Metro Vancouver needs to work on a funding strategy for an ambitious plan to turn one of the region’s parks into a centre for urban agriculture, wildlife management, and recreation.

Developing the 262-hectare Colony Farm Regional Park into such a hub won’t come cheap. The price tag: $29.4 million.

“There is no funding available at the moment for this,” Langley city councillor Gayle Martin told the Straight, referring to a staff proposal that involves, among other things, the establishment of an academy for sustainable food production. “We’ll be looking for partners,” Martin said.

The councillor is a member of Metro Vancouver’s sustainability-academy subcommittee, which will review a draft plan for the park on October 13. Expressing support for the concept, Martin said that it will have a number of public benefits, and “number one is certainly preserving the agriculture aspect in the Lower Mainland”.

Located at the southern junction of Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam, Colony Farm was once a productive agricultural site. The area currently consists of unused farmland, community gardens, trails, dykes, and fields managed for wildlife.

As Metro Vancouver Parks’ central area manager, Frieda Schade was involved in putting together the plan that would see the reintroduction of agriculture at Colony Farm. Other proposed activities there include farming demonstrations and therapeutic gardening.

“We obviously have a big job to do to get some partners, and we don’t think we can do it by ourselves,” Schade told the Straight.

The plan is making its way through the various committees of the regional body and will be taken up by the Metro Vancouver board by the end of the month.

Colony Farm, the seventh-busiest park in the region, had more than 345,000 visitors last year. The regional district spends $300,000 a year to maintain this park where people go to walk, jog, bike, and see birdlife.