McKay Street Makeover takes but 24 hours for hard working volunteers

A full day of work by volunteers  at McKay and Kootenay delivered
a new park for the  neighbourhood on the west side of the city

A twelve hour workday Saturday and some finishing work on Sunday saw an energetic group of volunteers respond to the call of Transition Prince Rupert, taking to the field at McKay and Kootenay to transform the scrub land into the long promised playground for the west side neighbourhood.

The McKay Street project as it became known over the last few years had a few sputters along the way, and clearly was boosted to the finish line by a 100,000 winfall from last years BCAA Play here competition win.

And from that success, the first of a rather ambitious blue print from Transition Prince Rupert has taken shape, with the playground up and standing ready for use.

The only thing standing in the way of the children of the west side and their park, the official approval of the City inspector, a final tick of the job task listings that is expected to be in place tomorrow.

Mayor Lee Brain spent a good portion of the day Saturday providing a running timeline of the day's events, which you can view through his civic Facebook page, giving a sample of the progress of the project from the early morning instructions, to the final few touches late into the evening of Saturday.

A look from the west to show where the new park at McKay Street is situated

Prior to the shovels hitting the ground we explored some of the history to the McKay Street project last week, tracing the project from it's early days of concept through Transition Prince Rupert, through the fundraising phase and the success of the BCAA competition and on to this weekends work.

With the Playground now in place, the attention for Transition Prince Rupert will turn towards the development of linear Dog park and then at some point in the future, hopes for a covered basketball pavilion, Skateboard Park, Cultural Centre and the other elements of the blue prints first delivered a few years ago.

The original design for the McKay Street Revitalization project

You can chart the progress of the GoFundMe initiative related to the plans here.

You can explore some of those plans from the Transition Prince Rupert Website and Facebook page.

More items related to City Council Discussion topics can be reviewed from our archive page.


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