The Editor,
As a Pleasantside resident, I want to protect our little community as much if not more than the people wanting to save Bert Flinn Park.
Pleasantside is an old community along Ioco Road with heritage buildings (Pleasantside Grocery and the caretaker’s home) as well as many original cottages built 50 years ago. We have the beautiful beach at Old Orchard Park and the inlet trail.
And we have Ioco Road: a two-lane-road used by Anmore, Belcarra and increasingly by White Pine Beach visitors; a road that even now, before the Ioco lands are developed, is unsafe and noisy.
There are many seniors living along Ioco Road and children who must cross the road to go to and from Pleasantside elementary school. Even if the Ioco lands are not densified and are developed with single-family homes, traffic will be too great. The road is over capacity now and traffic must be reduced for the safety and the peace of residents.
Save Bert Flinn Park is well organized with a petition and Facebook page but the movement fails to give enough consideration for the impact its cause could have on Pleasantside.
At present, there is no feasible option for access to Anmore, Belcarra, White Pine Beach and the Ioco lands, leaving our community with a traffic nightmare on Ioco Road. Together, we have to urge the city to find a viable option to David Avenue.
What we can agree on is that high-density development of Ioco Lands is not in the interests of the community. The quaint heritage buildings, the bowling green and the garden environment of old Ioco would be destroyed by car-oriented towers and multi-family dwellings. Increased densification would have a negative impact on Port Moody.
The plan was to develop high-density adjacent to public transit and encourage pedestrian neighbourhoods. Let’s adhere to the OCP, which states the city should maintain its small-town character, and oppose high-density for the Ioco townsite.
Yvonne Harris, Port Moody
