Victory Park Society campaigns for new North Sydney waterfront space

A newCape Breton group has plans to turna vacant area of the North Sydney waterfront into a mixed-use recreational space.

The Victory Park Society wants the government to look at reviving a privately owned section on Commercial Street between the Ballast Grounds and the Irving gas station.

"It's really the last opportunity for us to capture a part of our downtown and hold it as a community," said Ryan Duff, chairman of the ten-person society.

They're calling the proposed area Victory Park to honour the victory bonfires held there to celebrate the ends of the first and second world wars.

"There is nothing really on the site; it's grown in. There is some scrap metal and stuff on the site," he said.

Instead, the group wants to see a boardwalk, business kiosks, a restaurant, bandstand and playground.

It would replace Archibald's Wharf, which the Cape Breton Regional Municipality sold to Canadian Maritime Engineeringin May 2015. That led to vocal opposition from members of the community, who worried they were losing green space for public use.

Duff says he doesn't want to revive the controversy."It's impossible to completely disentangle the two, but this is not another fight about Archibald'sWharf."

The group wants to capitalize on the nearby Marine Atlantic ferry terminal and the 300,000 passengers that pass through ityearly.

"We are not doing a good enough job at leveraging that asset and getting them into the downtown and invigorating the economy," Duff said.

The society wants the governmentto fund a feasibility study.

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