New DBIA Lots Of Talk Little Understanding

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 03:45 AM

New DBIA President Hugh Nicholson, says his group will be taking a new direction. He has been quoted as saying "Are we going to be a downtown development corporation? No I don’t think that’s what we're after, but we certainly aren’t going to be just hanging flower baskets."

Before the Board, which is the group that elected Nicholson along with Vice President Gordon Langer and Dan McLaren as Treasurer, makes suggestions as to what direction the DBIA takes, it might want to read the terms of reference laid out by the Ministry of Community and Rural Development, as to what a DBIA can and cannot do. It appears they have not.

The Act Reads,” The board is not allowed to incur debt, own real property or undertake capital works on private land.”

As for the flower baskets:

A City Council can only grant money to a BIA that has as one of its aims, the planning and implementation of a business promotion scheme. The scheme must include one or more of the following:

carrying out studies or making reports respecting on or more areas in the municipality where business or commerce is carried out;
improving, beautifying or maintaining streets, sidewalks or municipal-owned land, buildings or other structure in one or more business improvement areas;
the removal of graffiti from buildings and other structures in one or more business improvement areas;
conserving heritage property in one or more business improvement areas; and
encouraging business in one or more business improvement areas

The new DBIA, under the new President, has taken on the position, that any of the information flowing from the DBIA should come through his paper and if anyone else wants to know what is going on, it is incumbent upon them to just read what he produces.

While Kirk Gable has come under fire for many years for his involvement in the DBIA there can be no doubt that he had the down town uppermost in his mind. The resignations of Gable, Blair Moffat, and Paul Williams from the board of the DBIA removes the only people who did not appear on the wish list prepared by Dan McLaren as to who he would like to see on the Board. Interestingly enough it is this new group that took over after Gable and Moffat had taken the heat for the establishment of the DBIA, simply bringing along their slate and slipping into the chair.

City Council has the final say when the budget from the DBIA is presented to them for consideration, the fact that the new DBIA even toyed with the idea of looking at land purchases and development shows their complete lack of knowledge of what they think they can do. This is a case of the new DBIA having its mouth in gear while its mind is in neutral.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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Posted on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 03:45 AM in Views by Ben Meisner

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Comments

Posted by: MiddleGround on May 25 2010 6:34 AM

The Gateway BIA do a great job. The Downtown BIA may want to look at the success they have had.

Posted by: gus on May 25 2010 7:57 AM

"carrying out studies or making reports respecting on or more areas in the municipality where business or commerce is carried out"

That was the key thing that the previous group did when they rode on the coat tails of a year around farmer's market and got Urbanics to prepare a study of how the downtown might look with that as a centre piece. Along with that, as I recall, came the notion that the downtown should be the place for entertainment.

Rember, this was all because the City had no real plan for the downtown other than its zoning plan.

Over the 8 or so years following that, the then DBIA was unable to move the City to promote a farmer's market, not even from the point of view of buying some property and deciding whether they might be part of the consortium as some other such markets are. And this is even after the NDI came about to possibly provide some possible assistence.

So now we have a new group who are doing just as much of the "lots of talk" as the other group. They are just getting started. In fact, as I now just learned from this report, they do not even have a workplan to go to Council.

Well, it looks that that might just be what they are working on today and tomorrow. They need input from their Board, bring in some people to help them deal with that, and then go into a public session tomorrow from the looks of it.

So far, other than the controversy because of who is involved this time around, they seem to be following a similar path as the previous group. Just that we have some new people hat the helm who have some differnt ideas about how to get something kick started.

And God only knows, we need something kick started downtown.