It’s a small space with a big purpose.
Called Peter Rabbit Parklet for its size, it sits beside Trims retail store on Woodbine Drive in Edgemont Village.
Lights hang in the two cherry trees on either side of the 30-foot lane, the neighbourhood Chevron station provided old tires for planters that were built up to create a boundary for the parklet, and Highlands United Church donated old pews they were planning to replace with chairs in the church. Other village merchants and businesses provided donations of plants and more, as well as plenty of sweat equity, and Peter Rabbit Parklet was born.
“It was spectacular,” Marlene Tate, Trims’ owner, says of the group effort.
The idea for the park reaches back to December 2015 when the leases for Trims and their next-door neighbour Peter Rabbit Market ended and the two longtime businesses had to move to new locations.
After 60 years in the village, Peter Rabbit Market had become a nucleus in the more than 100-strong business community that is centred around the half-kilometre long, pedestrian-friendly Edgemont Boulevard. Although there wasn’t anything technically wrong with the owner terminating the leases, notes Tate, the news was unexpected and served as a surprise. Her own business had been in the village for 27 years.
“When both stores left it actually put some form to the word ‘community.’ People reacted in a very visceral way,” says Tate, recalling a sidewalk memorial of sorts that sprung up at the former site of the beloved Peter Rabbit Market.
“I don’t think people are so opposed to change as much as they are loss of importance,” she explains.
That importance comes from a sense of community and history, something Tate hopes is preserved in the unique village that is currently undergoing some development changes. One of the aspects that makes the area unique is that about 80 per cent of the businesses in Edgmont Village are owned and operated by women and that has led to what Tate calls an understated, powerful entity: collaboration.
That sense of collaboration and community made it difficult for Tate to leave the neighbourhood when she was searching for a new location.
After months of touring other areas, including in Vancouver, she decided on an empty space on Woodbine Drive, a street some locals call “off-Broadway,” which had previously been occupied by a restaurant. Tate would have preferred to stay on Edgemont Boulevard, where she had been for decades, but was pleased she could remain in the community. Trims moved into its new home last fall, just in time for the Christmas season.
However, for various reasons, the owners of Peter Rabbit Market could not reopen and the store closed its doors permanently after six decades.
Tate didn’t want the history of the place to be forgotten, so she bought the name, the old signage, and the iconography, and re-registered it so it wouldn’t be lost.
“It has no essence of real commercial value to it but I just thought something like that can’t exist and be taken down and then just be forgotten about,” she says.
When Trims moved to its new location on Woodbine, they settled in next to an unused dirt lot that had previously been a gas station. Bordered by a chain link fence, it was “unloved,” notes Tate.
So she initiated a plan to make the space more useable, with the help of a number of other merchants in the village. After meeting with developers, owners, the municipal government, and other participating merchants over the course of months, they were able to negotiate 30 feet from the side of the restaurant into the dirt parking lot.
“We have turned that into a little parklet. We call it Peter Rabbit Parklet,” explains Tate. The name is an homage to the much-loved store, whose original sign now stands in the park.
Tate says recent development in the area has disturbed some of the familiar minutia in the village: where residents park their bikes, where they sit and eat their pizza, or have a chat. The new little park is a tranquil place built for sitting, eating in, chatting, playing, and visiting. It also serves to connect Woodbine Drive and Edgemont Boulevard.
The side of the wall in the park has been painted white so that movies can be shown on it when the weather improves, and there have already been a couple of small events held there. The space is being used regularly and Tate is pleased.
“It’s more than a place for people to sit,” she says. “It represents something else.”
It represents an ideal for the community and a message for developers that critical pieces of a community should stay intact or at least be identified and appreciated, she notes.
“You can’t buy community support, you can’t buy authenticity.”
As a longtime successful businesswoman, she is also honest about the fact that the park was also meant to draw more business to Trims and surrounding merchants.
“You can talk idealistically about a lot of things but it needs to have economic sustainability,” she notes.
But at its core, the park represents more than just business as usual.
Says Tate: “This is an absolute Petri dish of an authentic community.”
