Dogwood Gardens

There was a recent article in the Cloverdale Reporter about Dogwood Gardens celebrating 40 years so I thought I'd share some memories too.

Dogwood Gardens is a townhouse complex built on the east side of 177 B Street bordering 58th Avenue to the south. There are 86 or maybe 84 units - I don't recall how many! - on this 5 acre plot of land. The Reporter incorrectly reported Dogwood Gardens is on 10 acres. The confusion may have arisen that Mr Duckworth, of the former Duckworth's clothing store on 176th Street, sold the developer 10 acres that Dogwood Gardens is built on. Mr Duckworth probably did sell 10 acres. The original plans were a phase 2 complex, also to be built on 177 B Street, just north of the property where Dogwood Gardens stands. However Phase 2 never happened. I don't recall why, though lack of interest from prospective buyers seems to be what I remember. Back then this was a relatively new concept for the area. Dogwood Gardens is registered with the province as either strata 10 or 12 - again memory fails me which number it is! Today thousands of stratas are registered in BC. Back then we called Dogwood Gardens a condominium, but as apartment style condominiums started popping up, they were then referred to as townhouses. But back to the other 5 acres. That was turned into a couple of new streets and single family detached homes were built.

Dogwood Gardens was built by an old family friend of ours, Mr Ruckheim. He was a German builder and him and his partner retired after building Dogwood Gardens. Or should I say semi-retirement. He was building a boat with the plan to sail around the world with his wife and daughter, my friend Ingrid who was the same age as me. They got as far as Hawaii and wife and daughter jumped ship, had enough of bad weather, and flew back to BC where they waited for him and eventually built a home on Pender Island.

But back in 1969 a complex built by German builders who took pride in their workmanship resulted in very sturdy homes. These incredibly well built homes have maintenance issues as they age and residents update the interiors, but man I'd rather live there than in any of those new complexes that are slapped together these days by people who just want to get it done as fast as possible and get out. No pride in workmanship anymore.

Most of the Dogwood Garden townhouses are two bedrooms with a small den, but there are a few three bedroom and four bedroom units. Bedrooms are upstairs and downstairs is the kitchen, dining, and living rooms. The new units originally sold for $15,000 to $20,000. They are built around 4 quadrants with a different theme for the interior of each - a swimming pool, a playground, a fountain and putting green, and a mound garden. Walking paths wind throughout the complex. At 5 acres Dogwood Gardens has the lowest density of all townhouse complexes in North America.

The first year families were living there we all flocked there on Halloween. All those houses in one small area could be covered quickly. Unfortunately parents were driving their children in from other parts of Surrey. By the time we reached half the units they were already out of candy. The following year, and to date, Dogwood Gardens no longer has door to door trick or treating. Children are directed to the workshop decorated with a Halloween theme and some residents volunteer to hand out candies. The children receive a good sized bag full of treats.

My father purchased unit number 8 in Dogwood Gardens back in 1985 and rented it out for a short period of time before selling our house on 182 Street and him and my mother moved in and lived there for about 5 years. My father became president of the strata and one of the first things he did was get the bylaws changed to not allow renters. All the units are owned by the families who live in them.

In 1997 Kerry and I purchased unit 11 and lived there for 7 years. Bottom line was it was too small for our needs. Kerry was storing lumber in the living room and we had to look for a larger place. Sadly the new owners tore down the lovely rhododendron that was in front of the house.

Halloween as an owner is a little different than the kids who come to trick or treat at the workshop. Owners patrol the property all night to prevent vandals. We have a sign up sheet and take shifts.

We live nearby and often drive past Dogwood Gardens and it is still a neat and tidy complex, well mainained by a gardener/handyman. Strata living isn't for everyone but anyone looking to buy into this type of residence should give this property serious consideration.

The Unknown Mall

The Cloverdale Mall is not the only covered mall that our small town has seen. Back in 1980 a new mall opened on the south side of Highway 10, inbetween 177B Street and 176th Street, approximately where the stores of Clover Village Square currently are situated. Unfortunately I do not remember the name of this mall.

The Co-op grocery store and Boot’s drugstore anchored the east end of the mall. Unfortunately after several year’s absence from Cloverdale, and a bevy of addle-brained cashiers, the Co-op’s grocery store was unable to make a go of it. By this time most of Cloverdale had decided not to shop at the leaky Safeway and had found new grocery stores in Langley including the newly opened mega grocery store, Save-On Foods on the Fraser Highway.

The Boot’s drug store chain is popular in England and had big hopes of bringing in an ex-patriot crew to shop at the franchise in Cloverdale. Instead their high prices kept most Cloverdale patrons going to Shopper’s Drug Mart in the Cloverdale Mall, or Kuss’s Pharmacy on the main street. I don’t remember what came first, the Cloverdale Boot’s closing down, or the drugstore’s nationwide closure.

On the west side of the mall was Surrey Credit Union and a restaurant called Hale & Hearty’s. Inside the mall were the usual assortment of clothing and record stores.

Right from the beginning the mall never had many customers. The stores had more employees than there were customers shopping there. I remember hanging out a friend’s house one Friday night and her parents went out to check out the new mall. They returned a short time later and said there were six people shopping in the mall that night.

A friend of mine worked at Surrey Credit Union and she said that patrons of the Co-op were all given $5 vouchers as part of a promotion. The catch was they had to come down to Surrey Credit Union to cash it in and get their five bucks. The object was to get people walking through the mall and shopping. All to no avail.

Within a year many of the stores had closed down. By the mid-80’s a couple of stores inside the mall were still open. My doctor’s office was inside that mall for a period of time until she moved to a new clinic a block away in the late 80’s. Surrey Credit Union became Surrey Metro Savings and remained open. Also not closing down was Hale & Hearty’s restaurant which had pretty decent food for a good price and was a favorite hang out for the race track crowd, but was closed when I returned in 1992 with a friend to go for dinner. L

One credit union can not be financially feasible for the mall owners who had lots of empty retail space including 2 rather large locations, the former Co-op grocery store and Boot’s locations. By the mid-90’s the mall was demolished and eventually the Clover Square Village and their stores came into being.

So about 15 years for this mall. The Cloverdale Mall is still standing 35 years after it opened and is still the winner. And I use that term in the loosest sense because a mall that does not have any stores inside for shopping is not a mall. In my opinion.

Maybe Cloverdale was just not meant to have indoor shopping malls. The outside strip malls seem to be more to the liking of this community.

A few hours at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds

I managed to get to the Cloverdale fairgrounds on Sunday May 17 for a look around. It’s been a few years since we last went.

We were hoping to hear our friend Ivan sing on stage at 1pm but got hung up in West Vancouver and missed him, arriving about an hour after his set was finished. We walked over to the fairgrounds and it was quite hot – in the mid 20’s. Or for those of us still on Fahrenheit – high 70’s.

We entered off 60th Avenue where the kiddie rides were set up and a few concession trailers – mini donuts, corn on the cob, Hawaiian shaved ice, etc. We immediately took refuge inside the livestock building. It had a nice selection of hens, cows, sheep, goats, horses, and mini donkeys. Also a spinner was there showing what she did with sheep wool and a bee display was set up. Made me miss my little donkeys. See my previous blog on my little hee hawers.

We then headed down the midway where the adult rides are located, passing a monster truck taking people for rides in the bed of the pick up for $5 apiece. And oddly enough, all the seats were packed and people were waiting in line. I can get the same thrills riding in Kerry’s 4 x 4 on the gravel driveway of the farm where we keep our horses. That truck feels every bump on the road!

The midway was packed while fairgoers thronged to the big rides, the midway games, and more food concessions. Everything had huge line ups. But everyone I saw was smiling and having a good time.

We stopped at the barn where the retailers were set up managing to avoid spending money on any impulse shopping. Darn, I really kind of liked that purple cowboy hat! Maybe next year. Also maybe next year for the rodeo. Didn’t go this weekend due to time constraints.

We were hot and decided to walk back home and return in the evening to hear the band Chilliwack playing. On our way out I noticed a concession trailer selling deep fried Oreos and deep fried Jelly Belly jelly beans. I remember reading a blog a few months ago about someone who bought a deep fried Snickers bar at a fair and was duplicating the recipe as best he could. So now I’m checking all the concessions looking for one selling the deep fried Snickers. But no luck.

On a quick aside after we went home I drove back to Price Smart in the Clover Crossing Mall to buy a couple of things for dinner. This was the first time I’d driven down 176th Street past the fairgrounds because Kerry kept refusing to go this way due to the high pedestrian and car traffic in the area. But now I see the 62nd Avenue entrance to the backstretch area has a big sign saying no public parking, only green pass holders and motorcycles. So I’m thinking to myself if this is for passes only then they can not be set up to take cash in this section for their $10 parking fees and we should come back on the motorbikes, which we did at 7:30. Sure enough the security person guarding that entrance waved us through and the motorbikes were all set up in an area just before the admission gate. Free parking for motorbikes! I wish we’d driven past there earlier in the weekend and had seen that sign. We wouldn’t have walked over in the heat of the afternoon.

By this time in the evening it had cooled off and was more enjoyable wandering the fairgrounds. The 2010 Olympics had a tent set up that had a huge line up in the afternoon, but none that evening. We came in, had our photos taken on an Olympic pass, and then got to choose which Olympic event to participate in. I chose the bobsled and sat in this chair with a dome that was lowered over my head and a movie image played of riding a bobsleigh down the course. It was OK. Kerry chose the biathlon and has to do more work, pretending to ski and then a rifle to shoot at targets. He did pretty good.

And then I couldn’t resist. I stopped by the trailer selling the deep fried Oreos. I received a plate of 4 covered in powered sugar. Its kind of like eating an Oreo that was cooked inside mini donut batter. It was OK. Now I can say I’ve done it and won’t need to try that one again.

One last stop on our way to the motorbikes to pick up a couple of bags of kettle corn and our day at the fair was over.

Or so I thought. I woke up in the middle of the night with an upset stomach. Couldn’t have been those deep fried Oreos, could it?

Shooting death at Clover Inn

On Cloverdale's biggest weekend of the year a shooter walked into the Clover Inn on Saturday night May 16 around 11pm and shot 2 men and then fled. One died and the second is currently in critical condition. Neither of the men who were shot knew each other and police are still investigating a motive and trying to find the killer.

This is big news for Cloverdale. Violent crimes do not usually happen here. It is more an area of car theft and burglaries.

The Clover Inn was mentioned in one of my previous blogs as home to a stripper bar and clientele of a rougher nature.

Photos taken at Cloverdale Rodeo Parade May 16 2009

Cloverdale rodeo pancake update

I just drove past the Canadian Reformed Church on 60th and there is a sign outside saying their pancake breakfast on May 16 is free. See you there!

Cloverdale Rodeo Pancake Breakfasts May 16 2009

On the morning of the Cloverdale Rodeo Parade there are several pancake breakfasts held around town on Saturday May 16, 2009.

Probably the most popular will be the one put on by the Cloverdale Lions in Hawthorne Square on 176th Street, across from the Dale Building and the Clova Cinema, partly between 58th and 57th Avenues. This will be from 8am till 10am, approximately when the parade starts. A local band, the Trailerpark Playboys will be providing musical entertainment and an Elvis impersonator is also scheduled to make an appearance. Now keep in mind this is the May long weekend and it always rains. Or at least it has for 11 of the past 15 years if memory serves me correctly. The Lions pancake breakfast is held outside. Depending on the weather it might be a flop. Cost is unknown but I can't imagine it will be more than $5.

For an indoor pancake breakfast, the Cloverdale Legion is nearby on 57th Avenue, across from the firehall and serve breakfast from 6:30am till about 11:30am. In fact they'll be serving pancakes each day of the long weekend. We often go there for their monthly pancake breakfasts. For $4 ($3 for kids) they serve pancakes, eggs, sausages, coffee, and orange drink. You can go back for seconds if you're still hungry.

The Cloverdale United Church also has a pancake breakfast starting at 8am. They're located on the corner of the Cloverdale Bypass and 58th Avenue, but you'll have to drive around to their entrance on 58A Avenue to park. Free parking for the parade and rodeo if you come in for pancakes. Cost unknown for 2009 but in 2008 it was $2.

The Cloverdale Canadian Reformed Church on 60th Avenue is also holding a pancake breakfast. Cost unknown, but in 2008 it was free! That was the deciding factor where we ate pancakes last year. In addition to pancakes they served sausages and coffee and juice. I don't recall if there was fried eggs here. They also offered free parking for parade and rodeo goers who came in for breakfast. They're located at 17473 60th Avenue.

Sprucing up Cloverdale

In anticipation of the rodeo this weekend Cloverdale is getting spruced up. Someone at City Hall has sent the crews out. Too bad it only happens once a year.

The first thing I saw last week was a line painter repainting the yellow lines down the centre of the streets.

On Monday morning at 7:30 I ran into a street cleaner on 57 Avenue and 176A Street. At 10:30 Monday night I saw the street cleaner again when I had to run out on a quick errand. I don't know if its the same street cleaner or not, but it was the same truck, or at least a truck that looked exactly like the one I saw 15 hours earlier!

Today the landscapers/gardeners are out in force, especially around the Cloverdale Bypass and 58 Avenue area. Two tractors with lawn mower attachments and huge arms on them are cutting the grass around the United Church and across the street that huge lawn area got cut and there are a crew of people handling weed eaters in this general area.

On another note the carnival folks have started setting up the midway rides. I'm wondering if the rides will be open for thrill seekers this Thursday night following the bed races. When I was a teenager they didn't have the bed races back then, but the carnival midway always opened up the night before so the locals could come out and enjoy the rides before the weekend crowds hit.

Cloverdale Co-op Grocery Store

When I was a kid one of my favorite things was to accompany my mother on her Friday afternoon grocery shopping at the Co-op in Cloverdale. It was on the south side of Highway 10, at approximately at 176th Street. It was a neat two story building. Groceries were on the first floor and upstairs was the hardware department that also sold clothing. The Co-op owned most of the land for a block east down Highway 10 and had various warehouse buildings, some occupied, some empty. The Co-op had a feed mill, a separate building on the east side of the grocery store, separated by a driveway and parking lot. When I turned thirteen and got my first horse that feed mill came in handy and my father would take me there to buy oats for Duchess. There was a lumber yard out back, on the south side of the buildings.

But back to the groceries. My mother made a shopping list and she used that to pull items off the shelf. She would rarely deviate from the list and buy other items. I always got a popsicle on the shopping trips. This was back in the days when the grocery stores sold them as singles instead of in the multi packages that are available today. I usually ate the popsicle while I accompanied her up and down the aisles and when we got to the cashier we put the empty wrapper on the belt and the cashier would add it up with the groceries. No big deal. All part of small town living.

I still remember our Co-op membership number – 3428.

My father remembers that the Co-op used to have a meat processing plant there and they made a good profit buying wholesale and selling retail. I don’t remember this section of the Co-op at all. Maybe my vegetarian mind has blocked it out….

The Co-op grocery store closed around 1975. I don’t recall why. For some reason I thought this was a union store and the employees went on strike and it never was resolved. However my father says the Co-op closed due to bad management, unable to make a profit.

A year or so after the grocery closed the building burnt down. A spectacular fire of this two story warehouse. I wasn’t in town at the time but one of my friends who lived nearby went to check out the fire and she said all of Cloverdale and half of Langley turned out to watch the building burn.

In late 1980 the Co-op grocery store tried again in Cloverdale, anchor store of a new mall that was built on Highway 10 on some of the same land where the Co-op warehouses originally stood. I was in there a few times and not many people were shopping there. After several years absence most of the residents of Cloverdale had found other grocery stores in Langley and weren’t switching back. The cashiers at the new Co-op were all a lazy, stuck up, silly bunch. I swear they were all under the influence of some controlled substance. This bunch sure couldn’t help the new Co-op grocery store gain and retain customers. I came in during a power outage to buy something. There were two or three cashiers working (and I use that word loosely) and each had one or two customers in their lane. But the cashiers were all standing around with their thumbs up their asses. Their cash registers were electric and they had no back up plan for power outages. This was back in the day before electronic scanners. All grocery products were stamped with a price and the cashier would enter the amount for each product. So I headed over to the Safeway at the Cloverdale Mall to make my purchase. The cashiers there were very busy and their registers were working. Even though these were also electronic cash registers they had a manual over ride for when the power was out. The Safeway cashiers were able to punch in the price and pull a lever after each price was entered, and then moved on to the next item.

The new Co-op grocery store closed down within a year of opening. With lousy cashiers, no customers, and possibly the same bad management that caused the original store to close, they never stood a chance.

The Cloverdale Mall

When I was a kid there used to be a big park and ball field pretty much in downtown Cloverdale for sports events like baseball games. The fire department was across the street and on Halloween the department put on fireworks shows. All this ended in the early 1970’s when the Cloverdale Mall was built on the field.

In accompaniment with building the Cloverdale Mall, the Cloverdale Bypass was built, allowing through 176th Street traffic a short detour to avoid driving through downtown Cloverdale. So the mall sits approximately between 58th and 57th Avenues and 176th Street and the Bypass.

If memory serves me correctly the Cloverdale Mall opened in 1973 or perhaps early 1974. This was a big thing for Cloverdale having several shops in one covered area. Safeway was the token grocery store and other establishments inside the mall included Shopper’s Drug Mart, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the government liquor store, the Mixer Shack, the Four Seasons (Chinese Restaurant), a bakery, a record store, Saan, a fast food fried chicken place who’s name escapes me (not KFC), and a coffee shop where you ordered at the window and took your drinks and snacks to one of the benches or tables throughout the mall. I’m sure there were other stores in there, but these were the main stores when the mall first opened. I was going to Cloverdale Junior High at the time and I was in the band and several times we performed inside the mall. There would be other musical groups occasionally performing there during the first few years the mall was open.

Almost immediately after opening the Cloverdale Mall was plagued with problems, notably a leaky roof. Every rainy day I came to the mall there would be buckets placed around catching the water. Safeway was a disgusting place to shop. It was a small store and staff were kept busy mopping up the water and placing out buckets to catch the rain water that constantly dripped inside. The store always appeared dirty no matter how diligently the staff tried to keep on top of the leaky roof.

The mall just wasn’t that popular and by 1980 was pretty much a ghost town with Cloverdale shoppers heading to the recently revamped Guildford Mall or the newly opened Willowbrook Mall. The school bands and other independent acts no longer performed inside the mall.

The liquor store kept the customers coming into the mall. But after a few years the liquor store relocated to its current location on 176th Street near the Number 10 Highway and that was the beginning of Cloverdale Mall’s slow death. Shopper’s Drug Mart and the Scotiabank relocated to other areas of Cloverdale, the Safeway closed down, and one by one the remaining stores shut down and the mall’s owners were unable to find new retailers to lease to. By the late 1990’s the mall had a handful of retailers and several churches leasing space. But now the retailers have all gone and the churches and religious groups are still leasing former retail space.

The City of Surrey owns the land and has been trying to sell it. Developers with a vision of mixed residential and commercial have been invited to put in a bid. It was announced earlier this year that the property had been sold, but last week the City of Surrey amended that to say the buyer had backed out due to financing and the mall is officially up for sale again.

No matter who buys this property and what is eventually built on there, I doubt the vision is going to match the reality. In hindsight perhaps the property would have been better left in its original form as a park where kids came out to play baseball and on Halloween we all enjoyed the fireworks.

Cloverdale's latest statues

The last 2 statues on 176th Street depicting Cloverdale's history are up. A cowgirl and a conductor.

What's happening in Cloverdale in May 2009?

I have a few events that will be happening this month around Cloverdale.

May 2 and 3: the Royal Hudson steam train will arrive in Cloverdale behind the Clydesdale Inn located on the south side of Highway 10, just a little east of 176th Street. Around 11:30 am for about an hour or so. Good photo opportunities. But if you'd like to do more than look at it, you can ride it, departing the New Westminster Quay at 10am. On the return trip from Cloverdale it stops at the Sullivan Station for about half an hour and returns to New West at 3pm. Tickets cost $99 plus taxes. Phone West Coast Rail Tours 604-524-1011.

May 14: the Cloverdale Bed Races start at 6pm and run for a couple of hours or until all the teams have had a chance to race. This takes place on 176A Street between 58 Avenue and 57 Avenue and is pretty much the kick off to the Cloverdale Rodeo long weekend. There is usually live music and food stands like hot dogs. If you're interested in putting a team together, here is the application form. http://www.cloverdale.bc.ca/chamber/Bed%20Race%20Application%202009.pdf

May 15: the Cloverdale Chili Cookoff is in the Cloversquare Village at Highway 10 and 177B Street between 4pm and 6pm. Test the chilis and vote for your favorite. Also has live entertainment.

May 16: the Cloverdale Rodeo Parade has the usual parade entries: baton twirlers, bands, floats, clowns, dancers, and horses. Starts at 10am for about 2 hours. Here's a map of the parade route so you can choose where you want to sit. Most people head to 176th Street around 58 Avenue. This route map almost looks like the parade route from 1977 blocking off a couple of lanes on Highway 10 for the parade route. I rode my horse in the parade that year with a friend on a less broke horse and when we got to Highway 10 at 176A Street and the through cars in the adjacent lanes her horse turned around on her. I managed to grab her horse and ponied it along until we got to 176th Street and no more vehicle traffic and she was OK again. Perhaps there are so many entries this year that the extra route is needed. http://www.cloverdalerodeo.com/pdf/Rodeo-Parade-2009.pdf

May 15 - 18 the Cloverdale Country Fair and Rodeo. The fairgrounds open on Friday May 15 at 4pm and closes at midnight. Saturday May 16 11am to 1am, Sunday May 17 11am to midnight, and Monday May 18 11am to 5pm. Admission to the fairgrounds is $10. Yikes! It was free when I was a kid. However, you can save a couple of bucks by prepurchasing tickets at the Cloverdale, White Rock, Guildford, and Langley London Drugs for $8. The rodeo performances are on each day. This is an invitation only rodeo where the contestants compete for cash prizes. Cloverdale lost its pro rodeo tour rating when they decided to eliminate various events. For more information on the events and rodeo times see http://www.cloverdalerodeo.com

And that's pretty much it. The May long weekend events being the highlight. The Cloverdale Flea Market is on each Sunday at the fairgrounds, but cancelled on the rodeo weekend. Likewise there is no horse racing at Fraser Downs on that weekend.