Does this mean we will be leaving the concept of stupid growth on the ground behind us?

2035 I'll be 65 years old by then and if PG remains a have not city with no jobs or barley any. There won't be anyone here to care if there is a downtown.

Wow, 25 years from now, lets see I will be 90 years old by then. I have been waiting for the past 40 years to have something done down town Prince George. Nothing but studies. who can predict what will occur 25 years down the road. Wishful thinking, can we try for something sooner?

2035, eh? Don't rush it, please! Take your time: haste makes waste!

I remember working on planning for PG 25 years down the road in the mid 1970s. That was when it was still growing at a 4% or so per year pace. A 3% growth was thought to be reasonable by all the planners in those days, so that a population of about 140,000 was projected by 2000.

That projection ended up being relatively accurate for Kelowna and parts of the GVRD. PG ended up being no more than 1%.

The current plan actually projects a growth rate of 0.19%. With a 2008 population of 75,026, the 2035 population is projected at 79,540. With that, the suburbs will be emptied out to put people into apartments downtown.

Planners will be planners whether 1975 or 2009.

http://www.sgog.bc.ca/uplo/PG_development_opps_Altus.pdf

Waste of time and money and in the end there will be nothing.

The so called "Smart Growth" plan is actually pretty dumb. The idea of replacing the Days Inn and the new Medical Health Centre with a downtown lake will be very expensive. Who will be buying the property required for the lake? The taxpayers? Why destroy perfectly good buildings to create a downtown lake? How many buildings will be destoyed and how much land will be required for the downtown lake. A quick estimation of the value of land and buildings to be destroyed is over $100 million. Where is the business case for this stupidity?

The problem with the plan, and with previous downtown plans, is that the planning vision usually comes with an assumption that there will be an unlimited supply of tax dollars to pay for the dream.

I agree with the previous comments that the so called "Smart Growth" plan represents a total waste of money. There is absolutely no business case for the outrageous expenditures that are proposed.

Unfortunately, the Smart Growth plan is yet another flawed vision that is doomed to fail.

You are all sitting there with blinders on and narrowminded thinking. Thank god you aren't running this city or it would be nothing but one big bingo parlor!

[urlhttp://ca.news.finance.yahoo.com/s/14092009/2/biz-finance-majority-canadian-employees-living-paycheque-paycheque-survey-shows.html[/url]

Mayor and Council better keep the spending within reason!

This report says that nearly 60% of Canadians are now living paycheque to paycheque.

That is the same way the City is living .... tax income to tax imcome ...

I find it interesting that the City can supposedly find a $500,000 per year saving if they handle their debts in a different fashion. If they could have done this some time ago and it has been missed all along, I would like to know how many years we missed doing this.

In addition, the person who found the windfall should be given a 2 week paid vacation to some warmer climate this winter.

Greta, there is narrow minded thinking and then there is pie in the sky thinking. I have found that it is important in life to distinguish between the two.

Those who dream, enjoy their lives of dreams and leave nothing to share for others.

Those who plan things that can be accomplished and know how to implement them generally accomplish them and leave things for others to enjoy as well.

As Douglas Adams wrote: "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

And George Santayana:"The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it."

Water, and how we handle it.

The flooding of the mouth of the Nechako .... we try to keep the water out of the areas where water wants to be by artificial meansd to conquer nature.

The pond and canal in the middle of the City ... if we cannot bring the City to the water, we will bring the water to the City by conquering nature.

And this from a smart growth plan that supposedly has the environment in mind by working with nature instead of against nature.

Greta's meanderings are somewhat niave, and yet she continues to dream without any care for the costs of this so called "smart growth".

Beware of the planners!

A lake in the city??? Hmmm Just stop filling the potholes and you'll have a lake in no time.

Someone had to bring it up. Pothole 250

You've got to start somewhere and having a dream just isn't that bad a thing. Anything worthwhile costs.

Greta, I agree that one has to start somehwere and that a dream is not that bad a place to start.

All I am saying is that it takes more than a dream. It takes people who can make those dreams a reality.

I posted the dream from another generation thst was created in 1966 for the same piece of ground. That dream was not realized likely because people were unable to understand the dream, did not know how to carry it out, and possbily did not even want to carry it out.

That is the reason I say that it takes considerably more than a dream.

My experience tells me that dreamers are a dime a dozen.

People with the know how to carry a dream out, on the other hand, are rare. Not only that, but those who recognize those talents and help those people to put those talents to work are even rarer.

Here is the front page of the Citizen from Jan 1967
http://content.lib.sfu.ca/cgi-bin/getimage.exe?CISOROOT=/pgpl&CISOPTR=116913&DMWIDTH=1500&DMHEIGHT=2000&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=%20centrum&REC=1&DMTHUMB=1&DMROTATE=0&DMSCALE=100

Then we have the more detailed report from page 4 of the paper.
http://content.lib.sfu.ca/cgi-bin/getimage.exe?CISOROOT=/pgpl&CISOPTR=116916&DMWIDTH=1500&DMHEIGHT=1600&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=%20centrum&REC=1&DMTHUMB=1&DMROTATE=0&DMSCALE=100

Tell me Greta, now that some of us have been given a new dream, and you appear to be one to like it, how do suggest we make sure that it does not end up the same way as the 1966 dream?