Roughly 600 residents sign petition against potential Hammond recreation centre  

A Maple Ridge resident is gathering signatures against a potential new recreation centre in Hammond, a proposal that has caused division in the historic community. 

On July 30, Gail Sattler, who has lived in the community for about 35 years, shared with city council — in a closed meeting to the public — that about 600 Hammond residents have signed a petition against a new recreation centre in Hammond Community Park. 

The community’s infrastructure, originally crafted in the late-1800s, was not designed for that kind of facility, Sattler said, who fears about a rise in traffic and vehicle congestion. 

“This is a quiet residential neighbourhood, we don’t have the infrastructure,” said Sattler. (You can find the petition by downloading this packet on the city’s website.) 

The pushback comes roughly eight months after Maple Ridge began its first phase of public engagement on a new Hammond Park facility, which saw some residents support the recreational building that may give the city its second indoor pool and fifth ice sheet. 

The feedback, held online and through multiple in-person events in January and February, found that many residents feel there is a shortage of fitness and training options in Maple Ridge. 

Although the public survey and in-person engagement opportunities didn’t poll residents for their support on a new recreation centre, 698 people, or 30 per cent of all survey respondents, expressed enthusiasm for a new recreation facility somewhere in Maple Ridge, according to the city.  

There were 172 people who directly opposed the proposed location in Hammond.

Maple Ridge, which experienced a 10.6 per cent population increase between 2016 and 2021, identified Hammond as the spot to host a new recreation site as the city’s population grows and demand for aquatic and arena facilities rises.  

The 13-acre Hammond Community Park site is currently home to a community centre and outdoor pool that is near the end of its life span. 

The park is also home to two baseball diamonds, Hammond Stadium and the Larry Walker Field, which serve as home fields for the Ridge Meadows Baseball Association. Both would be relocated to a new place if the project proceeds. 

In the public survey, 257 people expressed concerns about losing the baseball fields. 

James Rowley, a Maple Ridge resident who has lived in a 1923-built heritage home in Hammond since 2007, says the potential recreation facility may bring many positives to the community such as increased walkability, arts and cultural initiatives. 

“The idea of having a neighbourhood recreation facility that can address so many different needs, it’s very exciting,” Rowley said. 

About 84 per cent of trips within Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows are taken by car, according to a 2021 TransLink study. 

But as the city continues to develop and encourages new forms of transportation — Maple Ridge signalled its desire for Bus Rapid Transit last year — Rowley believes the new multi-use community centre could be the key to establishing a walkable and low-carbon community in Hammond, if other forms of active transportation are implemented near the facility.

“Our neighbourhood of Hammond is changing whether we like it or not,” Rowley wrote in a blog earlier this year. “The best we can do is guide the change so that it means a low-carbon, climate-resilient, walkable community that welcomes all.”

Hammond, a historic area that sprouted up along the Fraser River and registered as a township in 1883, still has many single-family homes and heritage trees from the era. 

In 2017, Maple Ridge council adopted an area plan to protect that history — ensuring the preservation of the street grid, and that any new development would fit into the character of the community. 

Sattler, who moved to Hammond from Coquitlam over three decades ago for its reputation as a quiet, residential neighbourhood, worries increased traffic from the new recreation centre would not fit the neighbourhood’s many two-lane streets. And jeopardize the makeup of the community. 

“We don’t have the width of roads to handle that kind of traffic,” Sattler said, adding that Maple Ridge should build a new recreation centre in the eastern half of the city, where development, in areas such as Albion, may include more density. 

The land of the current Hammond Community Centre and outdoor pool sits on an area that once was home to many Japanese Canadian residents, Rowley said. In Hammond, specifically, the community put on many Japanese plays in the area, according to the Maple Ridge Museum. 

But by the time World War II began, all Japanese residents were told to vacate their land and moved to farms or internment camps throughout the province. (Interment and deportation was supported by Maple Ridge council in 1942.) 

Rowley believes that a new recreation facility could honour that Japanese’s heritage, along with the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations. 

“It was the municipal council that voted not to give them their land back after the war,” he said. “As Maple Ridge, there’s an obligation to do something with this that just doesn’t serve the baseball community.” 

City council has not officially voted on the proposal — the city is expected to undergo a second round of public engagement next month.