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For the past ninety years the PNE site, including the racetrack, has
grown to occupy 114 acres of the 160 acres that constitutes Hastings
Park. In 1910, the park, some miles from the population center of
Vancouver, surrounded by bush, seemed an ideal location. Since then a
stable, mainly residential community has grown up around the park.
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Within that community, the impact of the annual fair and it's attendant
hordes of visitors has been tolerated by local residents. However, in
the mid nineties there arose a groundswell of support for a plan that
would see the PNE lease discontinued and the park reclaimed as
greenspace for the benefit of the surrounding community.
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By 1996 a move seemed inevitable. The PNE corporation had begun it's
search in earnest for a new home, and landscape architects had begun to
draw up plans to redevelop the park for the people. It was this sense of imminent change, a venerable Vancouver institution
about to dissolve and reinvent itself, which attracted my attention.
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