Jessica Kerr
/ Vancouver Courier
May 16, 2019
It will likely be a few years before Vancouver could see any new large-scale events coming to one of the city’s parks.
Vancouver Park Board this week voted to put a moratorium on
introducing any new commercial initiatives until after the board has
updated, and approved, its special events guidelines. Any existing
events, and new events that are considered charitable or non-profit,
will be allowed to continue. However, the park board will not consider
any applications for new commercial events until after the guidelines,
which were last updated and approved in 2003, are revamped.
That means that if events such as last year’s Skookum music festival
and the Vancouver Mural Fest concert in Jonathan Rogers Park, Diner en
Blanc and the annual Lululemon SeaWheeze half marathon were proposed
this year, the board would not entertain the application until after the
guidelines are updated.
Octavio Silva, manager of business development, estimated updating the guidelines will take about 12 to 15 months to complete.
Paul Runnals, an owner of BrandLive, the event production company
behind last year’s Skookum Festival in Stanley Park, among other events,
spoke at Monday’s meeting and urged commissioners to continue to allow
new commercial events while updating the guidelines.
“We support the need for an updated and balanced strategy towards
the hosting of public and private events, which is respectful of the
rich and historical importance of certain sites to the local First
Nations, while still making space available for free and community
events,” he said. “However, this strategy must also facilitate private
events that support the meeting and convention sector, as well as
commercial events that bring in significant cultural, economic, tourism
and employment benefits to the city, to local businesses and to local
residents.”
The park board issues approximately 1,300 event permits a year. Most
of them, roughly 94 per cent, are recurring events that happen on an
annual basis. The remaining six per cent are new initiatives and of
those, 12 per cent were new commercial events last year — Skookum, the
mural fest concert and Bacio Rosso Gourmet Cabaret Cirque in Queen
Elizabeth Park.
Commercial events, with 15 taking place in parks in 2018, make up
about one per cent of the total number of events that take place in
parks annually. However, that one per cent brings in 44 per cent of the
park board’s revenue generated from hosting events — $238,500 last year.
Without parks as possible venue options, many events would struggle to find a home in the city.
“One of the biggest challenges our industry faces is a lack of
suitable venues to host events in and around the downtown peninsula,”
Runnals said. “With the pace of development that has been ongoing
through the Lower Mainland, a number of important event sites have been
lost including… the Concord lands in northeast False Creek, while others
have significant physical or other restrictions that limit their
viability such as the north plaza of the art gallery and Jack Poole
Plaza down at the convention centre.”
The motion passed in a 5-2 vote with NPA commissioners John Coupar and Tricia Barker in opposition. “We sometimes talk about corporate events as if they’re some sort of
evil thing,” Coupar said, adding that many popular attractions in the
city, such as Bloedel Conservatory, VanDusen Botanical Garden and the
H.R. MacMillan planetarium, are the result of corporate philanthropy.
Barker said while she supports the idea of updating the guidelines,
“I also don’t think that they are so broken that we can’t let another
event come in… I think we are reasonable people and we can look at those
events and make really good decisions on whether they’re appropriate in
our parks or not.”
Green commissioner Camil Dumont voiced concern over the effect that events can have on parks.
“There are parks in our system that are really stressed in regard to
how much event activity takes place in them,” he said. “I think
particularly of VanDusen garden and, I think, the botanical and
horticultural priorities of that space are compromised, in my view, by
the amount of events there.”
Board chair Stuart Mackinnon supported the motion, saying it allows the park board to maintain any current events.
“None of those will go away. It simply says that we’re going to hit
the pause button, which I think is a really good idea…” he said. “This
is my third term on the park board and, as a group, we rarely say no to
corporate events and I want to make sure that we know why we’re making
those decisions, what the ramifications are going to be in the future
and that we have the public behind us when we make those decisions.”
Coupar said he is concerned a 12 to 15month pause could take longer than anticipated.
“Things always take longer than we expect at the park board,” he
said. “That’s a given. It’s not because our staff aren’t working hard,
it’s because they have a lot of things to deal with, so 18 months can
become two years, two years can become two and a half years.”
@JessicaEKerr
jkerr@vancourier.com
