Bulldoze it all down and start over. Wait a minute, that's not such a good idea. City will buy it all up at a huge cost and raise our taxes to cover it. Better yet, bulldoze city hall.

I love it......can't wait to see some more demolition!!!

So how much of a hit does this do to the average property tax bill. Everybody pays maybe an extra 2-3 dollars. If it means the downtown is starting to look better then I'm all for it.

I was just at the Ramada for a Christmas dinner on Friday. It's starting to look like a really nice hotel again. If they can clear out the crap across the street and reno the Keg I think we are starting to see something worth coming downtown for.

The Pine Centre Mall is also starting to look a lot better than in previous years. I think there are only 1-2 vacancies.

This town is starting to look a bit better. Throw a little Canada Winter Games money in the pot and I think you could say things are looking up.

I love empty lots ..... look like a very prosperous town with really cheap lots to buy ...... and knowing there is not enough money to buy them and build new buildings on them that need to take in $30 or so per square foot/annum for rental rates.

Very very smart .......

Why, pretty soon we will have parking lots like when BMO tore down buildings next to it to build a 5+ storey office building on 3rd .... and that was after CIBC did the same ... love the birches, but not much window shopping there .... Then there was the Europe ... smart idea ot make a pocket park out of that....

Soon we will have tons of parking and/or mini parks ....

Tourists will come in droves ... and citizens of PG will be lounging there rather than the masses that lounge on the park at City Hall and Civic Plaza ...

Can hardly get a spot on the ice in the winter there . .....

Let;s face it, people here are not interested in sidewalk cafes, outdoor skating rinks downtown, lawns at city halls, steps to sit on and people watch at the court house, neat little boutique stores.......

Why would anyone want to buy pet gifts and supplies downtown when they are cheaper at WalMart and Zellers and even Petland. And there is parking on top of that .....

So what is the magic formula to generate a mini Robson Street and Commercial Drive somehwere in this northern city's downtown?

I really not longer have an idea, especially since City Hall, the two merchant factions downtown and the Newspaper can't even get along.

High time for a truce, no more bikering, and work this out together so that everyone other than the Golf Course folks benefit.

One match and a bull dozer for all

Puff-Puff-Pass,I think they all need too sit down for a session or 2,Whats that smell.....

There must be something fishy about this? Who owns Commonwealth Campuses Inc?

Nothing fishy ... bunch of people who have gotten off their asses and are actually trying to do something about downtown. Obviously that does noy sit well with some others.

Interestingly the nobody seems to see anything wrong with the City spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to study the golf course lands to death so that a buyer does not have spend the money to make a proposal as every other person that wants to develop something has to do.

But, one group are the bad guys and the others are the good guys.

Then there is the province and the university who are playing games with their precious wood tech centre. Anyone who thinks that those studies don't cost the taxpayers any money needs to get some better sense of reality.

"Who owns Commonwealth Campuses Inc?"

Look at the full page ads supporting Kevin Falcon and you will likely find most of the owners on that list.

A line of D-9's on Victoria street from 1st.Ave to 15th.would go a long way to solving the downtown issues.
Start pushing, and keep going until you get to the river!

I have lived in Prince George for over three decades and in the area closing in on five decades.

The downtown of Prince George is slowly changing. and fortunately, now for the better. It is a long ways from what it should be, but we need to take baby steps first. The Plaza 400 was a good one, The Court house was another good step, now the old PG Hotel is our next step. We need to get the Performing arts Theatre down town.
not neccessarily the envisioned monster, but something that will draw a crowd of 3-4hundred people downtown two to three times a week.

He spoke.

What you and others seem to forget is that as far as retail goes, Plaza 400 was a miserable failure. It ended up being a hotel and an office building. That is not something that brings people downtown to shop.

The ground level retail fizzled totally with it sitting virtually empty for more than a year.

When the Holiday Inn was added it moved to the lower floor rather than the second floor reception with an escalator to the gorund floor, and a bridge over to the parkade. Nice big city thinking, but too advanced for PG, even now.

Then the temporary courts moved in while the new court house was being digested by the powers that be. That space is now ded store frontage used for dead file storage if you take a look in the windows. A total travesty!!!!

Most other cities the size of PG, such as Kamloops, have a viable downtown shopping area PLUS the suburban malls and box stores.

In fact, when you look closely at Kelowna, Kamloops, and Nanaimo, none have the amount of higher rise office buildings we do. Maybe that is what we should be pointing our fingers at rather than housing in the downtown, which none of those three cities have any more of than we do. In fact, none of them, other than Nanaimo with their Coast, have two larger hotels in their downtown.

We have "point" developments with a downtown area that is by far the largest of the four, with buildings spread over hell's half acre.

We may be about to continue that folly. A building every decade at the rate we are going. Remove 10 little ones, replace it with a larger single one with rental rates twice to three times the rate .... making it cheaper to locate back into suburban malls.

And the end result. The same as this entire city - a sprawling downtown with shops here and there and lots of space between so that people take cars to get from one shop to another.

It is totally unplanned!!!! We spend more time and money planning golf course lands that are not going to be occupied for at least 20 years than we have done for downtown over the last 30 years.

We have private money being spent by investors to plan downtown blocks while we have public money spent on golf course lands.

What is wrong with this picture???? Please, someone at City Hall tell me!!!

Hey Gus your all wound up this morning . We can talk about how our city is managed but until we get of our asses and go down to City Hall and tell them where we need to go nothing will change. Sure we can throw them out at the next election but that will not change until we have a realistic look at where the problem is and its not COUNCIL. They appear to be a rubber stamp for guys like Mr Bates. He needs to go.

Look at the crap he pulled off on Brian Skakun and Mr Wigwam should fallow Bates down the road.

Many of us still go down to the Northern and City Furniture and I have to agree since the ugly canopies went 3rd Avene looks great. Why not give George St the same treatment. Instead we end up with a lot of empty spaces. And parking lots. Bit until the population starts to grow those spaces will remain empty.

And how can the City grow when we are No 1 in crime rates and high taxes.
Cheers

Plaza 400, Court House, Wood Innovation Centre .....

The common element is government.

At least Plaza 400 tried to be a mixed use development. Ended up as a hotel and government offcies only, without the more important retail.

The court house is a wast of what should have been a prime corner for an office, hotel, retail complex with a nice multi storey glass enclosure facing east-south-west in a winter city to anchor the intersection of 3rd and George. We now have an edifice that tries to pretend it is the Capitol building of the pretend Northern Captial of BC. Looks far too much like a USA state capitol revival for my liking, all out of false stucco covered foam plastic.

There is no merit to the building as far as adding to the downtown to attract people to it.

In fact, PG is far too small a city to have the wonderful type of social interactions one gets at the Robson street interface of the BC Law courts with the back steps of the old courth house, now the VAG.

The only thing that brings that part of town to life is the seasonal and half day per week farmers' market. Move it somehwere else and that building will be totally dead other than 2 or 3 public demontrations a year.

The wood innovation centre, if built downtown, will likely be another dead building. If they try to add retail to it, it will sit just as empty as the Plaza's did 3 decades ago, and as empty as the storefronts in Nanaimo's convention centre that are asking rents that no business can afford in that location.

Those kind of building do nothing to make the downtown a drawing card for anyone other than the people who work there. 5pm, and the sidewalks get rolled up.

Good restaurants cannot survive on a lunch hour crowd 5 days a week. Neither can retailers.

Hey, retired, ... all wound up, eh??? LOL

How can you tell?

I am just getting tired of the bureaucratic BS with the Skakun thing, the downtown plans (SGOG) that are not really serious plans ... golf course plans that are also not serious plans ... the province egging us on with the wood innovation centre .... and everyone is doing all the so called planning behind closed doors ....

Even the BIA is not doing anything. year end time and they have done squat. The picture in this morning's paper shows they have a new president .... the editorial in the paper is panning the liquor store at the Coast for whatever reason, the Gordo the prez of the BIA makes a comment about a liquor store accross from the Ramada ...

I mean, total nonesense.

Who is in charge, anyway? as bad as Obamaland ...... :-)

Hopefully the live streaming of Council works tonight. I need to see the whites of their eyes for a change.

Hey Gus, its me again. Your points are all valiid. But hear me again, before you can fix it you have to know whats giving us the problm. And it runs through our entire society in almost every thing we do we try to fix it but dont know where the problem lies so it just keeps on hreaking again.
Cheres

Gus, I think you need to be on Council. We need a clear thinking red neck.

Retired .... I think a large part of the problem is that people are afraid to make a decision which might backfire on them. The more people you can point your finger at in making decisions, the safer you are in your position, whether it is a Councillor, Mayor, City Manager, departmental manager, etc.

It is even happening in the political parties. I think the thing that distinguishes those who spoke out about a leadership review in the NDP are not dissidents, they are people who have made up their mind, based on their experience, that keeping on the agenda that they were on would jeopardize the party and so they had the guts to speak out. That happens when people have had a lid put on their opinions within in-camera discussions. Eventually pressure builds up and it is explosion time.

You know, all those jokes some decades ago about decision making by committee, and how swing that is designed by a committee turns out.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Intelligent_Design_By_Committee
Or design by experts…
http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/design.jpg

Well, we have arrived at a point in our western society where decisions being made by committees is being taken to an extreme. Everyone needs validation before they can make a decision.

Boom!

Lived in the area and now in town since the 50's. And around and around we go! Brownshoe sounds like someone in my house, talking about matches and bulldozers.
We don't need a performing centre, to honor hiz honor! We need good jobs,and a viable economy. - Not more gov't offices, parking lots, for a start. But maybe in another 50 yrs we'll still be TALKING ABOUT IT! Not doing anything to change things.