Chilliwack – Once again, public art in Chilliwack is on display.
The Love Lock Heart is now sitting proudly in Central Community Park off Young Road and Victoria Avenue.
The initial social media response has been positive.
Carol Marleau was the Project Manager with the City of Chilliwack. She told FVN:
In April of 2021 staff for the City of Chilliwack had two meetings with Ron Romeyn of The Harvest Café, Daris Lapoint of the Chilliwack Arts Council and Trevor McDonald, Executive Director of the Downtown Chilliwack Business Improvement Association.
The purpose of the meetings was to discuss the potential of siting a public art piece, the Love Lock Heart, at Central Community Park.
The hope of creating this art piece was to increase traffic to the area there by reducing vandalism all while celebrating people coming together through a placement and subsequent visit to of a lock marked with their initials. There are a number of “lock” projects around the world (China, Paris, New York etc.) and as with those locations this sculpture would also serve as a tourist attraction increasing visits to the downtown core and ideally encouraging residents and visitors alike to shop and dine while in the community.
As the piece would be owned by the City of Chilliwack but managed by the Chilliwack Community Arts Council, and as the piece would require engineering considerations staff released an RFP seeking designs that would meet said specifications. The proposals were vetted by the Chilliwack Public Art Advisory Committee with a recommendation going forward to Council and the successful proponent of the project was Challen and Tracey Clark of State of the Art Concepts who came in at $16,000 inclusive of all taxes which was under the maximum approximated cost of $20,000.
