No more homeless in Portland? Well, what are we waiting for. Find the money somewhere. I know. I have some left over after I have paid my taxes and bought some food. Come and take it.

"That’s where the public meeting plays an important role, but the attendance at the first session, held last night at the Civic Centre, would suggest it is not a priority with the public at large."

Plenty of time for outrage after the facility is built.

This is one case where "Build it and they will come" holds true.

The problem with these types of ventures is that the Feds and the Province come in and give money for the contruction in exchange for the photo op and then leave maintenance to the locals.

Foothills Blvd was built by the province and then given to the city. Now its a nice wide road with a goat trail quality surface as the city cannot afford the upkeep. Same for university way.

Huge capital projects keep politicians politicking while the taxpayer is cripplied with the huge legacy costs.

Sure is bright at the end of that pipe.

OK, we give them the land to build it, we provide the utility services to them, waive the Development cost charges. No money goes into it.

Then that is the end of the free ride. They pay taxes, utility bills and everything else. No free rides, there dream, we help where we can and thats it.

Impressive building plan. Hope it gets built.

Keep building these things and we will all be living in one...

Health and Wellness Centre.

Here is one in Canmore:
http://canmorewellnesscentre.com/services.htm

Services they provide:
Acupuncture
Life Coaching
Colon Hydrotherapy
Plant Spirit Medicine
Detox Acupuncture
Computerized Wellness Assessment & Therapy
Hypnosis, Reiki
Bio-Terrain Nutritional Testing
Live Blood Cell Analysis
Medicine Walks
Psychotherapy
Breast Helath Monitoring
Nutrition
Biological Dentistry
Meditation Instruction
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Kirlian Photography
Polysans Nutritional Assessment
Massage
Far Infrared Sauna

Based on that description it appears that the term "Wellness Centre" needs a bit more of a descriptor attached to it as to exactly who the clients for the wellness centre will be and what services are offered.

Isn't cloaking the proposed Centre with a pretty image of housing false advertising?

I think a Canmore type of "wellness centre" could be set up on Tabor Lake or some such area outside of the City along with hotel rooms above. The image above could be applied for that as well.

Locals as well as tourists could use it for wellness retreats.

Georgian Health & Wellness Centrehttp://www.georgianhealthandwellness.com/about.htm

Then there is the detox variety of Health and Wellness Centre:
http://www.healingisajourney.com

Then there is the physiotherapy type of Health and Wellness Centre.
http://www.portlandcentre.ca/Programs/a~1259/article.html
We already have one of those downtown.

I'm assuming Gus's post was largely sarcastic. If so, it was a very good one.

I wish the media would calling this what it is... a homeless shelter combined with a drug treatment centre. Currently they're making it sound like a spa and relaxation centre.

What happened to the Cancer Centre we were to get? I hope that this building is going to be what Wolfie says it is and not what Gus suggests. :}

Good Grief, Clearly not many posters bothered to attend the session last night.

It is not a homeless shelter, or a drug treatment center or a detox centre. it is a culmination of various service providers in one central location with transitional\low income housing attached. It is intended to be one central location where people can go to access services that are currently spread all over downtown. Homeless people and drug addicts are not the only people that access these services, they are just a small part of the clientelle.

It is not a question of whether or not we need such a facility, it is a question of where do you put it so that people that need the services can access it.

Please people, try attending an information session or two and find out what a project is all about before you decide that you are against it.

Contribute to the solution instead of contributing to the problem.

The cancer centre is going ahead, sometime.
I would think that release of the provincial funding would be carefully timed in order to gain the most political capital for the Gordo.
It will be a design build, or public private partnership, you know, the arrangement that excludes most general contractors from participating because they can't afford to play at that level. This leaves the field open to a select few general contractors who have deep pockets, they in turn only hire the subcontractors who will play along with their flexible rulebook, thus excluding most of the other eligible subcontractors. This system is flawed, the taxpayer ends up paying more for the public facility than if it had been tendered in the usual fashion.
The location won't change, it will be on Alward Street, pretty much on top of the existing park and playground.
metalman.

"Good Grief, Clearly not many posters bothered to attend the session last night.

It is not a homeless shelter, or a drug treatment center or a detox centre."

Right. It's all of the above.

I'm not saying we don't need these things, but let's just call a spade a spade.

Canmorewellnesscentre? Hmmm? It says it has "bio-terrain nutritional testing". My guess is that that is where someone snacks in a 4X4 while it is moving to see if the passenger and driver can keep their non-nutritional snacks in their stomachs. Correct me if I'm wrong.

As per the Citizen today:

According to Murray Krause, Central Interior Native Health Society executive director: "The centre will centralize a handful of downtown social services into a single location, (it) is aimed at low income people with addiction and mental health issues, not criminals."

Although I didn't attend the information session, this seems pretty straightforward to me.

If it helps to consolodate existing services and as a result frees up land in the downtown to be developed for other needs, I think it's likely beneficial. Part of the exisiting problem with the current downtown is the complete patchwork of services and businesses spread all over the place. If we could develop some actual "clusters" or "zones" of more similar services, I think it would help improve the downtown.

The fact remains that as a large service centre, we have to deal with the social issues/needs that will be present in our community just due to our size. If we can do it in a proactive manner which results in other benefits to the city, I think that's better than just sticking our heads in the sand and hoping that they go away, because they won't.

Streetwise2 ... read the article in the Citizen. The headline is "wellness Centre draws flak". You were there. Do you think that is a fair comment? If not, why not?

I happen to share the opinion by an observer that the centre could go on the east side of Queensway. Councillor Krause states that it should not be put where shopping is located. Where exactly is that?

Since there is little of that now, we must also assume the reverse to be true. Whereever those services are to be located, shopping is not likely to locate alongside them or accross the street.

Those words are comng from Krause, not from Moffat or others in the downtown.

The planner does not want anything on the other side of Queensway for one simple reason. He does not want to "expand" the area of "downtown". He wants new buildings "downtown" no matter what the use. The words reportedly used, however, were that the land-use impacts - noise, vibration, fumes, odour - can sometimes make residential challenging to co-locate.

The industrial section on the east of the Queensway have the same odours from mills as the sections to west of Queensway. The noise from night-time street activities is greater on the west than the east. The noise from emergency vehicles is closer on the west than the east. The public safety issues are worse on the west than the east.

Old industrial areas in larger communities are the areas which have interesting mixes of housing, offices shops, etc. and are the areas which typically transition from run down industrial section to "funky" places to eventually high end residential and shopping areas.

Some BC examples on a much larger scale? New Westmninster Boardwalk condo housing, marketplace, hotel; Yaletown in Vancouver; the so called "cultural district" in Kelowna which repalced its East Queensway equivalent.

I attended the meeting last night. Good thing more people did not attend as there was not a whole lot of places to sit and at 6 o'clock most people are still in transit. My take on it was that we are going to get it wether we want it or not. It's Murry Krause's passion and he gets well paid for his passion. He should be asking all the people of P.G. if its what we want as he represents us as well as Native Health. There could end up being a conflict of interest here. None of the media has done a very good job of reporting on this Issue, it just seems to be about Murry Krause and his dream. We do not live in Portland U.S.A. and our City is being distroyed. We need to do something but not bring in more problems. I do not agree with it and do not want my tax dollars spent this way. As for a place to put it all together why not use the HUGE Native Friendship Center?? They rent out space. In my view that would be the perfect spot .

I read the article in the Citizen and yes I was there. I don't think that the headline clearly expressed what actually took place.

Yes, concerns were expressed but they are concerns that people have about downtown as it is right now, not with the proposed center. The Center may be an opportunity to make an improvement and it was an attempt to get public input and hear other peoples ideas at how to address and resolve the issues with downtown. The services that would be provided by the proposed centre all already downtown, they are just scatter all around shopping blocks.

The center is an idea at this point. No property has been bought, no contracts are signed and no one has been hired and no money has been spent.

I applaud the organizers for looking for public input, I am just disappointed that with all the people complaining there was such a small turnout to share their thoughts.

We can complain about our downtown until we are blue in the face and nothing will change until the citizen of this city step up to the plate and start offering reasonable solutions.

"I applaud the organizers for looking for public input, I am just disappointed that with all the people complaining there was such a small turnout to share their thoughts."

Do you really think that I would not have spoken up at the meeting and that I would not have said the things I said on here?

In fact, my voice would simply have been taken as another negative voice. It has been my experience that those people who present typically have a closed mind rather than an open mind. In fact, the notion of having a public meeting is part of the list on the checklist that they check off. It is called public consultation.

There is no checkbox, however, for the quality of the public consultation. When people leave the meeting, what is the feedback? When someone says they will look at your idea and get back to you, do they? That has not been my experience.

I applaud those people who continue to come to such meetings.

I mean, look at people like the Moffat family. They are a family who have been in this community and have given to it all their lives. They have decided they want to stay in the store downtown. They could have taken the chance to set up a Home Hardware store in a box store location in the sprawlsville part of town. They have not. Are they listened to? Unless they are elected as mayor, no!

Do you think that the Moffats offer reasonable solutions? Do you think that Ted represents a faction of downtown that is a significant faction? A minority fashion? Or is he just one of those NIMBY people?

I have no business downtown. So this is not a NIMBY issue for me. However, the downtown does not only belong to those who live, work, or have businesses downtown. It is OUR backyard. We are ALL stakeholders (isn’t that a wonderful meaningless word?) in OUR downtown.

We had a smart growth on the ground process that everyone at City Hall is now bowing to because it had a community participatory component to it. Did it address this issue? No! Otherwise we would have some idea of where it should be.

I do not know where it should be.

How do we resolve it? Get those people involved who are on the several sides of the issues. Get Petra from the Bakery on George involved. Get the B&B Music owner involved. Get Sam from the Ramada involved. Get the Moffats involved. Get Dungate involved. Get Hillhouse from Majestic Management Involved. Get Coole from the PG Hotel involved. Get Ric from Rics Grill involved.

They are the real owners of the everyday, on the ground problems. Some of them are considered to be the creators of the problem. They especially need to be involved.

Waiting to see who shows up at a public meeting is the lazy person’s approach. The people in charge of the process know these people, they know the problems. Are they engaging these people? When will we hear about that engagement or non-engagement?

"As for a place to put it all together why not use the HUGE Native Friendship Center??"

Thank you for that suggestion. I think it is worthwhile to not throw that out, but to put that into the mix and test it in a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis.

The building is in good structural shape. It could be upgraded quite easily to housing and the other services using the imagination of an architect. They could even bring wood into the mix in a two story "podium" with imaginative use of wood in an interior corridor that connects to the services, ahs south facing exposures, and even provides some outside spaces on the south side or the west part of the building.

Great idea, in my opinion!!!

Thanks GUS, I think the HUGE Native Friendship center is the pefect place.I think everybody would be happy with this spot. I do not think we should be spending more money and bringing in more people in with who knows what from who knows where. Who paid for Versa Designs for the drawings?? THIS IS A DONE DEAL.

If I might chime in here; The native friendship centre would seem to be an ideal location, and, if I am not mistaken, the lower roof and structure are capable of supporting additional stories, with 21st century seismic upgrades of course.
Of course if bitter is right, the deals have already been made....
metalman.

I like your thinking Bitter. Are you planning on running for office?

Prince George's seismic requirements have been downgraded to where they were previously. As long as the building meets those, which it should, it is okay. Otherwise, any upgrades would likely be minor.

It survived the earthquake of some 2 decades ago, as did all other buildings in PG.

If someone needs to put something on top of the original one storey law courts to the east of the building, even if it is not designed to take additional floors, it is relatively easy to add floors.

Is this dream gonna be built before or after our Performing Arts Centre?

Canadian, thanks for asking but I can't run for office I would give Murry Krause a nervous breakdown, he woulden't get his way with me.

I wonder why the Citizen or the Free Press has not printed a picture of this so called wellness center??