Come on Ben, you have to know that the mayor and council have these 6,000 people hiding in the weeds ready to populate all the new condos and low rise buildings soon to be built in the downtown core. Do you think they would waste hundreds of thousands of our dollars in ever increasing incentives if they did not have an end game?

I don't know what the sign says now.
I do know I heard a little spot on the radio the other day about the city borrowing 3 million to go towards buying out property owners along the flood zone on the Nechako. That amount to be added to the 8 million they are waiting for from the province.

With this kind of BS happening everytime we turn around they should make the pop # sign easily changeable to account for all the people leaving PG.

It used to be 81000. Alot of folks left when the NDP were in power.

Yes, and the population has continued the downward slide for the past 10 years of Liberal rule. Just sayin.

It did not much help, that they moved
the city signs further out, so PG looks
bigger. Only a couple of things in PG
fits for a city of 80,000+ and that
is the size of the city employees and
the costs of property taxes, utilities
and service charges.

So do people want the population to increase or not? The answer to that will a rather significant impact on where the city goes from here.

The problem with PG, as I see it anyway, is that even when we had a "large" population, the city had a small town mentality. This was largely due to the fact that mills dominated the landscape and the workforce was primary blue collar. This is what the "old time" residents were used to and that's what they were comfortable with.

The culture of PG over the last decade and a bit has changed allot. UNBC has had a significant impact, there are more "professional" jobs, the city almost certainly has a higher average education level than in the past and I think the "younger" generations want more services, culture and amenities than what were available in the "old" PG and in most cases, they are willing to fund them and support them.

As I see it, the future conflict will be between the people who want to retain the small town mentality of the past and the people who want to leave that behind and grow the city into something that can offer more to them.

I'm not sure we'll ever see a town of 80,000 people again that has that small town feel of the early 90's or late 80's. I just don't think the demographics work given the job market out there right now for our area.

NMG, I am trying to get comfortable with what you are saying, especially the thing about the blue collar workforce of old and the more sophisticated professional UNBC higher educated workforce of today!

If all that were true then why are some existing cultural institutions such as the Art Gallery and the PG Symphony et al now more than ever hard up for money and barely making ends meet, needing support from the City, i.e. taxpayers' dollars!

Shouldn't they be fully self supporting and awash in money with all the many professional white collar types clamouring for ever more culture?

Will this new more classy demographic support the planned Performing Arts Center to a significantly greater degree than it has attended the existing arts facilities up to now?

Just wondering.

Just my opinion, but I think if all of the existing arts groups were to share space at a proper PAC (as opposed to being spread out all over the city), I think the economics would likely improve.

As an aside, I don't think the arts will likely ever be fully self supporting. Neither will ball diamonds, hockey rinks, soccer fields or swimming pools. I look at them as something that contributes to the overall attractiveness of a city. I may not go to the Art Gallery, but I sure as heck don't mind paying $20 a year out of my taxes to fund it, because I think it makes our city a better place to live. Same goes for the other stuff I don't use, like the Kin Centre for example.

I do see a rather big difference between people that don't want to fund stuff like the arts and those that are okay with it. I think there is a definite demographic difference there.

Your taxes won't be 20 dollars more per year - it will be more like 20 dollars per month!

Additionally, what will happen to the facilities vacated by the groups which are using them now?

Besides, none of them have indicated that they would be using a new PAC and some of them have indicated that in order to hold their events at the new PAC they would have to double or triple their ticket prices in order to pay the fees the new PAC would have to charge them.

However, since we never have any of these issues come to a referendum in Prince George I am already totally convinced that the new PAC is on the way, no matter what the population overall is in favour of.

And I do not believe that you have any statistics which would support your assumption about cultural preferences and white collar vs. blue collar populations.

Somehow I smell a bit of elitism here. Of course, I may be overly sensitive.

Maybe thats why gangs and crime is so rampant in PG now, with the new touchy feely demographics we supposedly have.

"And I do not believe that you have any statistics which would support your assumption about cultural preferences and white collar vs. blue collar populations"

You honestly believe that the guys working shifts at the Pulp Mill are talking about the arts the same way as a group of English students at UNBC would?

"Somehow I smell a bit of elitism here"

It's got nothing to do with elitism. Nowhere did I say that the arts were any more important than hockey rinks. My underlying point is that in order to grow the city, I think we need to offer things that are attractive to a diverse group of people and not just one particular segment of the population. That's how we'll attract new people here and that's how we'll grow.

Are you an English student at UNBC working shifts at the Pulp Mill?

I fairly doubt it! Like I said before, it is a done deal so different opinions matter very little.

No, but I happen to have a fairly diverse group of friends and in my experience, their interests are significantly different from each other.

Heck, I'm not that old and I remember the days that many people in PG laughed at the concept of having a university here. It was as though the notion of wanting to get an education instead of running to the mill or the bush right out of high school made you a fool. All of this stuff is interconnected and and it's about expanding our horizons of what our city is and challenging our notions of what it can become. You won't transform PG into a place that has the potential for future growth if you aren't willing to make some changes along the way.

Times change and if the city doesn't change with them, the city will go kaput. Just my opinion :)

Good discussion on performing arts centres. What are they and who uses them. I think that there are far too many assumptions made by people about that.

PACs are found in all communities across the country. I believe I am correct in saying that there are more likely to be PACs in communities the size of PG in the USA than in Canada. In both countries there has been a bit of a building boom in satellite communities surrounding larger urban centres. So, even though there are adequate or even excellent facilities in the metro centre, the bedroom communities have been building up their own community facilities, including those to serve the arts.

When it comes to the arts, there are no distinctions between white collar and blue collar communities. In fact, when I grew up in Ottawa, before the building of the National Arts Centre as a 1967 centennial project (only spaces for the performing arts in there, so a bit of a misnomer) Hamilton, about the same size as Ottawa at the time, had built a brand new PAC while Ottawa, the white collar civil service, high tech and embassy town, only had the “Little Theatre” which is exactly what it was; a total embarrassment on the international scene as the capital of a country.

Buildings of any kind are only tools. Like any tools, some get old and useless and either have to be updated, handed over to others who might still want them, or dump them and replace them to become useful again.

Once one has the right tool it is only as good as its operator. In the case of a PAC it needs to serve the interests of the community, otherwise there will be few people using it. The CN centre and the change that has happened in the performance programming there in the last 5 or so years is an excellent case in point. The operator has to find out almost by trial and error what the community will pay to see. Get the right mix and ticket prices in this community do not seem to be a deterrent. We are really not all that much different from other communities. However, the CN Centre is not the right tool for all performances. We have some of those in the community. The main one is Vanier Hall which has not been updated since it was first built. A similar theatre in Kamloops has had two renovations and is now separated from the school district and, as the Sagebrush Theatre, is owned by the community. The playhouse is okay, but too small at 300 seats.

PACs are nothing more than entertainment centres. The building does not care whether there is an opera, a symphony, a ballet, choir, or a Shaw festival gracing the stages. Equally at home are comedy festivals, stand up comics, acrobatic troupes, magicians, popular singers and bands, experimental theatre, specialty films, etc. The performances can be those that are local or are produced elsewhere to go on the road across Canada and the rest of the world. I’ll leave it to you to fill in any blanks I left that might draw you into such a facility. And if it is not going to be you, that is fine too. There are many others who will attend given the right programming.

A PAC will also increase the capacity this city has to attract larger gatherings, whether conferences, conventions, events such as the winter games, etc. Now that we have passed the 5 year mark in the continuing construction of the new Sandman, we have some additional rooms in this town. Perhaps the Casino hotel will be next to expand when it will be ready to dabble in increasing the convention space capacity in PG.

Here is an example of a small satellite city about the size of PG outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul – Burnsville.
They have a “heart of the city” downtown development project on the go
http://www.ci.burnsville.mn.us/index.aspx?nid=89
Projects in the “Heart of the city”
http://www.ci.burnsville.mn.us/index.aspx?nid=602

They have just built a PAC
http://www.burnsvillepac.com

This is a $30million start to a $200million downtown redevelopment project
http://www.alliant-inc.com/services/land_development/docs/mixed_use/grande_market_place_project_sheet.pdf

They have a city hall web site which is easy to navigate through and find lots of information. Here is the document centre
http://www.ci.burnsville.mn.us/DocumentCenterii.aspx

Police? Here is their annual report to the public.
http://www.ci.burnsville.mn.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=1756
Total authorized strength = 93 (includes civilians) for a budget of $12 million.
City budget is $77 million for a population of 61,000 (2007)

The Council has a mayor and 4 councillors …… :-)

How things could be if we were growing.

But, we are not. So the real question becomes, Why Not? Why is this community and several others across the northern half of the country in Ontario and Quebec not growing? Can it be turned around? If yes, how and by whom?

I know one thing for sure, it is not going to be done by any large corporation. They are in it for themselves and they have no qualms about riding on the backs of people in the communities, that is starting to become more and more obvious by the day.

It is no longer labour vs management, it is corporations vs communities.

Gus: "When it comes to the arts, there are no distinctions between white collar and blue collar communities."

That is my opinion as well! BTW, great website links!