ROTHENBURGER – A few yoga classes won’t ‘commercialize’ Riverside Park
ALLOWING THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR into Riverside Park has long been a worry for the denizens of Kamloops. Commercialization of the city’s gem must be avoided at all costs, according to one way of thinking.
There’s validity to those concerns and they’ve been expressed any time there’s a plan for a hotel tower, a multi-story parkade, a big farmer’s market complex or even a river tube concession. None of them has gotten traction.
But those kinds of enterprises are a world apart from allowing fitness studios and gyms to hold outdoor classes in the park during the pandemic. Yet Mayor Ken Christian has already noted concerns that such a move would open the doors to the dreaded commercialization of that revered space.
Christian also says the City must not be perceived to be offering businesses a direct benefit by giving them a special rate.
Neither of those two points stands up to scrutiny.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Full disclosure; I am one of those who is fervently opposed to commercialization of our greens spaces. Once the genie is out of the bottle it is impossible to put it back.
I’m also someone who has been living like a monk for 14 months. Which brings to the crux of my concern with opening the City green spaces to fitness classes of any type.
Full disclosure; I am one of those who is fervently opposed to commercialization of our greens spaces. Once the genie is out of the bottle it is impossible to put it back.
I’m also someone who has been living like a monk for 14 months. Which brings to the crux of my concern with opening the City green spaces to fitness classes of any type.
What is business doing to protect the public and themselves from COVID19? I belong to a sports group that uses City space. Before we could use the facilities our Provincial organization had to have approval from Action Sport, an arm of the Provincial Government. Plus City approval was need. In both cases an extensive lists and do’s and don’t had to be agreed to and adhered to. All of this is an extra expense to the club.
Isn’t protecting businesses at any cost been the downfall for many jurisdictions trying to wrestle COVID19 to the ground?
This is just a wild guess but there may be a lot of activities, far worse than some yoga classes, taking place in Riverside Park already.
Under the watchful eye of Community Safety, why not let the yoga classes go ahead for a day or two or stretch it out to a week?
A $50.00 fine for leaving one’s mat behind should be enough a deterrent to the lazy ones who don’t play by the rules.
Who knows but something like this could actually be a good thing for the stress the Covid-19 restrictions have put on us.