Looking down on a little park on the edge of Yaletown at the foot of Helmcken Street. It was built before the highrises and gentrification of Yaletown; only the extended-care home to the north and the warehouses to the west existed. The rest was parking lot and railyards.
Now it has matured and provides an oasis for Yaletowners of all types, as these images from Michael Alexander illustrate.
Unfortunately one thing hasn’t changed, as Michael notes:
The lane at the west end of Helmcken Park. The friendly folks at the Yaletown Galleria building (right rear) have barricaded the street, which somehow became a private parking lot, with bollards and cables, while their businesses use the park’s edge for advertising.
Unfortunately the City never had, gave away or lost the right-of-way east of Mainland, preventing the extension of the park to the eventual Helmcken Greenway.
There is, actually, a pedestrian route that doesn’t require climbing over anything—it’s even wheelchair accessible. But if you’re heading SE on Helmcken toward the little park, the path (ramped and guard-railed) is off to your right-hand side along the building, its entry point ironically concealed behind a way-finding panel at the south corner of Mainland and Helmcken. I must have clambered over that barrier (and the chain that preceded it) a hundred times, my attention on the parklet ahead, before I noticed the footpath. Apparently everyone else does too. From the south end, it’s signposted, but from the north it’s too easy to miss.
As a City of Vancouver senior planner for the central area, we were told the City never had a ROW. However, it seems to this now retiree that acquiring this chunk of land has far more intrinsic value than the Arbutus Corridor. One issue that can’t go away easily is that the City’s contracts with other properties forbids cycling, skating and skate board use to greenways and pedestrian passages in most of the immediate area. I never quite figured out why this was done – without involving planners. I do understand why the folks with these encumbrances would have wanted it that way, but still don’t agree it was a good idea.
VanMap shows a right of way through that half block, but only for the width of the current pedestrian path along the right side as you head for the park.
The original post calls the parking lot a street, but VanMap shows it as private property.
Agree that acquiring the land to extend Helmcken to the park makes sense.
Or more precisely extending the park to Mainland – as a car free square.