Downtown Revitalization Marketing Plan Under Board Review Today

Friday, April 21, 2006 04:01 AM

The long awaited downtown revitalization marketing plan will be presented to the Board of City Centre Ventures today.

Plan developer, Gordon Harris, of Harris Consulting, says the draft report will be reviewed by the Board later today then, final tweaking will be done before the final report is presented to the public.

Harris says there were three major parts to the plan

1. Identifying the pros and cons of developing in Prince George. He says P.G. has some distinct advantages as there is a very supportive atmosphere through tax incentives, development fast tracking, and business support.

2. Identifying who would be willing to invest in the downtown. Harris says they have identified 25 – 30 groups from pension funds to investment groups both within and outside of Canada.

3. Developing a package or brochure to introduce potential investors to Prince George.

The report was supposed to be ready by the end of December, but Harris says that may have been too ambitious a time frame. “There were some delays on both sides” says Harris who says it took longer than expected to get some information, and his company had commitments to other clients.

Although the project is five months overdue, that doesn’t mean there will be any cost over runs “This was a fixed price contract, and we are happy to live with that.” The report carries a price tag of $145 thousand dollars.

Harris says the atmosphere in Prince George should give this city a competitive edge when it comes to attracting investors “There is a very clear understanding that the downtown is an essential piece of developing the whole city.”

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Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 04:01 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: diplomat on April 21 2006 7:48 AM

>"Harris says the atmosphere in Prince George should give this city a competitive edge when it comes to attracting investors..."<

The ambience of PG is better than its atmosphere - we have a lot of air quality problems.

Repeat after me: Ambience, ambience, ambience.........

Posted by: Percy on April 21 2006 9:06 AM

If we would only deal with our air quality problems and our streets, Prince George would be a very attractive place to invest in, raise a family in and do business in. Percy

Posted by: owl on April 21 2006 10:53 AM

A few more $145,000 projects of this nature and the Cameron Street Bridge could have been fixed with existing budget money.

Five months late? Most, if not all, proposal awards are partially based on on-time delivery. Time should be of the essence and the amount of compensation should be reduced based on the tardiness of the report.

It states above: "Identifying who would be willing to invest in the downtown. Harris says they have identified 25 – 30 groups from pension funds to investment groups both within and outside of Canada."

Identifying them is easy enough. Asking them whether they are willing to invest here is another. Asking them what the conditions need to be for investing here is another yet. Identifying whether the conditions here are such that the investors will put money into the community is another yet. I hope the report has done that.

I would assume that many of those potential investors contacted may not know about the "gritty mill town" atmosphere.

I doubt there is a city in North America that does not know feel that developing the downtown is an essential piece of developing the whole city. Most of them have not taken more than 20 years to turn things around.

Posted by: diplomat on April 21 2006 12:08 PM

Quesnel has a similar air pollution problem and on a bad day it seems to be even worse than Prince George - at least that is what some Quesnel residents say.

I certainly would like to see some statistics that break PG pollution down into percentages as far as vehicular, heating and industrial emissions go.

Posted by: owl on April 21 2006 4:59 PM

There is a national pollution inventory site.

http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/querysite/location_query_e.cfm

I have the information in a nadeier form. This site goes into considerable depth. There are also local air quality reports which are a few year behind, but will tell the story as well, although not as well as the national site especially when it comes to estimating residential wood heating versus the other sources of industrial combustion. The percentage from wood burning is ridiculously low.

Posted by: owl on April 21 2006 4:59 PM

Would you believe that was supposed to read "handier" form?
:-(

Posted by: trueblue2 on April 21 2006 8:01 PM

Right on Owl! Is this report going to be a public document? It would be interesting to see what, if anything, is new in this report...