Pending parks: Why Abbotsford's recreational ambitions seem to have stalled

Abbotsford has more land than any other British Columbia largest municipality, but it still doesn’t have enough to realize all its dreams.

As Mission, Chilliwack, and Langley spend millions on new recreation facilities, Abbotsford has been slower to build amenities for its growing population. But Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens says the city has focused on finding ways to make better use of the facilities it already owns, while eyeing potential properties that could be used in the future.

In recent years, Langley has moved to build a massive soccer campus, Mission has set the stage for a destination spray park, and Chilliwack has budgeted money to vastly expand its trail network while building a large pickleball facility. Even the tiny District of Kent is building a massive new leisure centre.

Abbotsford, though, has spent much less time and money on new recreation facilities. Instead, most of its energy has been focused on creating new strategies to guide how its pools, fields, and cultural holdings will be used in the coming years.

Some of those strategies foresee the construction of new facilities, but the city hasn’t actually gotten around to committing money to actually build new fields or aquatic complexes.

Siemens says the city is working on new amenities, but needs more land to make them happen. And with land a scarce resource in Abbotsford—perhaps more so than its neighbours—Siemens said the city has been focused on making better, more efficient use of the land and parks it already has.

Pending parks

Through Siemens’ first half-term as mayor, Abbotsford has continued the plan-first, build-eventually approach that dominated Henry Braun’s terms as mayor. Abbotsford has socked away money in various reserve accounts while plotting its long-term growth through a series of strategic and planning documents.

Currently, the city and its staff are undertaking a new aquatic strategy to lay out how its pools operate and what new facilities might be necessary, along with a similar process for its sports fields and courts. In 2022, Abbotsford completed a new cultural strategy, which in turn led to another and still-ongoing review of how culture services are delivered. Those projects themselves stem from the city’s Official Community Plan that is now nearly a decade old (and is again being updated).

It can seem like there is always another step of planning before the city gets around to building something; when a disc golfer approached the city to lobby for a course at Clayburn Park in Abbotsford, city officials noted that the park was set to undergo its own master planning process starting in 2027. Officials also suggested that an alternate spot for a course could be identified in that sport field strategy. But the future is as unclear as it was in 2017, when advocates first asked the city for a course, which they suggested could cost as little as $3,000.

Siemens, though, said the city is working on improving what it has, even as it thinks about building new facilities in the future.

He pointed to additions at Berry Park, which has seen the construction of a new playground and bathroom; the creation of Engineer Park, a community park in east Aldergrove; and improvements at Jubilee and Exhibition parks. He also noted that the city has renewed an agreement with the local school district that should set the stage for more work.

“You’ll start seeing those physical improvements coming along real quick now,” he said.

At the same time, some of the city’s biggest ambitions identified in those decade-old plans continue to wait for the land necessary to turn them into reality.

“Some of the land we need to acquire for larger amenities does take some time to acquire,” Siemens said. He suggested that the aquatic and arena strategies will work in conjunction with one another to help coordinate the undertaking of those larger projects. (Unlike Langley and Chilliwack, Abbotsford has previously constructed arenas and pools in the same recreation centres.)

Other ambitions either a change in political realities, or a change in strategy.

Abbotsford’s 2016 Official Community Plan designates two potential areas (the plan calls them “special study areas”) for large new sports parks, but both of those sites are in the Agricultural Land Reserve and would need the blessing of the Agriculture Land Commission. One is located to the south and east of the University of the Fraser Valley’s campus, the other is adjacent to Delair Park.

The city has neither purchased the land nor started the work necessary to apply to remove either property from the ALR. And, indeed, there’s reason to doubt any application would be successful, given current farmland policies and recent ALC decisions.

“The challenge is for tournaments and things like that, we need to have larger pieces of land, and those are either outside of our urban boundary or they're within the Agricultural Land Reserve,” Siemens said. “We are hopefully going to be able to make some headway on that, but that's a longer term-plan.”