New rainbow-coloured crosswalks are coming to the heart of the city’s downtown core.
Nanaimo city council has decided to paint two crosswalks rainbow at the intersection of Commercial and Bastion Streets in time for the inaugural Pride Parade, June 12.
Rick Myers, president of the Nanaimo Pride Society, asked for the ‘pride walk’ earlier this month.
Nanaimo city staff recommended using standard road paint for the coloured crosswalks. While it's temporary, lasting about a year, the city’s transportation manager Gordon Foy said it's something that can be delivered quickly and the cost is relatively small. It’s estimated to cost $2,500.
Other options could have been to paint the same intersection with more long-lasting paint for between $7,000 and $8,000 directly on crosswalk bricks, but the concern was there could be cracks along brick lines and it would degrade quickly because the bricks are moving. Another crosswalk at Museum Way could have been permanently coloured rainbow for between about $12,000 and $15,000.
According to Tracy Samra, chief administrative officer, staff looked at more cost-effective options not knowing if the Pride Parade will be done a second and third year and given that council has identified public art at crosswalks as a project it may want to pursue across the city.
“Our recommendation is the more cost effective over the short term until council has decided where it’s going to be putting its public art and how it wants to deal with permanently designating crosswalks for different types of purposes,” she said.
Coun. Diane Brennan said her concern for the corner of Bastion and Commercial is the paint is slapped down over the bricks, it starts fading and the colors start to change so they are not so vibrant. She said she'd prefer to pay a little more respect to the idea by using the crosswalk in front of Serious Coffee and doing it right so it lasts longer and the vibrancy stays.
Coun. Wendy Pratt said she likes the idea that they take time to decide if they are going to do something more permanent.
“I really like the idea of doing some crosswalks in different motifs so this would be one of them but I think we can delay that at least a year. That way we can put it in the budget too,” she said.
Coun. Jerry Hong made the motion to direct staff to paint two Commercial Street sidewalks in pride colours on a temporary basis.