Serving Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra since 1984
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FRIDAY
February 18, 2011
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The Coquitlam Express enter their final game of the regular season needing a win.
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Your source for local news, sports, weather and entertainment. www.thenownews.com
Hanging bullies out to dry Jennifer McFee jmcfee@thenownews.com
Paul vanPeenen/NOW
Grade 4 student Josh Eisner is spearheading an anti-bullying initiative for Pink Shirt Day at Porter Street Elementary. He has arranged for the entire school to paint wooden T-shirts in shades of pink, to be hung along the school’s fence.
Bullying has got to stop. That’s the message nine-yearold Josh Eisner hopes to bring to his school — and community — through a hands-on Pink Shirt Day project. The annual anti-bullying event is set for Feb. 23, when people across the country will don pink shirts in colourful solidarity against bullying behaviours. Last year, Josh designed a logo, contacted companies for quotes and marketed pink Tshirts for sale at Porter Street Elementary school. This year, the Grade 4 student is taking his efforts one step further. Josh wants to create a visual message for the entire community to see. Josh gleaned inspiration from the Stream of Dreams CONT. ON PAGE 4, see CORPORATE.
Coquitlam OKs new City Centre library John Kurucz jkurucz@thenownews.com Three times the space, for about one-third the cost. The City of Coquitlam announced Thursday it has acquired a parcel of land near City Hall that will be the new home of the City Centre branch of the Coquitlam Public Library, a move that’s intended to bolster the library’s reach within the community while addressing long-standing parking issues in the area. Located at 1169 Pinetree Way, the new library building features 32,000 square feet of space and 90 parking stalls, compared to 11,000 square feet of space at the current facility at City Hall. “We’re very excited and delighted to be able
to expand our service in the City Centre area — it’s in the middle of Coquitlam and there are highrises going up all the time,” said Rhian Piprell, director of the Coquitlam Public Library. “The space we have right now is too small and not easily accessible because of the lack of parking — we’ve been getting complaints for years about that. This will allow us to provide many of the things that people have been asking for for our library service.” “Looking at the longer term, with the population growing in the Town Centre, the forecast that we’re looking at and the number of visits we get at the small library, we recognized the need for some time now,” added Coquitlam Library Board chair John Meneghello. “It’s wonderful news for us, it’s great for our citizens and we’re really excited.” The land was bought for $15 million, far less
than what it would have cost the city to buy an undeveloped property, Mayor Richard Stewart said. “It’s an unusual opportunity and we’re glad that we were able to jump at it,” Stewart said Thursday. “Part of it is the fact that we were able to purchase a piece of real estate, a ready-made shell for so much less than it would have cost us to build it. Building on that particular space, as is now, would have been twice what we paid, plus the cost of land.” The added room will allow the library to expand its services, with more quiet study space and work space, on top of additional programming for both kids and adults. “Something that is emerging a lot more these days is that we’re finding that the library is becoming a place to be,” Piprell said. “We find that a lot of people come to our libraries and they may not actually borrow books, but
STEAKHOUSE & LOUNGE
they come here for a place to set up their desks or their laptops just to do work. We’d like to see it as the third space after home and work.” Between now and the June 28 move-in date, city staff will work with the library board to figure out how to best utilize the available space. From there, the nuts and bolts work begins: installing washrooms, countertops and office space, among other things. As for the current facility, Stewart said it will likely be used to house RCMP members and city staff working throughout the community who have not been housed at City Hall. “It will provide a pressure release valve for the RCMP spacing, and it will also allow us to repatriate some of our city staff and reduce some of our costs for leasing space elsewhere,” he said. “There’s about six different ways that this is a win-win scenario for the city.”