No longer floating the idea: Charlottetown approves dock for Victoria Park

The controversial floating dock planned for Victoria Park in Charlottetown will be in the water this summer.

Charlottetown council voted for the dock to go ahead at a meeting Monday night — but without one main feature; boats will not be allowed to launch from it. The original plan had room for non-motorized vessels, but council changed that after hearing concerns about safety and traffic. 

"We received e-mails, we received comments, we did go to a full-fledged public meeting and open house at the Charlottetown Hotel recently. There was a number of concerns, the bulk of those concerns surround the non-motorized vessels," said Mitchell Tweel, chair of the parks and recreation committee.

"So we thought as a pilot project, why not try a compromise and the compromise would be we would not proceed with with the non-motorized vessels."

The dock, which the city purchased for $51,605 last year, has been a site of controversy since then. Resident complaints eventually led to a broadly attended public meeting in May, where comments were divided evenly between those for and against the project. 

Project will be re-evaluated 

Tweel said staff will be monitoring the usage and collecting comments from the public during the pilot project, which will run throughout the summer and then be re-evaluated. 

"We have to experiment," said Tweel 

"And the beauty of this particular dock. It's a modular dock. We can add, we can delete, we can subtract. The flexibility is incredible."

The vote passed six votes to four with councillors, MacLeod, Ramsay, Duffy, and Doiron voting against the project.

Mayor Philip Brown argued the vote should not go ahead because the project had not been reviewed by the parks and recreation committee again after the public meeting. But, when asked for her opinion, the city's solicitor said the vote was legal.

Tweel said he hopes to have the dock installed in the next two and a half weeks. 

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