UNBC Key To Wood Innovation Center

Tuesday, April 06, 2010 03:58 AM

Prince George, B.C. - The much promised Wood innovation Center is the corner stone of any major development in the Prince George downtown core.

The Province has had the Wood Innovation center as a line item in the budget for a number of sessions, and it has been talked about in the Speech from the Throne.

The Province would build the center, with the City Of Prince George providing the necessary land as a gift to the province.

It is known that the success of the center hinges on the development of a number of items, including a major tenant, UNBC. Discussions have been underway for some time to have UNBC set up a satellite engineering campus in the new facility. UNBC already has a foot print in the downtown, the old Bank of Montreal building on Third Avenue.

This new satellite campus wood house research into wood innovation, an Emily Carr facility for industrial design (not an Arts center) and would take up much of the space. Several other BC universities have been approached with a view to setting up a new Wood Innovation center to do research.

The hitch has been the tremendous cost to establish a satellite facility such as the one proposed.

UNBC has been under tremendous political pressure to move ahead with the project in spite of the additional cost that a satellite facility would incur by setting up downtown.

The hope is that other facilities such as Initiatives Prince George would also make its home in the new Center and other private companies would acquire space with a view to developing and improving their products.

The City was asked for a 30 year tax holiday for any new downtown development. The Wood Innovation Center would not fall under this request because both the Province and the City do not pay taxes. That request met with opposition and the proposal has not, to this point, received any serious traction.

The Province has been reluctant to get into any debate about the circumstances surrounding the sale of the PG Hotel and the manner in which it came about. The Province could request the City provide another site in the core, suitable for their needs .

Included in the original proposal floating around was the idea of building accommodation for students and alike on the adjacent property.

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Posted on Tuesday, April 06, 2010 03:58 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: He spoke on April 6 2010 9:33 AM

Hmm, sure was nice of good ole Dan donating 2.5 million dollars to the city. and not be able to collect taxes on it. There has to be more to this story.

Posted by: He spoke on April 6 2010 9:33 AM

To the Province, not the city.

Posted by: He spoke on April 6 2010 12:12 PM

I'm bit saying it is not a bad idea, to kick start the downtown. I am just wondering what the pay off is? It not easy to take about $80 of our annual tax bill from every home owner and just give it to the provincial government. There has to be something in which we get compensated somewhere.

Could the pay off been with the Boundary Road. I think the money was well in place before that.

River Road is mostly by the Feds.

Cop Shop, MMMMM maybe, we are gonna get something from the Province on this.

PAC, I sure hope we don't waste it on that project.

I think we are gonna get something down the line here,,, and Dan the Man, is gonna come out smelling like a rose.

Posted by: Palopu on April 6 2010 9:19 PM

We'll get something down the line alright, and its liable to be a huge stomach ache and a huge loss of taxpayers money. What else is new???

1.Undergraduate enrolments at UNBC were down by a total of 84 students as of March 31st. There is absolutely no reason to beleive that enrolments will increase over the next 10 years. Considering that UNBC funding is based on Full Time Equivelent Enrolments, then one could deduce that Government funding will remain static, or decline. This of course explains why UNBC is very concerned about the additional cost of a satelitte facility.

2. Building facilities for students to live downtown seems like a good idea, however if you consider that the facilities at the student dorms at the University are not fully occupied, then we could expect less people staying at those faciities, and again less revenue for UNBC.

3. Lets get real here. We are talking about Spruce, Pine trees and lumber. How much innovation do you think we will come up with. How much wood innovation has already taken place in Ontario, other parts of Canada, and the World. They have been working with wood in Europe for thousands of years. If we want to know anything maybe we should ask. This would save us millions.

4. This whole wood innovation project is another spend money, make work, and leave the building maintenance costs to the taxpayers, without any return on investment.