It may be time to say goodbye to Brolly Square.
This month, the Greater Terrace Beautification Society (GTBS) will be removing all planters and decorative art on the site in preparation for drilling by property owner Imperial Oil.
The petroleum company has been conducting environmental testing on the property since last fall to determine the level of hydrocarbons still present from the property’s days as a gas station. Once it receives environmental clearance, Imperial Oil hopes to eventually sell the property.
The site will need to be clear by the time drilling starts again on Aug. 12. The activity involves drilling wells to monitor soil and groundwater over several seasons, says Imperial official Jon Harding.
In 2009, GTBS negotiated a 10-year lease of the property to install planters and metal umbrella art pieces to turn the fenced-off, overgrown brownfield site into a viable downtown space. Brolly Square was officially opened in 2012 after a contest resulted in its name.
READ MORE: Brolly Square receives its official unfurling
Over the years the square has served as a popular location for concerts, public events and charitable barbecues. But it is also a location frequented by loiterers and scenes of public drinking resulting in a high volume of nuisance complaints to police.
“We’re kind of burnt out on maintaining it,” says Dave Gordon, vice-president of GTBS.
The lease has now passed its date, though there is still an opportunity for the society to renew it for another 10 years. That’s what members are trying to decide now — whether a small community organization should be responsible for Brolly Square’s upkeep.
“There’s a lot of unknowns at the moment,” Chris Hansen, GTBS treasurer. “We’re very small, and volunteers are hard to come by nowadays. That’s a site that needs constant maintenance. We have not made a final decision on [the lease], we’re still tossing around ideas.”
Gordon says it is costly for the organization to dismantle the park. When the drilling started last fall, the society spent $3,500 to remove planters and some art pieces. He estimates it will cost another $7,500 to take the rest of it apart.
“It’s really frustrating that after 10 years, we have spent all this community time and money and we’ll end up with just what we had before,” Gordon says.
The society’s lease with Imperial requires GTBS to clear the property, but Gordon says he believes Canada’s second-biggest integrated oil company has the capacity to do it themselves.
“I’m in a position that if Imperial wants access to [Brolly Square], then they should take it all apart themselves at their own cost rather than go to this small community group and take their plant-sale money.”
READ MORE: Beginning of the end for Brolly Square?
But if the City of Terrace was able to buy the property back with a clean environmental review, they could develop it for a better purpose, Gordon says. In Smithers, espresso cafe Bugwood Bean opened on a formerly vacant site in 2010. Brolly Square is similar in that it’s located in the heart of the city’s downtown core on Lakelse Ave. To have it fenced off to the community would “look terrible,” Gordon says.
“Our concern from the [Terrace and District Improvement Society] and Beautification Society is that it’s going to sit there as a for sale lot for an indefinite period of time…If it has a chain-link fence around it and it’s derelict, it’s just going to reflect negatively on the town and hold back on development.”
Either way, a lengthy process will be required before the site can be put back on the market — first, Imperial has to get an environmental stamp of approval on the property, though it’s not known exactly how long the assessment will take.
“We do intend to put the property back into productive use, but we have steps we need to go through to get there,” Harding says.
— with files from Rod Link
brittany@terracestandard.com
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