Bull doze the entire thing including city hall

Cough cough….junkies…cough cough… Sorry had a tickle in the back of my throat.

http://downtownpg.com/we-are-looking-for-your-input/ if you really want to help.

Grimfaus–yes! The tickle in my throat too. The downtown is in perpetual revitalize mode! And I have heard it said–a darn big fire would be the best thing to happen. Not going to though!

Thanks axman

Hey at least Mr. Holmes et. al. are deigning to ask P.G. citizens for an opinion. Has the city council ever done that?
metalman.

The City Council does not “do”. It makes decisions based on recommendations of staff, community based committees and reports of consultants.

Dr. Alex Michalos was the author of many PG quality of life surveys and analysis.

“ So we want to find out what people want as opposed to us trying to guess. Let’s give the people what they want.”

Great! Recommendations of community based committees and reports of consultants usually gather dust in binders on the top shelf, the one that can be reached only by ladder!

As for staff – they usually are inspired by the same.

I have NEVER seen a satisfaction survey mail-in form together with a request for personal feedback included with my tax bill.

That would be a start if THEY really wanted to know!

Not a big deal for people to do this survey and get their opinions on file.

Contrary to what some people believe, there are some positive aspects of downtown, such as the restaurants, and shopping.

In addition a hell of a lot of people work down there on a daily basis, and they make a big impact of the City.

So lets fill out the survey (hopefully on a positive note) and go from there.

Getting rid of pay parking would be a first step.

Shut the dbia down, it was wrong to impose a second tax on the businesses dowtown.
Whats it done so far? water flowers.
Also shut down initiatives pg.

I think a satifaction survey sent in with a bill would get biased answers.

Sorry, doing good surveys takes a bit more than asking some questions.

I read over the DBIA survey. Some major problems there as far as I am concerned. Not a wll done survey.

Example – guests could include children, just seniors, people with special interests … in other words the kind of places one would take on group to would be different from another group.

If you are waiting for perfection or anything close in this town, don’t hold your breath.

Downtown Prince George could become a nice place with a little effort from all concerned.

The thousands of people who attend the Farmers Market every Saturday should give you some idea of the potential.

Upgrades to roads and sidewalks, fix up or tear down the empty buildings. Move out some second hand stores and loan sharks, fix up the store fronts, so that people see a clean and appealing environment,walking police patrols, and Walla, things start to change.

Remember the old saying.

**The bar against all learning, and the one thing that will keep you in everlasting ignorance, is contempt prior to investigation**

Palopu: “Move out some second hand stores and loan sharks”

Move them where? All of the customers for those businesses are downtown. These businesses didn’t spring up in the locations they are by accident. Same with all the social service agencies.

The solution is not as simple as you propose. There are a lot of different factors that come into play. If fixing the downtown were that simple, we wouldn’t have been talking about it for the last 30 years or so.

That’s the point JohnnyBelt. There is a hell of a big difference between talking about a problem and doing something about it.

As we all know **Talk** is cheap. Action speaks louder than words.

Creatures of the night avoid light. So we need to shine some light on this problem, and get the Police to stay in the area, on foot patrol. Which they did for awhile, then they went to bikes, and then they disappeared.

The situation would be a lot worse without the social service agencies in the area, however Im sure there are solutions to that problem also.

The City just received $600,000.00 from the BC Government for traffic tickets issued by the RCMP in Prince George for the past 6 Months. Perhaps we should be using this money to solve the crime problems in targeted areas. Once it goes into general revenue, who the hell knows where it is spent.

“Move out the second hand stores”

I just returned from Whatcom County. Go to Lynden, Blaine, LaConner, Anacortes, Friday Harbor, Coupeville, etc. THAT is one of the things which makes those small communities interesting, their so-called “Antique stores”.

It would definitely be one of the things which would keep tourists here for another day.

It is all in the minds of people. That is the firt thing I would look for, the people’s mindsets.

I have come to the conclusion that the mindset of the people here with respect to community facilities is not conducive to improvement of the lot of the community.

All those places I have listed have been through a lot more than we have as a result of the recession. House prices have still not caught up and are about 1/3 of what they are on the north of the border.

But the downtown in ALL of those places are pelasant, clean, friendly, safe, and look like someone cares. On top of that there are not only stores with washrooms that are cleaner than those I would typically see here, but they also have public washrooms in every downtown that are impeccably clean, large, and very accessible.

There is most definitely pride of place there.

Oh, and there is no paid parking …… and there is plenty of parking, and parking spaces are wider than in Canada.

they have been revitalizing for years and nothing…give it up….the farmers market is good but last time I was there was put off by the number of people with their dogs and people trying to sell their food

What do people expect of downtown? THAT is the question which needs to be answered.

I expect downtown to be a people place, such as Robson in Vancouver, Commercial Drive, 4th, Broadway, Granville North and Granville south, etc. etc.

Where are our people places? It used to be 3rd when I arrived in 1973 as well as George.

We have no people places left. We have a sterile Civic Centre Plaza, a sterile City Hall plaza, a sterile Victoria Street and a one block piece 4th that has had some work done on it some 20 to 30 years ago and it has never blossomed in the last decade and is starting to wither away more and more. If one more retailer leaves there to be replaced by a consulting firm and it will have died.

I think the farmer’s market is n downhill slide. An effort was made to get the City involved with the farmer’s market from the point of view of building of sorts.

I think most successful farmer’s market’s from the point of view of bringing people downtown are a joint operation with the city and the vendors.

gus: “THAT is one of the things which makes those small communities interesting, their so-called “Antique stores”.

There’s a line between antiques and junk. Our second hand stores specialize in the latter.

“Where are our people places? It used to be 3rd when I arrived in 1973 as well as George.”

Probably Ft. George park is about as close as it gets. In terms of retail, you’ll find the crowds at the big box stores. Yup, the 70’s are gone.

I have traveled a lot and one thing all great cities have in common is great sight lines. They all have a focal point that draws in the curiosity of tourists and acts as a spring board to revitalization of an area.

I think in PG we can rule out the river (unless we got a national program to relocate the rail line to coincide with the pipeline proposals through Bear Lake Fort St James), and we can also rule out the central focus on 3rd and George as the focal point of revitalization. The 3rd and George focus is good money after bad and dooms any revitalization efforts (Gus).

Two things are apparent to me as strengths we have in our downtown.

Number one strength is the commercial district (which it should be called) between 6th and 2nd on Victoria street anchored by the two tallest buildings in the downtown representing the most defined commercial district outside of Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary in the west.

We should build on this area with the focus being on LNG companies that want to locate in Northern BC. If they want to run the nonsense of having a limited liability through subsidiary companies for their pipelines, then they should be forced to locate the head offices of those subsidiaries in Northern BC… and the office space that goes with that. This way the decision makers are local and not in Calgary with limited liability and limited local concern. At the same time the BMO and CIBC could be looked at to step up with buildings of their own in this defined area of business… as well as regional forest companies. If the area is defined and seen as the place to be to do business in the north, then the critical mass will move things forward. This is a clean part of downtown with no social service agencies and it has potential (it is not 3rd and George).

Number two is the hospitality district, which I think would include everything from the Civic Center to Victoria street over to 6th avenue. We see this with the planned 10 story hotel for the old police parking lot, as well as proximity to the commercial district and the tourism draws like the pool, library, art gallery, and civic plaza. This should be the focus of the entertainment and restaurants as well.

PG has huge sight line potential that is completely ignored. We live in a bowl that has huge potential for accessible parks and trails along its rim. Fifth avenue from the 5th avenue canyon on Cranbrook hill has a sight line that could one day rival Jasper Avenue in Edmonton if we had highrise residential development in the green space between Tabor and Ospika (ideal for underground parking), as well as future residential highrise development through to downtown along 5th avenue with commercial district highrises at the termination. 15th avenue has this potential for sight lines as well, but without the highrises of the downtown at its termination.

Building on sight lines… the courthouse would be a wonderful termination for a sight line from the police station and the commercial district. Problem is its cut off by decrepit buildings on the corner of 3rd and George… tear them down and realign the streets while we can. Cockeye 3rd so it aligns with the front of the courthouse with a traffic circle in front so traffic flows and doesn’t have to stop… cut through the Northwest corner of the Brink building and tear down the building across from that so that 3rd goes into a y formation connection 3rd and 4th to a 3rd lined up with the courthouse for sight lines to future commercial highrises in the commercial district.

This is all hypothetical conjecture for a mind exercise (would be great if it was real though), but the icing on the cake for redevelopment I think would be a pedestrian viaduct from 3rd and George that goes over most of the existing buildings with sight lines (ie courthouse and hospitality district at either end), and connects to the $1 airspace in the hospitality district. A wide pedestrian downtown square of sorts with security patrols and a 50-cent entrance fee at either end.

With a pedestrian viaduct build like an avenue for walking traffic… it could be a place for tourists and downtown workers to jog or have quick safe access to the courthouse, tourists could do the circle tour through the hospitality and commercial districts completed via the viaduct (a government street in Victoria of sorts but above ground), and most importantly new hotels and restaurants, and even shopping outlets could build ground level parking with frontage to the viaduct that has sight lines in both directions. The riff raft and cars stay below and the commercial pedestrian hub moves above ground. If the downtown social services are at street level no big deal and no hindrance on downtown redevelopment.

Downtown PG would then be safe, have iconic appeal, have tourism curiosity, and be defined for its strengths rather than its weaknesses. It would be a place investors would want to invest in to get their place at the table, rather than flee for the suburbs or avoiding PG all together.

First we would need growth and some faith. The growth should be tied to locating head offices of regional subsidiaries to PG in the commercial district, this enables the growth of the hospitality district, this brings people downtown without trying to force people to live downtown. We have resources in the north that worldwide investors want access to, so we should leverage that to build a city rather than an over grown temporary work camp.

IMHO

“I think a satifaction survey sent in with a bill would get biased answers.Sorry, doing good surveys takes a bit more than asking some questions.”

You hit the nail on the head! They are afraid of biased (honest?) answers so its safer to have no input from anyone lest their own biases take a beating.

I worked for a very large company and they put up suggestion boxes! There were so many great ideas and suggestions for improvements submitted by the folk on the floor that the engineering department was being called on the carpet for not coming up with some of these ideas first! Result: soon the suggestion boxes were removed.

“I expect downtown to be a people place”

EXACTLY! It’s not all about shopping or heading to work. The downtown should be a place for people to spend some free time, have a meal, take in the sights, socialize with people in the community, enjoy a street festival, have a night out with friends, etc.

I don’t know if it’s just a Western Canada thing, but to be perfectly honest, it’s as though people on that side of the country don’t really “celebrate” anything. It’s a pretty reclusive culture compared to the places I’ve seen out here. I make this observation for not just Ottawa (which is a very large city so some of the comparisons aren’t fair), but also for small and medium sized cities that I’ve visited in Ontario, Quebec, New York State, Vermont and New Hampshire.

It seems like every town out here has its own “thing”, its own identity and its own celebrations. Go into the “core” of these places at any time of the year and you’ll see people socializing, farmers selling their local goods, musicians performing, buskers entertaining people, festivals of all sorts, niche retail outlets, unique restaurants, places to celebrate the history of the city or area, etc. These cities are just cool places to be and places one can draw energy from.

I’d say that the cities and the people in them out this way are more social than what one would experience back home. I don’t know why that is and I’m not sure if it’s the culture that builds the city, or the city that helps influence the culture. It probably a bit of both. The only place I can think of on the Western side of the country that has this similar vibe is Whitehorse.

As the old saying goes “you don’t know what you don’t know”. If people don’t have any experiences to compare to PG, you really don’t know what you are missing!

NMG: “I don’t know if it’s just a Western Canada thing, but to be perfectly honest, it’s as though people on that side of the country don’t really “celebrate” anything. It’s a pretty reclusive culture compared to the places I’ve seen out here.”

You’re onto something. I think it’s just a boring culture in PG. People don’t tend to socialize outside of their little groups. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who are new to town.

Having said that, there are many towns in BC that are more culturally alive than PG, and you can sense it when you go to where people gather.

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