Q&A: Mill Lake boardwalk future still uncertain, Siemens says

The fate of Mill Lake’s beloved boardwalk still hangs in the air.

In a wide-ranging interview with Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens to mark the midway point of his first term in office, we asked about the boardwalk, the state of Sumas Prairie negotiations, local parks, and the impact of provincial development rules on the city’s historic downtown.

Siemens said the federal government may need to step in to broker an international agreement to deal with the Nooksack River’s potential flooding. He also said that new provincial rules that allow for increased density in areas surrounding transit hubs could eventually apply to downtown Abbotsford once the area’s new Montrose bus exchange opens.

This is part of a series of mid-term interviews with the mayors of Fraser Valley communities. You can read the others here: Paul Horn (Mission) | Ken Popove (Chilliwack) | Victor Smith (Hope); interviews with the mayors of the valley’s other municipalities will be published later this fall.

This interview between Siemens and FVC editor Tyler Olsen has been lightly edited for clarity.

FVC: To start, what would you say some of your council's achievements for the past two years have been?

Siemens: Early on, we updated our strategic plan; we got together and really gelled as a group, and came up with the strategic plan, working really well together—setting a really positive tone.

Some of our biggest achievements to date have been—we’ve got record building permits, we're really working on our official community plan with densification from the core out. With our transit, we’re building our transit corridors. The McKee Neighborhood Plan has been huge.

Working on our flood mitigation plan, we've had some good wins there with the Barrowtown resiliency [and] working well with our transboundary initiative. The airport’s growing quickly. We've got 30,000 square feet of hangar space that's gone on there, the Hungerford properties along Mt. Lehman Road/Vitalus. So I think [we’re] working well together as a community, setting a really strong tone with our community.

I think one of the biggest things that we're working on is our Culture Connect, which is really putting the heart and soul into some of what government does, and so [I’m] really proud of what we've done. We’ve got a lot of really unique opportunities to bring the community together and working with our community partners on that.

FVC: I think about Abbotsford in [relation to] all these [neighbouring] municipalities, and one of the things I try to wrap my head around is why one is doing one thing, and why the other is doing the other thing. One thing with Abbotsford, I look around and I see, for better or for worse, Mission is building a new destination spray park. Langley is building this massive soccer campus, Chilliwack is putting up pickleball courts, and they've done pump tracks and put up a curling facility. And Abbotsford it seems, just as an observer, hasn't quite been matching those other communities in the terms of amenities it's building for residents over the last two, five [years], even probably longer than that. Why do you think that is, and do you foresee that changing?

Siemens: I guess when I take a look at Mill Lake Park—the Mill Lake master plan we’re just finalizing that—our aquatic strategy, our arena strategy; we've done quite a bit of work already with our fields. Abbotsford's got some tremendous parks, and we've got our trails and all of those areas. I think sometimes we don't maybe talk about it as much, but if you take a look at a lot of our outdoor amenities, our spray parks that we're putting in place and [others]. Engineer Park is one on the west side of town that is being developed as we speak.

Mill Lake has a tremendous amount of opportunity, but we also know that we have to buy up property around Mill Lake, so we've got that strategy in place. We're making sure that we have strategic land holdings for some of these amenities to occur. We’ve got Abbotsford Center, which brings in a tremendous amount of opportunities that we have here that they don't have in other municipalities.

So development cost charges for community amenities: we're just in the process of updating those bylaws, so [we’re] building our reserves, which are in a good place, but some of the land that we need to acquire for larger amenities does take some time to acquire. So we've got a strategy in place.

So if you take a look at our arena strategy and our aquatic strategy, those are going to dovetail and work together, because often they're co-located. So pound for pound, our parks are in great shape. We've got outdoor washrooms. Again, we look at Mill Lake, take a look at Jubilee Park and what we've done there, and the updates on Jubilee Park—that is a city-wide park that's really well used. Take a look at some of the improvements we put out at Exhibition Park. Take a look at the fairgrounds. And then, I was just out at Berry Park, we've had two national winners in baseball, and then we had one provincial, so I was out at Berry Park where we did the the unveiling of the banner for the national [championship]. Again, [we’re] trying to utilize those parks and maintain those parks to a higher standard, wo working well with all of our organizations. One of the big wins is we just renewed our agreement with School District 34 and and are working on our outdoor fields, our turf fields.

Again, some of this had to happen in order to actually see the physical improvements, but you'll start seeing those physical improvements coming along really quick now. So [we’re] working on those joint use agreements, making sure that our parks and our schools are working together, and then that joint use agreement will also be talking about how to utilize our park space with schools; but how do we use school space in after hours for various communities in various neighborhoods?

So I think there's a lot going on. The McKee Peak neighborhood plan, a trail strategy for that is coming along quite nicely. So I guess it depends what you want to focus on, but we are building a really strong strategies going forward, and we're acquiring those lands. It doesn't happen overnight, but it doesn't happen if you don't have a plan. And so that's all coming together quite nicely, but it's never fast enough for some but we are trying to speed that up as best we can, right?

FVC: Sometimes I think about the fact that strategies and plans—just personally—it all makes total sense. At the same time, a municipality is burdened by the fact that new regimes come in, new people come in, new people go and you're trying to meet the demands of families and people today versus those families 10 years from now; a child isn't going to be a child for much longer, and so parents are understandably going to want things to be done sooner rather than later.

Siemens: If you take a look at our field strategy that we're working on right now, it is to utilize what we have better and making sure that it's maintained to a certain standard, and then ensuring that we've got the joint-use agreements. And we also are working with UFV on utilizing some of their land: are there things that can be co-located? Can we work together better to utilize our facilities in a more efficient and effective way, so that it actually does bring about better services for people that are here in the here and now.

So in all of our plans, we have short-, medium- and long-term [goals]. Short-term, there’s going to be some easy wins: splash park, splash pads; there's a process in place, and if you take a look at our plans, that's happening over the next couple of years. So that's in various neighborhoods. And mid-term is where we can utilize what we have with other organizations better. And then the longer-term, of course, you're probably seeing what we can do to move things up a little faster by acquiring the land a little quicker. And then are there things that we can do with a developer that can provide housing?

So some of that is market-driven, because you don't want to lose opportunities to co-locate some things. But you also have to understand that in five years time the market is going to look a little bit different. So you don't want to get a short-term gain and then miss out on a bigger opportunity. So it's a bit of a balance, and it really is challenging sometimes when you're growing as quick as we are. But one of our goals is to make sure you've got park amenities within 300 meters of some of our neighborhoods. If you take a look at high rises, or mid-rises going in, making sure that the parks are within 300 meters, so that people can utilize those and the trails connecting all of it.

FVC: I play soccer, we practice at Barry Park, and I've seen that facility improve, just in terms of they've got washrooms in there and the new playground. You talked about buying land. It sounds like the strategy is intensification of [existing] land in part, I would assume, because Abbotsford has less room to grow, probably, than those other three communities I mentioned, just in terms of its footprint, and its confines within the [Agricultural Land Reserve].

Siemens: That's the thing. For the larger tournament fields, that does require us to take land out of the [ALR] so that's a longer-term perspective that we have to be very strategic on. But we also have to be very mindful of it, and so exactly what you've said there. Intensify what we have and make sure that we are utilizing it to the best of its ability: that is the short-to-medium-term goal. So what you've seen at Barry Park is what we want to replicate that in some of our other parks.

But 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. So that's the challenge that we have there, and we are hopefully going to be able to make some headway on that. But that's a longer-term plan.

FVC: You mentioned Mill Lake. There was a little bit of a sneak preview of what might be possible there. What's the status of those plans, and when people might start to see actual changes in the park?

Siemens: So the plan, we're hoping to have that in 2025, so hopefully we'll have that plan finalized, and then once we know what the master plan is, we can start chipping away at some of those options.

FVC: Have you guys made any decisions about that boardwalk?

Siemens: No decisions on that boardwalk yet. On the one end, some of that is going to be happen with redevelopment. And so do we continue with the boardwalk, or are we able to put it on land once those developments happen? We see the one development right now and then the one next to it, so some of that is dependent on when that development happens, because that would be a negotiation with the developers.

So there are opportunities, maybe, to have that walkway on land altogether. If those negotiations don't go well, then then we have to regroup. Because that boardwalk isn't going to last forever, and it's going to have to be upgraded. So those will be part of the longer-term plan. So no decisions have been made, just ideas that have been floated.

FVC: So the [Official Community Plan] was adopted in 2016 after a few years of work, the City Centre Plan came next, and it has this grand vision for the South Fraser Way corridor. When [in the future] do you see that area looking significantly different?

Siemens: So we are updating our [Official Community Plan]. It's time to [revise it]. Of course, there's legislation and those types of things that speak to that.

The challenge that we're having right now is the market isn't quite where we need it to be for the high-rises to happen. Part of that is market-driven: interest rates and those types of things. But the other challenge that you have is concrete and steel are astronomically expensive right now, so we're seeing a lot of uptake on high-rises in the Burnaby, Langley, Surrey area.

The market's not quite there yet for Abbotsford. We are positioned to welcome it, and we welcome it with open arms. The zoning is there. Realistically, we're probably 5, 10 years out.

Again, a lot depends on the regional economy, the provincial economy and the national economy, and what interest rates do, and all of those things. We had really good uptake on the six-storey buildings. We don't want to lose—and I don't think developers want to lose opportunity—along South Fraser Way when we take a look at the long-term vision. I think there really are some synergies there that could happen, and a whole lot of amenities that could happen.

So you're not going to see a lot of six-storey buildings in certain areas, because I think people are holding long-term and are going to look for higher opportunities. So the peripheral around the city center, like what we're seeing in the historic downtown—and we're seeing it happening around the peripheral area of the city center core—is going to be more six-storey. I think [that] is going to be where you're going to see that.

But there are a lot of commercial opportunities, and we know that commercial is changing quite a bit. It requires a smaller footprint for the retail, but it requires more people, and that's where the high-rises and those types of things [come in]. So we've had a lot of people looking at different opportunities. We've had some applications come in and then start to get stalled because the market's not quite there. So some of the inflationary costs on concrete and steel are going to probably play into that as well. I'd love to see it happen sooner, and we are positioned to allow it to happen sooner, but I think the reality of the markets are probably going to dictate and it will be a little longer.

FVC: The other day, I was in downtown Abbotsford. I hadn't been there for a while, and I go by Montrose, and it's just torn up to bits while you guys are building that exchange there. I was reminded and wondering: why or how did the Bourquin [bus] exchange get identified as the Transit-Oriented Development area, and is that exchange going to remain a bus exchange?

[Editor: the provincial government has designated certain “transit-oriented development areas” around bus exchanges across BC. In such areas, parking requirements are banned and buildings must be permitted to a certain density. But in Abbotsford, the Bourquin bus exchange has been identified as the city’s transit-oriented development area even though the city had previously planned to phase out that exchange in favour of a new transit hub on Montrose Street. The density mandated in the provincial rules would dramatically increase the size of buildings permitted in Abbotsford’s historic downtown, if applied there.]

Siemens: That’ll change over time. Well, the challenge that you have with provincial legislation is they have deadlines, and the deadlines have to deal with what's in place right now. And right now that is the transit exchange. Now, granted, the high-rises that they envisioned for that transit exchange are pretty much in alignment with our Official Community Plan anyways, but you will see the the the Montrose exchange and the High Street exchange probably become the focal point for the new legislation with the Official Community Plan update.

So the provincial legislation said, by such and such a date you have to have certain things in play. And so that's how Bourquin got in there. And the Montrose one is anticipated it will be in the new Official Community Plan as we update that over the next year.

FVC: Do you see that then really forcing you to also change the plans for the historic downtown?

Siemens: That's the bit of the rub that we have, because historic downtown has developed quite nicely. There's going to be certain areas where the high-rises, I think, make a tremendous amount of sense. So we're not quite sure where that's going to land with the province, and through the official Community Plan process we will be dialoguing more with the Downtown Business Association and with the different stakeholders there, and seeing how that plays out. There will be some changes but to what degree, we’re not sure.

FVC: And what's the latest on the Sumas Prairie talks with feds and/or the Americans?

Siemens: So that one, again, the Transboundary Initiative is ongoing. We are trying to entice the federal government to be at the table. So Nathan Cullen is [the] minister now that's taking that on. And so the challenge that we have on on the US side is, by and large, it boils down to the full split at Everson. That's our biggest challenge, and we're having some good discussions, and we're making some some some good headway. But we do need the federal government to be at the table, because I think we have to escalate that watershed to the same degree as the Skagit and the Columbia [rivers]. Because this is vitally important to the Canadian economy, because there are so many things that are tied to that on the Canadian side—everything coming out of the Port of Vancouver, the pipelines that are taking natural gas, hydro lines, all of those things. So it's trying to elevate that to the national government's perspective, because that's vitally important. We need that horsepower at that table to have those discussions.

FVC: I was talking to Neil Peters the other week about the previous efforts, and he said that one issue was that they were talking about the International Joint Commission, but that the federal government would need to invite them in—I believe that's who oversees Columbia. Is that what you're talking about, trying to get the feds to create some sort of treaty-making situation?

Siemens: You know, ultimately, I think that might be where it leads to because of the challenges that—people don't realize that the Nooksack is one of the most heavily sedimented rivers in that watershed, and on a per-cubic-metre basis—how they measure it—it has probably the most sediment of any river in that in that area, and that has a tremendous effect, because there have been some engineered things down in Everson that have caused that to back up.

[Editor: Siemens is likely referring to the Everson Bridge which, as the largest choke point on the river, causes the river to slow near the point where it occasionally spills its banks and floods toward Canada.]

[In 2021], we took 100% of the flow we were supposed to. You know, we're designed to take about 50% of the water. So that's going to be a longer play and you have elections, players change, and you’ve got to educate everybody again on the significance and the challenges. So that's an ongoing challenge. But I think that's going to be a longer play. And I can't wait. We have to work on our end of it to try and resolve what we can on our end to move that water through faster when it comes. But ideally, I think we would love to be able to share the flow, because that's what it's designed to do, is to share that flow.

This interview was conducted before the 2024 provincial election. We asked what Siemens was hoping to hear from politicians about Abbotsford’s local priorities. You can find his response here, along with those of other local mayors.