Is Prince George preparing to make another big mistake?

While I appreciate Bill Christie’s enthusiasm for a proper performing arts centre, and his progressive thinking in terms of financing, his choice of location is poor.

While he points out a performing arts centre at Duchess Park would be relatively close to downtown, he also confirms his view that this type of facility should be downtown. That is my view, and the view expressed in our Official Community Plan.

Bill Christie’s suggested compromise is a losing proposition, and would be very costly to the city over the long run. Can we not learn from our mistakes?

Twelve years ago the city built CN Centre at Exhibition Park, far, far away from the downtown and its concentration of commercial enterprises such as restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, clubs and specialty retail stores. This decision was made despite the trend of progressive cities to leverage their investment by building these “traffic drivers” where they could benefit commercial enterprise and revitalized public space—downtown. We did not, and as a result, we have a $20 million facility that benefits exactly one business and does not provided downtown redevelopment momentum, plays no roll in stabilizing the viability of dozens of businesses, and does not help stabilize or increase the value of surrounding commercial property.

The same argument could be made to explain why the new casino and hotel needed to be downtown—another mistake by our city.

Downtown property values have decreased by $80 million in the last seven years, and the tax paid to the city by the downtown has decreased by over $1.4 million per year (that’s three percent of your residential taxes, folks). We can’t afford to continue that trend.

With very few large, public (three levels of government) investments left, downtown is again on the road to loosing a major economic driver and momentum builder. The negative impact on the city coffers, and by extension the taxpayer, is significant.

Given that a possible future for downtown is to be the northern centre for business, entrepreneurship, creativity and culture, perhaps Mr. Christie could consider building the new Duchess Park school beside a downtown performing arts centre. After all, there are many successful urban school models to choose from, even in Quesnel.

Shawn Petriw

Take a look .....

http://www.city.pg.bc.ca/pages/webcam/

Does this site look like a bustling building complex generating tons of business downtown?

A grouping of banquet halls, library, art gallery?

Put a web cam outside of the CN Centre and the image would be the same on a typical day. Do the same outside of the PG Playhouse and the same image of nothingness would be typical.

It is a different story if there were a webcam outside the Casino, Future Shop, Famous Players Theatre, Royal Bank Building and a JJ's pub, etc.

I think there are some challenges ahead for a proposal for such a joint development proposal. Location is but one of them.

However, I am not in agreement that Winnipeg Street is not a "downtown" location.

Downtown PG is not the precinct of the DBIA. In fact, that is one of the concerns I have about the DBIA, its geographical boundaries of primary concern are far too small.

Theatres and theatre districts have a primary symbiotic relationship with restaurants and pubs for the before and after theatre crowd. It also presents opportunities for some specialty boutiques.

Wed have no such precinct in this community.

We used to have the beginnings of such a precinct when Rosel's restaurant opened its business on 7th in the Victoria to Winnipeg street corridor of older residences. Another samler one survived for a relatively long period opposite the WCB building in what is now Dog Gone Bakery.

This corridor of say 5th to 10th streets, lends itself to "downtown" mutli-use infill projects which combine conversions of older, substantial residences to small restaurants, boutiques and professional offices alnog with infill condominium housing developments such as the project which was built and the one which still sits empty as proposed by "Goldwing".

It is precisely this type of development which is required to stop leakage from the downtown and bring people back downtown in a true multi-use precinct which is not devoid of trees and green space.

I think we ought to give this proposal a chance to see how it can help the full downtown of PG, not just the piece of asphalt jungle many seem to call "downtown".

Owl I agree with you on this one. I think its a good proposal. Moving the school into the downtown core is ludicrous. I think they would be better together at the current location.

IMO if the downtown is to have any chance it needs to get away from George Street and area. A move to recenter closer to Victoria street anchored by a performing arts center on Winnipeg would get my support.

Bill Christie would get my support for his proposal, although I would not support the idea of closing Lakewood Secondary to make the Dutches Park model to work.

That said a 200 seat facility is not going to revitalise much for a neighborhood much less the downtown.

Owl,

Your web cam argument skews the facts.

Just because it doesn’t show a full parking lot, doesn’t mean no one is there. You wouldn’t see any “bustling” at the casino, either—they’re all inside.

You should know that the Library has about 350,000 visitors a year, employs 64 and processes about one million transactions each year.

Yes, I’d have to say this is a building complex that brings a lot of people downtown.

As for the definition of downtown, it’s not the DBIA area, but the city’s definition of the C1 zone and includes the Coast Hotel, library, art gallery civic centre, pool, and also includes a portion up 3rd avenue.

Your definition, however, goes too far. Any urban planner worth his salt will say our downtown is too large and that achieving appropriate density is difficult. Expanding the area doesn’t help anything, and is in fact, counterproductive.

And I agree we need downtown to be full of trees and green space, and it’s one reason the DBIA has been so vocal in pushing for trees to be planted downtown in a cost-effective manner. It’s called smart urban planning, and it is fully supported by the DBIA and others who champion downtown redevelopment.

If you’re looking for someone to blame for the current state of downtown, look to the largest property owner—the city—and past city councils who let the downtown deteriorate by their lack of vision and implementation.

As for a 200 seat theatre not helping much, that's not what Bill Christie said. He suggests the province could anti up "200 seats worth" of performing arts centre, with the city and other funders pitching in the rest through some sort of partnership.

Shawn Petriw

The web cam actually shows the Civic Plaza.

Civic Plazas that work in other cities are typically inhabited by people .... to find people in ours is quite rare. Not even parade routes are taken through the civic plaza .... the civic plaza does not house the farmer's market for some strange reason ... sometimes the fountain is active, sometimes not ... its a toss of a coin .... sort of like guessing when there might be ice on the rink in the winter ....

The fact thst the library has 350,000 or so visitors a year shows clearly how important it is that you have to draw the right type of people downtown .... the impact of the library downtown is pretty minimal other than taking up space and not providing taxes to the city.

Have you ever noticed that the Library turns its back on the plaza? The views from reading areas in the libary do not include views of the plaza. Most people enter the library through the dark bowels of the building via a narrow exit stairway ... the probelms associsted with desinging a building on the assumption other things will follow, and then the client (City) goes and does something else.

Hey, City Council really has not changed over the last 20 years, has it? .. :-)

The CBD, or downtown as some like to call it, is about 90 acres in size. The Pine Centre property is about one third of that in area. Walking from the Sears entrance to central court and then through Zellers and out their main exterior entrance is the same distance as walking from Victoria to Queensway.

I have not found to many planners worth their weight in salt in the first place. I would love to engage in a discussion with a planner who thinks our CBD is too large.

Waht are some examples of cities in North America with a population of about 80,000 that have CBD's substantially smaller than ours?

Trees downtown have made a change. The trees along Victoria have grown substantially and it is a pleasure to walk along that street now. Landscaping by some businesses has also improved.

But there is no downtown park. The civic plaza is essentially a hard surfaced wasteland. The one park we have is not readily accessible though highly visible. The lawn in front of City Hall is really the only thing approaching an urban greenspace.

Owl,

We are mostly in agreement, especially on the need to change for the better.

You’d have to talk to the city about the farmers market; my understanding is they don’t want them to be there for some reason.

Also, I don’t know how long you’ve lived in PG, but the original library concept was part one of three phases, later phases including a convention centre. Your beef with the dysfunction of our civic plaza should be taken up with John Backhouse. I agree it’s a mess and needs some green, which is easily doable on the east side of the fountain/ice rink thing.

As for a planner that believes our CBD is too large, talk to the guy heading up the public consultation regarding the rewrite of our zoning bylaws. Also, the people at Urbanics, who did the 2000 downtown study.

Examples of 80,000 population centres with a smaller CBD include Kamloops, Kelowna and Nanaimo – our major competitors.

I hope you keep lobbying for green space and trees. We need them.

Shawn Petriw

I will gladly get into comparing PG with the three other cities. They each have somewhat uniques situations with respect to street patterns and "natural geographic" restrictions, with Nanaimo suffering the most from the latter.

However, they all have the same problem of urban sprawl so typical of North American cities. In the end, what one City's planner decides is a C-1 or CBD zone in their city versus that of another city is really inconsequential. Growth in cities happens very much serendipitously unless one lives under a totalitarian state. Its sort of like playing Sim City in "real life". :-)

As many people know, in PG you can still see the grand avenue planned for 7th Avenue from the Crescents to the City hall "diamond" which then aligns with George Street which was to be terminated with a Rail Station on First Avenue.

So much for city planners and their plans.

http://www.city.pg.bc.ca/pages/streethistory

Interestingly enough, building a performing arts theatre at the end of 7th Avenue may actually allow the almost 100 year old concept of a pedestrian thoroughfare with widened sidewalks leading into the City Hall and Civic Centre precinct to be revisited as a long range goal for a city of twice the current population.

Who knows, Prince George may still emerge as a "City Beautiful" long after I'm gone.

As for all those other planning consultatns this City is and has been using, it is time we quit sending our taxpayer dollars to outsiders who keep telling us this that and the other thing. We either have a planning department that can do the work they are paid to do, or else lay them all off and go back to hiring a competent consultant on a long term basis to do the work required.

The rezoning and the OCP reviews are standard maintenance processes which do not need outside consultants.

As I said before, it is time for a sweep of the administration and a Council with the ability to do a proper job of that to get this City back on track.