Parkside at Royal Bay

Municipality: City of Colwood
Key Personnel:

Mike Wignall, Kevin Hossack

The Opportunity

Located adjacent to the Royal Bay neighbourhood in the City of Colwood, the Parkside development is a unique “woonerf” style single-family home development. The term “woonerf” originates from Dutch planning to describe a “Living Street”. A “Living Street” is one in which the roadway becomes a setting for neighbourhood social interaction. Motor vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles have shared use of the roadway and a focus is placed on creating an environment for safe pedestrian activity, instead of serving primarily vehicle traffic.

The Approach

The Parkside roadway consists of a one way brick paver access route. A sweeping abstract pattern has been incorporated into the paver layout to add an element of interest and encourage conversation.  The houses are architecturally designed in accordance with a central theme and the landscaping brings the housing and the street together to create a unique neighbourhood enclave.

The decision to incorporate “woonerf” style design originated from the initial practical requirement to allow moving trucks or larger vehicles access into the final development.  By creating a one way flowing path based on the vehicle path of a large truck, the preliminary roadway layout was formed and later enhanced in “woonerf” style resulting in   a street that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

A challenge of the project was the requirement to re-introduce storm water from the site and upland area back into the ground due to the latest City of Colwood innovations in storm water management. A system was designed to allow the storm water to be infiltrated by way of perforated pipes. The perforated pipes allow nominal drainage flows to infiltrate, while providing safe subsurface flow routes for more significant rainfall events that saturate the subsurface ground conditions.

Also incorporated into the design, in conjunction with the City of Colwood Engineering department, was a trial use of the Petro Barrier System to remove water borne hydro carbons from the road runoff.  The Petro Barrier units were installed in the catch basins within the project and continue operate under the City of Colwood’s supervision in this location.

The Result

The project began with the rezoning and development permit process in the late summer of 2011.  Detailed design followed in the late fall of 2011 and early part of 2012.  Construction began in the summer of 2012 and was completed in the spring of 2013.

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