This year’s theme for our province’s Heritage Week is ‘Main Street: At the Heart of the Community’. On Bowen, Snug Cove is our heart and soul of civic life - meet your neighbours, pick up tickets, visit the bank machine - almost all of us pass through at some point each day. Like all the best villages, the Cove developed around our transportation hub with a small colony of commercial ventures, relatively stable but never static and still evolving today. For many places, Main Street is no longer their heart, as big box malls have changed shopping patterns, leaving Main Street under-occupied and struggling to stay relevant. But on Bowen everyone needs the ferry, and that keeps the Cove vital.
This year’s heritage week theme is very timely for Bowen with significant Snug Cove projects in the pipeline (Bowen Pub, Garden Gateway, Cove Culture Corner). While islanders welcome new developments, there are also concerns about retaining the character and authenticity of our “main street.” In the 2011 Householder Survey, preservation of the character of Bowen was a high priority. So how do we retain the sense of place, while balancing the needs of owners to develop their properties and fostering sustainable and vibrant commerce in our downtown?
One proven way to achieve this is to focus on heritage. It turns out that by repurposing or renovating existing heritage buildings, as well as developing in a way that responds and is sensitive to the existing aesthetic, there are significant economic benefits. These benefits occur in large part precisely because of an enhancement of the sense of place that a heritage-based approach to redevelopment achieves.
Indeed, a heritage anchor building or heritage precinct can be a significant draw in itself, as heritage tourism continues to increase in popularity, attracting tourists and residents to the area. In essence, the process of heritage values development is to thoughtfully integrate the cultural history of a place through existing buildings and spaces, and ensuring new development complements rather than overpowers, existing architecture.
We want to explore the possibilities. This coming Wednesday, Bowen Heritage and the BIM Economic Development Committee will be co-hosting Heritage BC’s ‘Dynamic Downtowns’ webinar, presented by Maria Stanborough. In her presentation Maria will identify the key planning tools available to municipalities and look at case studies of successful downtown heritage conservation projects throughout BC, highlighting best practices and providing an economic impact analysis for each. Following the webinar, we will get practical and local identifying the possibilities in our own dynamic downtown.
The Dynamic Downtowns webinar, Wednesday, February 18 at 6:30 pm at Council Chambers is a FREE event. All are welcome, for more information about content see www.heritagebc.org.
In addition, Heritage members Will Husby and Marion Moore will host a casual, one hour “Jane’s walk” through Snug Cove to look for signs of what once were three main streets in this small village between the late 1800s and today. Jane’s Walks were invented by Jane Jacobs and rather than a presentation, they are walking conversations about the history and future of special places and landscapes in our communities. Long time residents share their memories of Snug Cove and new people get the chance to meet some veteran islanders and ask them questions about the community. Dress for weather and bring your knowledge and questions.
Jane’s Walk around Snug Cove, meet in front of the library on Saturday February 21, 1:00-2:15 pm. FREE event. Everyone welcome.
