Coldstream Station is now officially open.
The new district attraction had their opening ceremony on Thursday, March 23 at 12 p.m. and was attended by numerous dignitaries, including Coldstream’s Mayor Ruth Hoyte, Vernon Mayor Victor Cumming, Vernon Monashee MLA Harwinder Sandhu and B.C’s Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport Lana Popham.
The Station, located on Kalamalka Road, will be a major attraction for Okanagan Rail Trail bike users along with tourists.
Trevor Seibel, the chief administrative officer at the District of Coldstream, gave a tour of amenities that the $1,818,000 project will have.
A four-stall washroom was the chief amenity.
“There are four self-contained heated stalls that have toilets,” said Seibel.
The washrooms are complete with a Dyson hand dryer and a paper towel dispenser. They will be open year round from dawn to dusk. There is also a water bottle filling station situated next to the bathrooms. Seibel was also quick to clarify that the large WC symbols represent ‘water closet,’ as he stated that he had already had several questions from community members of the meaning behind the letters.
Another highlight of the project was the vastness of the parking lot.
“There are 90 parking stalls in its entirety on the site,” Seibel said.
In the lot, four power outlets have been set up, which will be used so that food trucks will have the opportunity to operate business during events.
“We can effectively close off this western part of the parking lot so that you can have food trucks, community markets, a staging area for events and maybe races on the rail trail,” Seibel said. “You can close it off. So you still have parking and movement, but you can have people flowing through this side without interfering in the vehicular traffic.”
Seibel also mentioned that they had hoped to have the Station set up much earlier, but had some issues building the main power box that will provide electricity to the washrooms, charging stations to mobile vendors and a conduit to the eventual building of the electric vehicle charging stations (that will be set up at a later time).
“This should have been open last fall, probably in the summer actually. But it took almost eight months to get it (the power box) built.”
The Community Economic Recovery Infrastructure Program contributed $624,000 to the project, Canada Community Building Fund added $894,000 and $300,000 was provided from the Canada Community Revitalization Fund.
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