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March 1 2013 www.newwestnewsleader.com
Alicia Worobec is up for a challenge—and now she’s New Westminster’s contestant in a special, 13-week health and fitness contest. Meet alicia on page a11
Plaza 88 tower pitch panned Grant Granger
ggranger@newwestnewsleader.com
curl Bc/contriButed
Andrew Bilesky competes in the provincial curling championship last month in Parksville, where he beat his old mentor, Brent Pierce, in the final.
Bilesky begins Brier on Saturday New Westminster skip off to curling’s World Series Grant Granger
ggranger@newwestnewsleader.com
Andrew Bilesky was nine when he first tagged along with his father and brother to the Royal City Curling Club to do what they were doing. Twenty years later Dad and Mark aren’t doing what he is doing this week, although they might tag along to watch. And that is going to the Brier, otherwise known as the Canadian men’s curling
championship, to play in the sport’s biggest event. The New Westminster resident will be skipping a rookie team against some of the game’s biggest names in front of up to 17,000 people at Edmonton’s Rexall Place and national television audiences beginning Saturday. Like many Lower Mainland boys, Bilesky played soccer and baseball growing up. Unlike many Canadian boys, Bilesky wasn’t infatuated with hockey or extreme sports. Many of those boys considered curling boring and lacked the adrenalin
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rush they craved. Not Bilesky. He considered it active and a good way to meet people. “It was fun. I started so young I didn’t even know the reputation of the game,” he says in between congratulations from several club members as they shake his hand and offer him good wishes. It helped to have some early success. At age 11, he was the youngest person at the B.C. Winter Games playing for his brother Mark, who is four years older. That evolved into playing
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junior bonspiels all over the place, including two more trips to the B.C. Winter Games, and he loved it. “When you’re a kid winning bonspiels and getting $250, that’s not a lot of money, but when you’re 14 years old it is, especially when people couldn’t believe you could win money. I put it into perspective that if I kept winning I could get to the Brier one day,” says Bilesky, “That’s the big show, they call it. It’s like going to the World Series for curling.” How right he was. Please see royal city, a3
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A Plaza 88 proposal for a 39-storey tower full of one-bedroom condos that asks the city to break several of its rules has raised red flags at city hall. With three residential towers already built adjacent to the New Westminster SkyTrain station, Plaza 88 Developments is planning to add another on vacant land on the other side of the McInnes Overpass at 900 Carnarvon St. A report to Monday’s council meeting, but not discussed because of time constraints, said Plaza 88 wants a tower with 396 residential units, almost quadruple what regulations would allow (102). The preliminary plan is to include 50 studio condos, 336 one-bedrooms and just three two-bedrooms. The residential floor space would total 246,000 square feet, an average of 622.5 per unit. The report notes the proposal meets the total square footage allowed (252,000 sq. ft.), but with only 5,500 set aside for commercial it is asking for 33,000 sq. ft. more than what it is entitled to for residential floor space. Please see city, a10