I agree with having housing in the downtown area. The people that live in the downtown core would keep the small shops and bistros/cafes/restarants open at the dinner hour and later....Picture coming out your door and walking to your destination or walking to work. Even a walk in the evening maybe just window browsing. These are the people that would keep our downtown alive....I do realize this is not a thing of the present but it can be for the future.

Yah, we want an active vibrant community down town, with no old businesses and no bitching.

Just imagine all the fuel/transportation costs for students living downtown. More buses and cars downtown. Housing downtown better suited for seniors or those that don't need to commute out of the area to do their business everyday.

Before you can get more people to live downtown you need to solve the problem of the bad air. I lived downtown for two years, but had to move out of the downtown core due to the air quality. Too many mornings waking up with my eyes burning from the smell.

Interesting. I hope this campaign is more than just the old talk we're been hearing for the past many years.

How do you get people to live downtown considering its current state? There's nothing to do (unless you like going to bars and nightclubs), and very few stores are open past 5:00 p.m.

Stores are not going to locate down there or extend their hours unless there are people to support it, and the people aren't going to live down there until there's more than drinking establishments open in the evenings.

Get rid of pawn shops and that will get rid of the riffraff's. Stop putting out these fires. Let'r burn down. Then turn up Bruce Springsteen... Rising.

Before you can get more people to live downtown you need to solve the problem of the bad air.

The only people that we seem to get to live down town are seniors developments. I guess the idea is "lets kill them sooner then later." We have all these baby boomers so we need more space.

What we realy need to do is to start looking for a good enviromental lawyer. That would be the fastest way to clean up down town.

Cheers

Well went to their web site to see their ideas...
web site is not even operational...
go figure...
now I am wondering about the validity of this all....

BCRacer: The website will be up in the next week. If you would like to be notified when it does go up, click on the e-mail link at the site and I will e-mail you when it's ready.

You can improve the infrastructure of the downtown all you want, but it will never be a welcome place to go to because of all the homeless, street people, ciminals, hookers that walk those streets....they aren't going anywhere....it is them that are the deterrents... if you can get rid of them you have a chance.

Hit that on the head there, Grandinquistor. Get rid of the riff raffs. that will improve downtown.

wasn't there a law about 40 years ago, if you did not have $10 in your pocket, you were considered a vagrant if you were causing a problem, and can be removed from the street. Up the ante to $30.00 and use this as a bargaining arm for the cops on the beat.

Barbaric, but it might work.

1980, Didn't Cadilac Fairview want to consolidate properties and make a huge downtown mall?

Wasn't the Moffats one of those people that brought it down, because they wanted too much money for the property. Now their siblings are worried.

Year 14 and still talking about downtown revitalisation....snore.
What ever became of all the previous housing slated for the downtown?All the glorious talk of condos,green spaces and a vibrant downtown..pipe dream.Take of the rosy glasses and look hard.

Blah blah blah, more studies, more consultants from out of town, more studies more consultants from out of town. Give it up! It's not worth it with the riff raff running around destroying everything others build up.

Maybe this young lady and her band of supporters can make a difference. All of you who are whining about the riffraff, sutdies, consultants, downtown revitalization, blah, blah, blah, etc are the very reason things haven't changed. Why don't you all get off your computers and lend your support instead of bitching. At least they are trying.

Mr. Trendy Trudeau got rid of the vagrancy law many years ago. His socialist logic was that it shouldn't be against the law to be poor. Good thinking, eh? And as an aside, after Joe Clark got kicked out after promising me a tax deductable mortgage, Trendy reasoned that a tax deductable mortgage would not be fair to renters. Glad he is gone, but he should have taken HIS national debt with him.

Attempts to clear the riff raff from the downtown area in hopes of revitalizing it were all flops. We got rid of the Mac and the Canada Hotels, pushed the hookers up Queensway and did away with all downtown liquor stores. Are things any better? Let's look at the absentee owners who want something for nothing, hence no changes. IMHO the failure of Cadilac Fairview's vision for downtown was the death knell for that area.

A journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step. To suggest that we cannot do anything about this problem is defeatist. Of course we can. It has been done in other Cities. Prince George spends all its time and effort in building non essential projects, we spend hundreds of millions on sports related facilities or other facilities and totally disregard the downtown area.

There are laws on the books to take care of those people who constantly break the law. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not ok to urinate, defecate, fornicate, and do drugs in public places. Nor is it ok to throw garbage etc on City streets, nor is it ok to be drunk and disorderly in a public place. The list goes on. We have the laws in place, what we do not have is the will to enforce the law, even though we have more police per capita than any other City of like size in Canada.

For those people in the downtown area that are legitimately sick, we need to provide them with medical care, for those that are not sick but constantly break the law, we need to incarcerate them for longer periods of time.

There is no doubt that these people are on the streets because the system doesnt want to deal with them. If we need more health care facilities, and more jails then we should build them. Seems we can spend 30 milllion on a new police station, perhaps we shud keep the old one for both incarceration and health care. Problem is the City has other plans for that building which I suspect is tearing it down to make way for a 25 million dollar Performing Arts Centre.

This City has a huge tax base and it seems the the City has been and is fully intent to spend every dollar,and borrow more rather than be fiscally responsible.

The people running the City and their associates have outlived their usefulness and need to be routed out of office before they do anymore damage. Those people who are elected will have to clean up the mess.

As an example. If someone were to go to the Playhouse Theatre and throw a rock through a window they would be charged with vandalism. The City on the other hand after taking over this building and doing a few million dollars in renovations, are planning to take a wrecking ball to the building and totally destroy it, and for some reason this is acceptable.

They basically do whatever they like from raising taxes to hiring relatives, and could care less about Joe Taxpayer.

Have a nice day.

For those who want to spread the word about the Downtown Community Rally, you can download a flyer from the website and share it (print, e-mail, post on bulletin board, etc).

You can also download it directly from this link:
http://downtownletsgetstarted.com/ccount/click.php?id=2

Whether or not it has been talked about or studied to death, the fact is that we do need to work on the downtown, and we need to do it now. There is no one solution, it's going to take a collaborative effort to deal with a mix of issues - housing, health care, addictions issues, homelessness, infrastructure, air quality, economic development, and so on. To take pot shots at those who want to take steps, even if they seem misguided or too small, is to accept that nothing can be done. It's a lot easier to change direction if something is moving than if it's parked!

The City has moved all the businesses upto Highway 16. Unless the populatopn increses exponentially the down town area will never be revived in our life time.

We could probably clean it up with bylaw enforcement. This would cost more money and the City does not have the balls to do it with the present people at City hall They have screwd up big time with their planing.

Cheers