Mayor of Smithers misses the biggest opportunity for his community. Tourism. The mayor should build on their strengths in that region.

Tourism has massive potential in that region with a rudderless bunch of actors steering the ship for their own parochial benefit and not that of their greater community. They need a plan to capture the 2010 opportunities as well as the growing Chinese tourism industry, but are stuck in internal protectionist turf battles where they can not see beyond the trees in the forest.

It seems that Tourism is the answer to every Citys problems. Problem is I dont see to many tourists in this area. Smithers gets their fair share, especially for the Winter months. They have for years been getting fly in Tourists for fishing in the remote lakes.(High Priced Tourists I might add) Robert Redford among others.

You need more than tourism to run a City. Selling pencils with a Canadian Flag Emblem is hardly a lifestyle. There was a time when Smithers was considered a Railway town and generated a lot of its jobs from that industry, however those days are gone forever.

Im still waiting for the big influx of Chinese tourists to this area. What would they do? Where would they go? What would they spend their money on? Its more likely they will go to California, Florida, Toronto, Vancouver, etc; There is no reason for them to come here. Its a big world out there.

During the Great Japanese Tourism phase you rarely saw any Japanese Tourists west of Jasper,or Banff, and the same will apply to the Chinese. If there are allowed to leave the Country.

Quite true, Chader; farming is fading in that area, now mostly rural residential. (which is pretty interesting, given that the ALR was put in place to protect the best farmland but seems to have been strangely avoided and circumvented in the old BV)

The whole valley has breathtaking tourist potential; lake/river fishing or boating, hiking, climbing, wildlife, nudism, golf, every winter sport available, and is well serviced for transportation utilization.

The turf battles have been going on for decades and similar to PG, they are based on greed.

Simple greed, not complex or sophisticated greed, just simple, basic greed. Ahhh, the smell of money in the morning !!

:-)

Most Chinese I talk to are fascinated by the wilderness. They would love to experience it if the services were vailable. There are 100,000,000 potential Chinese tourists if they can ever get Canada approved as an approved foreign destination status. What better place for the communists to approve than a wilderness where they won't get to many ideas.

Why do we supply China with resources and grain when they restrict their citizens from traveling to Canada?

Most eco-tourists make $60-100,000 a year. When it involves foreign tourists their dollars are as good as any primary industry dollars (ask Vancouver). Smithers has enough eco to offer that they can employ 1000's of eco-tourism operators if marketed right, and this would dwarf the employment income of any mines that are planned.

They key is infrastructure and economic developemnt assistance targeted to incubating the eco-tourism offerings to the point of critical mass. It involves a plan and a focal point organization. It is not a matter of marketing the existing monopoly of service providers with showers of government dollars like their current policy.

We need the infrastructure, and the plan for critical mass of the industry so we can provide the services these tourists would expect. I would have thought this would be a priority with 'our' tax dollars in light of the massive spending for the olympics in Vanvouver-Whistler. IMO the olympics is not about creating tourism opportunities, but rather tendering contracts to the construction industry for the benefit of the Lower Mainland and the political prestege of the event for the politicians.

The north will see a big fat zero by all indications.

Where would you rather work in the future? A question most voters should be asking themselves.

I agree with Chadermando. For those who have travelled the world, the places which attract people for tourism are obvious.

There are the winter places - picturesque towns in picturesque valleys. There are two that come to mind immediately in this area - Smithers and McBride. There are several others in BC - the entire area from Whistler to Pemberton as well as Revelstoke and Fernie.

There was just a report on CBC this morning about the global warming effect on the ski resorts in the Alps. The average temps have increased by 1C over the last 20 years. Chamonix, St. Moritz Cortina, Kitzbuehl all have had to cancel races and have no skiing or limited g this time.

Val Gardena snow report - Fair in the morning / slush in the afternoon base .... 10 cm - 35 cm

http://www.val-gardena.com/eng/page211.html

According to the report, winter tourism in the European Alps is a 50 billion Euro or about C$76 billion business. There are something like 600 separate hills, of which 200 are at lower elevations and closer to oceans that they are already being impacted. Often these are the dominant local industries by a long shot.

So, start looking to see what may end up happening to places like Apex Alpine, Big White, Silver Star, Sun Peaks. If Europe is an indicator, they may follow.

Smithers is a year round gold mine for tourism. The Okanagan and Shuswap is a year round gold mine for tourism, with summer being the high season.

The Okanagan has finally opened up to what its potential is for living, as well as visting. I think Smithers can easily be the next, on a smaller scale, if there is some assistance.

The Chinese are definitely coming into this area. I am at present trying to put a deal on property together with a couple from the lower mainland. The deal is in the millions.
They are serious.
It would be interesting if we had any idea of the billions they have invested already in the lower mainland. From my conversations some are now considering disposing of assets acquired on the lower mainland and utilizing the money for investment in the north, with Prince George being one of the areas.
They are in a position to make a considerable profit on investments in the south, and reinvestment of that capital is a priority.
Once they come into the north, I would not be at all surprised to see them invest around Houston and Smithers. In my opinion, those areas are much more appealing than this city.
I, personally, fail to see any beauty in Prince George, and the management of this city leaves no sense of security for the residents.
The Mayor and Council must be removed and replaced with people capable of making reasonable, common sense solutions for the betterment of the city.
The crew on the job at present just cannot "cut" it!!!! They really have to "go".

Maybe we could take our tax dollars and move to Smithers. It is more attractive and quieter and not polluted.

Trusted. I am aware of a contractor that built a house for a Chinese person from Hong Kong in the area of UBC in Vancouver, about 10 years ago. This house cost $15 Million dollars to construct. The owner had to pay for the electricity to be brought in undergound at a cost of $400,000.00 . Another house in the same area was built for 11 Million dollars.

The billions of dollars that were invested in the lower mainland is primarily money from Hong Kong that the Chinese were afraid that the communists would take away from them. This fear has declined in the past years, and a lot of this money is being returned and invested in China and South East Asia.

Any dollars invested in this area would be miniscule in relation to the money invested in South East Asia. In order to make big money, you need a large population base, otherwise you make small money.

If people are buying property in this area, it is usually for a long term investment, for their Childrens, Childrens, Children or a hedge against future loses and probably would not create a lot of employment in the short term.

As I said before. A small City in China is 5 Million people. Smithers has 5,500 and Prince George 77,000 . See the difference???

Beauty in Prince George? We have a University and a Railroad Museum and..er...ummmm, ahhh. Well, I think the waterslide at the casino doesn't count. Does it? Hmmmm? We also have...Gee whiz. What do we have to attract tourists? We don't even have a public campground. Other towns do. A sani-dump. If you know where to look. Maybe the next municipal council can look into this.

So they do not enter the North in hordes?
Well, out of one acorn a big oak tree did grow?
I do not expect another Richmond-nor should anyone else.
We need some new money-and a great deal of new brain power in the north.
The construction being done in this community is all outside money.
A few contractors make a major ?? contribution by building a few houses.
We might knock the city for a few projects which involve millions being spent, but if the city did not spend any money, just who would?
A few businesses tried to grow big time, and what was the end result? The Gov't did a number of bail outs, and they still went down the chute.
They became "has Beens." A lot of tax payer dollars bit the dust with their doom.
The big time investors do not play in the ball park with the willy nilly Prince George people
who like to call themselves investors.
Too bad-but true.
Bring back memories??

"In order to make big money, you need a large population base, otherwise you make small money" ????

That depends very much on what one does.

When real estate flattens out in one place because it may be out of reach of many and overvalued, while it is increasing in another for whatever reason, then you may make more if you sell the investment which gives you a 10% per annum return and put he money into investments which provide 20% or even higher returns.

Of course coming from a large urban area with a large number of people having investments there, therewould be a ceiling reached eventually in how many could actually invest in that smaller area. Of course, there are more smaller areas out there than just Prince George.

So, we may have a few people in Vancouver thinking that way, which means a lot of people from the perspective of PG. That large number with big money, can start playng with PG real estate all by themselves. The early ones could make 30% within a year by selling to other Vancouver people who, of course, heard about the opportunties here from those who had just invested here. Those could then buy from others here, or even from Vancouver investors.

Eventually there would be a flattening in the demand which was, in this possible scenario, almost completely driven by the combination of money being freed up in one place and investment opportunties being hyped in another place.

So, the original local owners of those properties, and the first few tiers to come in and get out in a timely fashion.

The loosers are those who got in too late.

Is this good for the community? In some ways yes, in other ways not. If there is no real growth to follow, it could stiffle real growth, then it most certainly not good since the prices will eventually drop and those who purchased property during the "feeding frenzie" will be the ones who paid the gains to the winners.

Moodys a private research firm, projected that the median sales price for an existing home will decline in 2007 by 3.6 percent--the first decline for an entire year in U.S. home prices since the Great Depression. One Reason: Speculators fled the market. Not only did they stop buying, they put properties they owned up for sale. Investors were a bigger part of the market than many thought. Excerpt from headline **U.S. housing thud story of the year**

Expect the same thing to happen in this area. **Bulge then burst**

Median price is not a good indicator for housing cost reporting. It needs to be viewed at the same time as other indicators such as mean price.

The reason is simple. There could be all sorts of movement at both the high and low end of the house price range. All a period shift in the median to a lower number shows is that of the total sales in houses, there were more sales in the range lower than the median price of the previous period, thus causing the median to shift downward.

There could have been a decrase or an increase in the mean prices of that range below the median and there could have been a decrease or increase in mean prices in the range above the median.

One will not know, unless one looks at the mean price as well, and look at the mean price in both ranges to get some ideas of what the market is actually doing.

In addition, one must look at the total sales as well to see where the market is heading.

Finally, in large countries, especially those where there is a lot of migration, different parts of the country will have unique profiles. One end of the country or the province will likely be quite different from the other.

http://usmarket.seekingalpha.com/article/16746

I think the mining issue will raise a lot of money for the provincial and federal government in tax royalties. Very little of which will ever be spent in Smithers or this region. Therefore it leaves employment as the main factor and raises a few more questions.

Should the focus be on sustainable long term economic viability; or short term 30-year dead-end employment opportunities that are more of a slave-employer relationship and could risk the sustainable long term?

The point of the article was that house prices declined because a large number of the homes were owned by speculators and they put them up for sale and got out of the market. I suspect we have some of this going on in this area.

In any event I expect that we are now overbuilt, and that prices will start to come down. Same old story.

I do not think that overbuilding will cause the prices to drop, or drop substantially. Those who actually built on speculation are still sitting on some relative high assessed property.

Certainly using replacement cost there is not much dispute about the actual cost of construction. There is likely more flexibility in the assessed cost of the land, especially for larger lots.

When it comes to assessing cost on sale prices of similar houses, one cannot compare a new house to one that was built 20 to 30 years ago unless that house has had a number of renovations done since then which maintain it in good shape - likely new kitchen, windows, furnace, roof, siding, flooring, etc. Thus, a new house will have a relatively fixed quality value assigned to it while an older house will have more flex there again.

So, it is unlikely that the recent spec builder will dump his or her inventory of houses for a while unless their financing is stretched as far as it will go. Then the banks will get antsy.

The bigger (relatively speaking) builders have been around for a while and have seen bad times and stuck it out. Unless they have been getting greedy, they should be prepared for a lull of a year or so and see how things are going.

If things slow down, forget about the Fraser Bench development for a few years.

I am not sure whether we are overbuilding. Households are getting smaller, so as long as some of the kids stay around town and do not bum off the parents for too long, then some sort of housing will continue to be needed, whether it is renting a spec landlord's house, or buying a starter home or, for those who have good jobs and two incomes, buying their "investment in the future" as much as the bank will lend them at 6% or whatever they can get. They are the potential foreclosure fodder.

I heard China last week threatened to sell off $1 Trillion dollars in US Treasury Bonds so they are not left holding the bag when the US bubble bursts. They want to be the first to cash in. The US Federal Reserve stopped publishing M3 money supply data in 2004 (spooking China) to hide the US dollar vulnerability and value. OPEC led by the Saudi's stepped in and threatened to cut oil shipments to China if China carried through on their threat to the US economic team in China. The Saudi's want their voice and strategic concerns in the Middle East top of mind in exchange. So far it looks like China hasn't started to sell yet and it was just a negotiating tactic. The US dollar wobbled. Some say China could achieve more economically then they ever could through war and that this is part of the manufacturing transfer and currency manipulation.

This could have huge implications on interest rates and home values.