Tipperary Park, City Hall green space gets nearly $250,000 of funding

It’s a long way to Tipperary, but depending on your definition of long, it shouldn’t be much of a long, long wait for some upgrades to the Downtown green space, also known as the Friendship Gardens.

The park, which is often the site of a number of city events—from the recent Hyack Festival to the upcoming On Your Block Fest, and even the New West Farmers Market—will be getting some money from the federal government.

A total of $243,750 will be coming from the federal government’s Canada Community Revitalization Fund. (CCRF)

Along with the creation of a rain garden, and adding more seating options to the park, there will also be more spaces for those working at city hall to park their bikes, as well as the additional planting of trees.

“The Tipperary Park project will expand the quality of open space, encourage sustainable transportation and, through carbon sequestration, improved air quality as a result of the rain gardens and tree planting,” explains a staff report to council.

The idea, according to report, is to make the area into a “green transportation hub.”

Here are the current time frames for each of the four projects to be completed:

• Seating installation: March 2024

• Tree reforestation: March 2024

• Bike enclosure construction: March 2024

• Tree planting and irrigation installation: March 2024

Tipperary Park’s name goes back to the late 1800s: the works yard and firehall were where city hall is today. Decades ago, when the city hired men to work on street construction, the site became a bit of an encampment that the then-local newspaper referred to as “Westminster’s Tipperary.” The name stuck; its contemporary is an Irish county.

To learn more about the funding, visit this website.