A plan to develop a bistro on English Bay Beach is headed for public consultations after Vancouver’s park board unanimously approved a design concept for the restaurant.

The two-level bistro—which would have 75 indoor seats, outdoor seating, and a takeout kiosk—would replace the concession next to the bathhouse on the beach. Jim Lowden, the park board’s director of special projects, said at the park board’s April 28 meeting that the private restaurant would serve food at “an Earls or Cactus Club type of price point”.

“This is not [like] Raincity Grill right across the street,” Lowden said. “But also, it’s not McDonald’s. This is something that is a little bit better in terms of quality.”

NPA commissioners Marty Zlotnik, Ian Robertson, Heather Holden, and board chair Korina Houghton voted in favour of the design, along with COPE commissioners Loretta Woodcock and Spencer Herbert. Independent commissioner Allan De Genova, who is seeking Vision Vancouver’s mayoral nomination, was absent.

Aaron Jasper, a director of the West End Residents Association, said for his group the issue is “process”, especially as the next stage is public consultation.

“Our hope would be that if the residents and the people of the West End come out to the sessions and flat-out reject it—and say they just don’t want to see this—that the park board is open to that,” Jasper told the commissioners. “In our minds, a consultation on just the design aspects is too narrow a consultation. So we hope that the scope is broader.”¦We don’t feel that a high-end restaurant would be necessarily a good fit. A lot of folks in our neighbourhood are of modest-to-low incomes.”

To justify the redevelopment of the beach concession, Lowden noted the park board supported the 2006 concession-strategy study, which listed a new lease agreement at English Bay as a major priority.

Holden said she thought it was very wise for commissioners “to continue with this move to get out of the business of providing food services”. Lowden told commissioners the park board would receive 6.5 percent of the restaurant’s gross sales. After the privately operated Watermark Restaurant at Kitsilano Beach opened in 2005, it had gross sales in its first five months of almost $2 million. Of that amount, the park board received only $86,000, after paying for new washrooms, according to the 2006 staff report that recommended the concession strategy.

Paul Faoro, president of CUPE Local 15, which represents municipal workers, told the Straight after the meeting he was “concerned about the privatization of the system”.

“Certainly, we have got huge concerns that the park board is giving private land for profit,” Faoro said. “We support small businesses, but there is a point where, with the best real estate in Vancouver, if somebody is making a profit off of it, we have a level of concern with the level of return into the parks system.”