"decisions affecting the downtown will, in the final analysis, be made by the majority"

By the majority of what group?

As I see it, it is very simple. The City is trying to get the University to move part of their operations downtown. The University will need a lot of coaxing dollars to do that. In other words, to save the downtown of PG using UNBC as the big ticket item is going to come at the expense of some major opertions inefficiencies for a small university in a small town.

This is not large urban area Canada in case people in this community have not noticed that. UNBC is not a large campus that can afford to build space somewhere else where the space will be sitting empty far too often and too long since it does not go into the common pool.

The decision of where to locate will be made by those who will own and operate the facilities, whether it is UNBC, a new hotel, a new restaurant, a new higher desnity housing development, a new movie theatre ... whatever.

As far as the PG hotel site being too expensive, we must remember that the higher the cost of the improvement to be put on a property, the lower the relative cost of the property. Thus, it is the high cost properties which require high cost developments to be placed on them.

The low cost properties, on the other hand, are ideal for low rise buildings of lesser construction cost.

The City has been hanging its hat on a component of UNBC, whether just housing as with the previous mayor, or now with the wood tech centre, coming downtown for far too long. Bets are now finally emerging that such a notion is unrealistic in this community's environment and has been from the beginning.

What we need in this community is for people to realize that if one wants to build a community, the community has to sit down together, get rid of all the infighting, and be forthright with each other.

They say that the arts community has not gotten its slice of the pie because they are divided. In fact, it can now be seen that it is the entire community that is divided. That lack of getting along is coming at a time of virtual crisis, the time when normal communities work together to reach a common goal.

What is wrong with this picture? Do people not see that?!!

So, because there is a six minute commute between a downtown campus and the main campus it is seen as being 'majorly inefficient'? You can't walk from one end of UBC or UVIC that fast. (assuming that the city is providing express transit).

Has the province made an ironclad committment to build downtown?

The cheapest land for the wood tech centre, which I believe is supposed to be operated by UNBC, is at the University, not downtown. Not only that, but UNBC has had plans to eventually build a research park. What better way to start that by using the wood innovation centre? It is the natural spot. Downtown is a totally artificial forced location and will deny UNBC the opportunity to kick start a much larger facility that will benefit both UNBC and this community.

There are some things that belong downtown and there are other things that do not. The wood innovation centre is not something that belongs downtown in my opinion for some very good reasons.

There is too much time wasted on that Sesame Street game: "which of these things does not belong".

1. Personnel - security, reception, janatorial, building maintenance, etc. etc.

2. space - meeting rooms, classrooms, lecture halls, undergraduate labs (part of the proposed engineering school), lounges, food services, etc.

There are efficiencies of scale that come into play on larger facilities which have sub components that require similar spaces.

Anyone who has ever operated a larger facility, worked in one, or designed many, knows that.

Guess why they put the Cancer clinic at the hospital rather than starting a second intensive health care centre up at the Hart, for instance.

I tell you what. Schedule a weekly class calendar for 50 students who have 18 to 24 hours of classes and share a selection of 20 courses from which each takes a unique set of 4 to 6. Seven of those courses are presented downtown and the others are presented on main campus. The mode of transportation is a bus to which each student will have to go to commute. Due to the logistics, 6 minutes commute time is inadequate because buses cannot travel that fast, require people to get on and off, and one must allow for traffic tie ups. Classes start on time!

You will find that you have to make sure that classes cannot be scheduled back to back, but that an hour must be provided for the realities of the commute unless one schedules main campus classes on the hour and downtown classes on the half hour.

So, with that one hint that I just gave you, go ahead!

Then tell me who wastes the most time in moving from one class to another.

BTW, I went to UoT St George Campus and UVIc and even UBC are nothing compared to that. For anyone who has been to such campuses, they will know that most univeristy programs, except for the weirdest combination of general arts courses are centred around buildings that are located close to each other.

BTW, I just did a route calculation on google earth from the UNBC bus stop to the PG Hotel

8.6 km ... estimated commute time 14 minutes.

The 6 minutes would mean an average speed of jut over 50 km/h. Great if there is no traffic and there are no traffic signals.

It would help if you knew how to research your base data on which you make assumptions a bit better than that. A waste of time.

BTW, why would the City provide express transit? It is a UNBC problem. It is their students. It is their classes that students will be late for. Do you want a third party to get involved with this and have a bunch of people pointing fingers at each other for not being able to provide an effective service or not being able to schedule classes properly to accommodate a two campur situation.

We can't even get together to plan what we want for downtown and who is going to do what.

Where would students and faculty park downtown? They would have to pay for parking downtown on top of paying for parking at UNBC.

It's a great idea on paper, but common sense will prevail and the smart thing to do is build it on the UNBC campus.

My god gus, too much coffee this morning?
In PG “express transit” to UNBC is known as the #15. It is actually fairly efficient (if you choose where you live wisely). The students recently voted for a transit pass to be included with tuition so every UNBC student has one.
I can’t see UNBC splitting up courses that exist up the hill. The notion of having 3 classes up the hill and 2 downtown is silly (although I know a lot of people who have done it between CNC & UNBC). CNC announced a while ago that they are looking to expand the programs they offer. Is UNBC also looking to introduce new programs? If so, I could see separate programs having the ability to be linked with the Wood Innovation Centre. For example, the medical program at UNBC could have been located next to the hospital instead of on campus. If there are programs offered by UNBC or CNC that do not currently exist and that would fit with whatever they plan on putting in the Wood Innovation Centre, I think it would be a great mix/partnership and I think that is EXACTLY the sort of thing that should be located in a downtown.

Common sense will prevail!? Yeah - good lick with that.

Yes, I agree that it would be silly to split program classes between two campuses. That is why I wrote what I did about inefficiencies.

In case you did not know, it was made public on this site that the proposal is for UNBC to be getting a full engineering program of some sorts which would idealy use the wood innovation centre as part of its facility.

I would think that exactly how that would work is being worked out right now. I also assume that part of the discussion is how various physical separations would influence the operational logistics as well as operational costs.

I would also think that if the City were not crying to get the facility downtown, and the province were not backing them on that, a downtown location would not even be a discussion point.

In other words, I doubt anyone at the University or any one of their consultants who is helping them to define an engineering program would have said that a must for the program to succeed is for the facility to be located in downtown PG.

That, to me, is the real test of where the facility belongs. The University needs to be first and foremost the supporter of the University. It is up to the City to support the downtown. They have not done that. Now they are burdening UNBC with their failure of keeping head offices (BoM), retail (The Brick), hotels (Sandman, Sheraton), Commercial art galleries (Direct Art) from stayng in downtown or moving into downtown.

Lets at least get that old hotel ripped down and paved into a parking lot.! It is going to be a vacant lot for some time.

The city could have an outfit like O'Brien training teach their students how to demolish a building with heavy equipment. Cost to taxpayers will be a lot less than other contractors would charge.

Oh right, and have the walls collapse like they did in the GVRD recently.

Paving the area would be a waste of oil products.

Put in some solid panels to walk through and get people to submit their art work that they can then paint onto the panels ...... let's do something creative.

Of course, we could also put up a little shack and a sign saying:

Parking $3/hour or $20 all day, and then hand out free parking tokens to the many businesses around, except the RAMADA since they already have parking in the parkade.

Oh, wait. I forgot! All the businesses around are being torn down .....

Dig a big hole and call it a community fishing pond... then we will all know what the water level really is and never question not building a wood innovation center on the site ever again.