Get Involved in Shaping What Comes Next
Your voice, your waterfront, your future.
We want to hear from you! The redevelopment of the former mill site is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future of Slocan — and your input is essential.
Use the form below to share your thoughts or ask a question. As we move forward, we will continue to add more ways for you to get involved, stay informed, and help co-create the Waterfront Commons and the broader vision for the site.
Let’s imagine the future of this space together.
Share your ideas, questions, or feedback using the comment section below. Comments in this field will be visible to everyone and can be up-voted.
-Kayak/canoe rentals
-a shop featuring local Slocan valley artisans/craftspeople where the shop takes a relatively low percentage so the artists can actually afford to sell their wares there
-rewilding the space making it a beautiful spot to walk around and explore
-maintain public access to the Old Highway 24hrs/day
What i would like to see is that the whole lake front is kept for the community, a pathway, bandshell, park. I think you should sell some land to raise money. Like make a new road south of the property and sell lots to raise funds.
Then i think that we should have a small Granville island market building and housing to showcase our artists in the valley, something like Crawford Bay does, and have live art being made in house. Great tourst attractions. Could have housing on top. Perhaps they’d be room for a small RV camping park.
A pre contact eco restoration of the entire site is an essential component of branding the Slocan village as Natures Shangri-La Gateway to the Valhallas. Once that is achieved a fresh template to inspire visionaries potential ideas for the site will be exuberant and numerous. The steps for visionary transition though tiny in the begining, bestride the hurdles when progress is seen. The over whelming desire for this site is restoration. The individual residents of both the Slocan valley and village of Slocan are on the same page, “We see the site as what it was, what can we collectively do to accomplish that?”
Motocross track
I think the city needs to show ownership of the land right now. They have owned it for several years but made no changes or even added signs telling people what and what they cannot do at the site, well or even who owns it. To anybody from in-town or arriving from afar it is an abandoned lot. There are some safety things that could be dealt with easily: stray wires and cables and some fencing. There are gates and fences that are not longer needed, some of which are a bit dangerous. Taking the fences and gates out will welcome people onto the space. And given people are using the land right now some picnic tables, benches, and maybe an outhouse on the east side are easy, cheap, and do not need a community plan.
Then consider the next easy things like how you can use the space right now while all the rest happens. The kids are doing a great job painting some places, you could encourage that in some way. You may need to brush some young trees to allow access to the space but I would encourage you to keep as many of the volunteer cottonwoods as possible because they may be assets in some future design. What else can you do with a huge flat piece of concrete that does not compromise future options? A campsite for RVs? A bike track? A hockey rink in winter? Storage?
Next I think that the city needs to do is commission a plan for the creek. It needs to involve hydrologists and fish biologists. If the creek is in some way released from the current confinement there will be flooding risks and the hydrologist can help with that. And there are various goals for restoration that include kokanee, rainbow trout, sockeye and chinook spawning. Only some of those options are likely to be possible, and it is worth remembering that the spawning reach is very short, like most in the West Koots, so what species needs it most? Tough questions but kokanee and chinook spawning may not be compatible. In any case once you have a plan you will have some idea for the footprint of the stream, it is likely to be a cone because you will need to take some energy out of the stream to allow spawning which means allowing it some room to meander. I think there is enough consensus on restoring the stream that the Village could move to a more detailed plan soon.
Last, I think the Village should consider our resource assets. Wood is certainly one of those things and we have many species and types of wood that could support a more diversified forest industry than studs and boards. And as North America moves to buying local, it may be a good time to try to incubate more finished forest products including the use of traditionally non-merchantable wood like birch or alder. Or the use of Doug fir or larch for furniture or cabinets given their strength. This is not a trivial endeavor, many previous governments in BC have tried to foster this industry, but at the women from Shorefast demonstrated, perhaps this is better fostered outside of government. They fostered a wood industry on an island than does not have much wood! I did not see one tree in their photos.