Area around Oppenheimer Park has deteriorated, become ‘more aggressive’: business owner

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The owner of a cafe across from Oppenheimer Park says there are more people camping there than ever, and conditions in the neighborhood are deteriorating and becoming more dangerous.

Lisa Leimanis owns the Uncommon Cafe, across from the park at Powell and Jackson.

“People are a little more afraid and there’s not really kids walking around anymore,” she says. “The park there has a kids playground and there used to be kids playing in there all the time. You just don’t really see families or anything anymore. It’s just more garbage and scary people.”

Leimanis notes that a shooting on Thursday is just one example of how the area has become “aggressive.”

She says business owners consistently call 911. On Friday she made a call herself because a man was walking down the street smashing car windows with a metal pipe.

On the other side of the park, the Vancouver Japanese Language School has hired cleaners specifically to clear their playground of drug paraphernalia, according to Leimanis.

“There’s no real bathroom facilities for people so there’s that sort of stuff around all the time too,” she says.

The Strathcona Business Improvement Association provides cleaners and a private security in the area, but Leimanis says it’s not enough.

While the Vancouver Park Board has said it intends to seek an injunction to move the homeless out of the Park, Leimanis says city officials have not given the business owners in the area any notification of when that may take place.

“The city hasn’t talked to us at all. There’s zero word from them,” she says. “We’ve never had anyone say anything to us.”

RELATED: Conditional injunction approved to decamp Oppenheimer Park tent city

But, she says cleaning up the park after the camp is cleared will be the easy part.

“I imagine even if it does get cleaned up, it’ll take a few months to get people comfortable again to come back down to the neighbourhood and bring their kids, and make it a community park like it’s supposed to be.”

In August the Strathcona Business Improvement Association conducted a survey that found 83 per cent of business owners favour returning the park to its “original purpose as a green and social space.

“Most concerning were reports directly from the businesses who cited loss of customers, an inability to retain staff due to feelings around lack of safety and, in one case, the closure of a business’s community serving retail location. One business in the immediate vicinity noted “the number of violent incidents has spiked in the time since it has become a tent city” and that “the number of times we have had to call 911 has risen beyond a point of reasonable expectation,” says the report on the survey results. 

Meanwhile, the Principal of a Port Moody school says they have cancelled an annual trip to hand out food and gifts in the Downtown Eastside.

“It wouldn’t be prudent to send 50 students into an area where a police investigation was happening,” writes Todd Clerkson of Heritage Woods Secondary School.

The Vancouver Police Department has reported a surge in 911 calls and advocated to the Park Board and the city in favour of clearing the camp.