Uptown

Uptown sits on the west side of New Westminster, centred on the intersection locals call "Six and Six" — where Sixth Street meets Sixth Avenue. The neighbourhood stretches roughly from the Burnaby boundary in the west to the slopes above downtown New Westminster in the east, with Eighth Avenue and Belmont Street forming much of its residential spine. It covers about 1.5 square kilometres of dense, walkable streets where commercial activity, heritage homes, and mid-rise apartments share the same blocks.

The people who live here are a genuine mix. Long-time New Westminster residents who have held onto character homes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues share the area with renters in the apartment buildings that line the commercial corridor, and with families who chose Uptown specifically for its school catchments and the ability to walk to almost everything. University students, downsizers, and young professionals working in Metro Vancouver round out the picture.

What gives Uptown its distinctive character is the density of daily life packed into a small footprint. Sixth Street is one of the few traditional main streets left in the region that still functions as a true neighbourhood commercial corridor — independent restaurants, banks, bakeries, a public library branch, and the enclosed Royal City Centre mall all within a few blocks of each other. Step a block off the corridor in either direction and you're suddenly on a quiet residential street with mature trees and Edwardian-era houses. The 2024 opening of the təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre added a major civic anchor to the area's east edge, replacing two aging facilities with one combined hub. For people who want the rhythm of a complete neighbourhood — where errands are done on foot and the recreation centre is a five-minute walk — Uptown delivers in a way few parts of Metro Vancouver still do.

Uptown is one of the most walkable neighbourhoods in New Westminster, with a Walk Score of 85. Daily errands — groceries, the pharmacy, the library, a coffee shop, a sit-down dinner — can almost all be done on foot from anywhere inside the neighbourhood. The Sixth Street corridor is the spine of that walkability, and the side streets feeding into it are gridded, gently sloped in most sections, and lined with sidewalks.

Transit access is solid, with a transit score of 65. The closest SkyTrain stop is 22nd Street Station on the Expo Line, sitting just across the Burnaby boundary on Stewardson Way — roughly a 10 to 15 minute walk west from the centre of Uptown. From there, downtown Vancouver is reachable in about 25 minutes, and Surrey is a similar ride in the other direction. For shorter trips, the 106 and 155 buses run frequently along Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue, connecting Uptown to Edmonds Station, Metrotown, and the downtown New Westminster waterfront without needing to walk to the SkyTrain.

Cycling is reasonable for confident riders, with a bike score around 65. Sixth Street itself is busy, but quieter parallel streets — particularly through the residential blocks on Seventh and Eighth Avenues — work well for getting east-west across the neighbourhood. The wider New Westminster bike network connects Uptown to the Central Valley Greenway and down to the Quayside waterfront, though the hills on the descent into downtown are a factor worth knowing about.

For drivers, Uptown's location is genuinely central. Highway 1 is a short drive north via Tenth Avenue and Canada Way. Downtown Vancouver is typically 25 to 35 minutes outside of peak hours, and the Pattullo and Alex Fraser Bridges put Surrey and Delta within easy reach. Street parking is metered along the Sixth Street commercial strip and free on most residential side streets, though competition can be tight near the busiest blocks.

Uptown falls within School District 40 (New Westminster), and the neighbourhood is one of the reasons many families choose this part of the city. Three elementary catchments overlap the area: Lord Kelvin Elementary, F.W. Howay Elementary, and Connaught Heights Elementary, depending on the specific block. Each draws from a slightly different slice of Uptown and the surrounding streets, and all three are within walking or short driving distance for most families in the neighbourhood.

For secondary, the catchment school is New Westminster Secondary School — the city's single comprehensive high school, which serves the entire municipality from a campus a short distance east of Uptown. The school offers a broad range of academic, arts, and athletics programs along with French immersion and various specialty streams. Because it pulls from the whole city, students from Uptown attend alongside peers from Queensborough, Sapperton, the West End, and downtown, which gives the school a notably diverse student body.

Beyond the public catchment schools, families in Uptown have access to early-learning programs, daycares, and preschools clustered around the commercial corridor and the community centre. The new təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre runs swim lessons, after-school programs, and youth drop-ins that complement the school day, and the New Westminster Public Library's main branch at 716 Sixth Avenue hosts storytimes, homework help, and family events throughout the year.

The neighbourhood itself is genuinely family-friendly in the everyday sense — sidewalks are wide, the street grid is intuitive for kids learning to walk to school, Moody Park anchors the western edge with playgrounds and open space, and the commercial corridor means parents can run errands without crossing major arterials. The mix of school options, recreation facilities, and walkable amenities within a tight footprint is one of Uptown's most consistent draws for families with school-aged children.

Sixth Street is the commercial heart of Uptown and one of the most complete neighbourhood retail corridors in New Westminster. The strip runs north-south through the centre of the neighbourhood and packs an unusual range of services into a walkable stretch: independent restaurants, cafés, bakeries, banks, dental and medical clinics, hair salons, dollar stores, specialty grocers, and the kinds of small businesses that have served the area for decades alongside newer arrivals.

Royal City Centre, the enclosed shopping mall at the Six and Six intersection, acts as the indoor anchor for the corridor. It houses a major grocery store, drugstore, fitness facility, and a mix of national and local retailers, giving residents a one-stop option for the basics regardless of the weather. Around the mall, additional grocery options — including international and specialty food stores — fill in the gaps along Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.

The main branch of the New Westminster Public Library at 716 Sixth Avenue is a few minutes' walk from the mall and functions as a genuine community hub, with study spaces, public computers, programs for every age group, and a steady flow of foot traffic throughout the day. Civic services, including City Hall, sit a short distance east of Uptown.

Healthcare access is strong. Royal Columbian Hospital — one of the region's major acute-care facilities — is a short drive or transit ride east in Sapperton, and walk-in clinics, pharmacies, optometrists, and dental offices are scattered throughout the Sixth Street corridor. For day-to-day food and dining, the restaurant scene leans practical and diverse: family-run diners, sushi spots, pho restaurants, pizza counters, Indian and Filipino eateries, and a growing handful of newer cafés and brunch spots. It's a corridor that prioritizes everyday usefulness over destination dining, which is exactly what makes it work as a neighbourhood main street.

Moody Park is the recreational centrepiece of Uptown's west side and the neighbourhood's largest green space. It includes an outdoor seasonal pool, tennis courts, lawn bowling greens, sports fields, playgrounds, and a network of pathways through mature trees. The park hosts seasonal events through the warmer months — including the long-running Uptown Live street festival and various community gatherings — and on any given summer evening it's busy with families, dog walkers, pickup sports, and picnickers.

The biggest recent change to Uptown's recreation landscape is the təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre at 65 East Sixth Avenue, which opened in 2024. The facility replaced the former Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre with a single combined building that houses a competition-length pool, leisure pool with slides and play features, hot tub, sauna, fitness centre, gymnasium, multipurpose rooms, and a childminding space. For a neighbourhood where many residents live in apartments without private outdoor space or amenities, the new centre functions as an everyday extension of home.

Beyond the two anchors, Uptown is dotted with smaller pocket parks and playgrounds tucked into residential blocks, and the neighbourhood's grid makes it easy to string together a walking or running loop. Hume Park and Glenbrook Ravine are within a short cycle to the east, and the Central Valley Greenway runs along the northern edge of the city for longer cycling outings.

For cultural and civic recreation, the New Westminster Public Library hosts a steady program of author readings, workshops, and community events, and the Massey Theatre — adjacent to New Westminster Secondary — stages concerts, dance recitals, and touring productions throughout the year. Sixth Street itself, with its independent shops and seasonal sidewalk programming, doubles as informal recreation: a place to wander, browse, and run into neighbours, which is part of what gives Uptown its everyday liveliness.

Uptown's social fabric reflects its built form: a dense, mixed-tenure neighbourhood where apartment renters, homeowners in heritage houses, students, families, and longtime residents share the same sidewalks and businesses. Households cover a wide age range, with a noticeable mix of young families drawn by the school catchments, working-age renters in the mid-rise apartments along the corridor, and long-established residents in the character homes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues. It's a neighbourhood where you'll see strollers, students, and retirees on the same block.

The history of Uptown is tied to New Westminster's broader story as the original capital of British Columbia and the oldest incorporated city in western Canada. As the downtown waterfront industrial economy evolved through the twentieth century, the commercial centre of gravity shifted up the hill, and Sixth Street emerged as the city's primary retail high street. Many of the buildings along the corridor and on the surrounding residential blocks date to the early twentieth century, and the heritage homes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues — some of which fall within the city's heritage protection programs — give the area a visible sense of continuity with that earlier era.

Community life plays out in predictable, comfortable ways. Moody Park hosts seasonal festivals including the Uptown Live music event. The təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre has quickly become a social anchor, with drop-in programs, fitness classes, and family swims pulling steady traffic. The library runs regular programming for all ages, and the Sixth Street merchants association organizes seasonal sidewalk events that turn the corridor into a low-key street fair.

What makes Uptown distinctive socially is the everyday density of contact — at the coffee shop, at the mall, at the pool, on the bus. It's a neighbourhood where you tend to see the same faces, where small businesses recognize their regulars, and where the scale of life is genuinely human. For people who want that texture of community without leaving the conveniences of an urban setting, Uptown is one of the most consistent places to find it in Metro Vancouver.