of the residents, we’ll refine the plan to reflect that.”
Resident Scott Tansowny said the plan’s idea of minimal impact on the forest is “very good,” but more could be done. He suggested striking the entire idea of a natural play space in the northeast section of the park, which is currently grassland.
Tansowny said the city should step back, “let nature do its thing” and leave the area to develop into a native grassland. That way the educational component of the park would be enhanced, with multiple habitats within the park.
“The less we develop within the park I think the better,” he said. “I think in a way a playground takes away from that a bit. Instead of getting kids and everybody engaged with the forest I think it does actually kind of pull away from it.”
Tansowny added the white spruce forest is one of the last untouched stretches of native wildlife in the area, and it serves as a refuge for many species of wildlife.
“I think it’s important to keep that. It’s something we have right in our backyard and it’s something we should treasure and value,” he said.
Trail and amenity designs should be complete by end of 2020, Brenneis said, and the city will also begin work designing trail connections between the park and the overall Red Willow Trail System.
However, there is no hard date for completion of the Grey Nuns White Spruce Park, as it is currently on St. Albert’s unfunded capital plan. The GNWSP is part of a master park plan, is called the Red Willow Park West Master Plan. It will be up to city council during budget deliberations this month to decide which items on the capital plan will have dollars assigned to them.
Coun. Ken MacKay attended the open house, and told the Gazette he would prioritize the park “quite high” but it will have to be up against the city's other capital project priorities.
“Certainly we need to protect these areas, so how do we do that in these economic conditions,” he said, “I think it’s going to be a challenge for us but certainly this is a worthy project to look at ahead of other projects, perhaps.”
Residents can participate in the city’s online survey for the Grey Nuns White Spruce Park until Oct. 22, which can be found on the City of St. Albert’s website.
