With all the new developments in progress in the city, the planning department and city council have the opportunity to bring more beauty to our lovely city.
Will they take that chance? We need proper setbacks from roads and sidewalks and tree-lined streets with a combination of plants that will allow colour in both the summer and winter.
For example, there are two hotels proposed for Eckhart Avenue, the entrance into our city. But both renderings of the buildings do not offer any setbacks. They are right next to the sidewalk. The landscaping appears to be a bush in gravel. The hotels are needed as some motels are losing usefulness, but this is a chance to make the entrance into the city open and beautiful, if the hotels are set back from the street and a line of trees and bushes were planted. If setbacks and better landscaping requirements are not met, we will end up with a concrete jungle effect — a type of mini Vancouver. We can do better. This is not an urban centre, it is a lovely rural city and I would like to see it remain that way. The city planners do not seem to have the same vision of a future Penticton. They have a vision of extreme high density and minimal landscaping.
Second example, Cherry Lane Shopping Centre recently bulldozed all the established evergreens on its front property and replaced them with dryland bushes in gravel. Instead of colour in the winter and cool pollution absorbing greenery in the summer, now we have a hot dry barren parking lot. This was not an improvement. My husband, who was an architect and planner, said if he had ever submitted a design like that he would have been fired. I can only hope they will not do the same thing along the back side of Cherry Lane on the lovely tree lined shady Atkinson Street.
Third, wouldn’t it be nice if all the businesses along Main Street were encouraged to plant some ornamental shade trees along the roadway. It would be lovely to have a tree lined street all along Main Street and Skaha Lake Road. If you agree with these ideas, please go to the city hall website and email the city planners, mayor and council members and express your opinion of what the city is becoming. Do we want to add beauty to Penticton or just efficiency?
Kathy Corbett
Penticton