With the forest industry in it's current situation and the pine beetle having a feast, where will they find the people to fill these homes? Didn't the population of PG just go down a bit?

Lets hope it actually goes ahead.

I think this is the second time that this area has had a plan presented to City Hall, if not Council. The first time was some 30 years ago. The population did not continue to grow as expected.

I am wondering what has changed.

I notice the Massey Drive extension up the hill is still proposed.

I cannot see an Ospika extension. Has it been dropped or is that someone else's reponsibility?

Ospika extension? Maybe if we wait long enough, a glacier will provide us with one.

10,000 for University Heights. 10,000 for Fraser Bench Lands, 75 lots at 16 and Tyner. 170 lots still to go at Aberdeen, plus many other projects around town. I guess we are looking for an increase in population in the order of 50,000 people in the next 10/20 years. Either that or they expect everyone in the bowl to move to the outlying areas and let the bowl turn into a ghetto. I suspect that this is part of the plan.

In any event all good things come to an end. With the possible closures of 3/4 mills in the area, and the saturation of shopping facilities, along with the continued exodus of people to other areas to find work, I doubt if any of these projects will move forward with any speed.

Add to all the new building the fact that we have a huge seniors population, and there will be a big influx of houses coming on the market as these people move into Senior residences, etc;

They should change the name of this town from Prince George to Hypertown, because all you get day after day after day, is hype, hype, hype. The local paper is incapable of printing an unbiased news story, everything they print is hype, hype, hype. The sad thing is that most people buy into it.

I see three major flaws in this proposal that I think should be reconsidered.

#1) They propose another intersection on highway 16 west at Bon Voyage creating further traffic issues for commercial traffic trying to get through the funnel of all commercial traffic to the gauntlet of stop lights and manufactured traffic congestion. I would prefer PG stick to the 'bi-pass' for its traffic congestion ego. This kind of planning is further proof that PG needs a ring road to avoid city planners. The obvious solution is to require the neighbourhoods to the north and south of highway 16 be connected by an over/underpass at Westgate, and or Ospika. In the minimum any future university connector from Bon Voyage should only be connected to west bound traffic on highway 16 unless they want to pay for an overpass.

#2)The plan calls for all the vista view lots to be developed as single family homes. All the unusable swamp land in the gullies is to be allocated as park land (its not about quantity, but quality). This is a major problem of PG planning where our city privatizes the best views for the exclusive use of the ownership. IMO, the exclusivity of focal points to the neighbourhood does nothing to develop the ownership of the entire community to the best qualities of a neighbourhood. At a minimum, quality viewcapes should be part of apartment complexes that cater to university students and new arrivals to the city; but to limit their utility to the entire community by making them exclusive domains of private single family homes is a shameful short sighted waste IMO.

#3)This plan is all about the small lot big house, like the Hayer Hills across from DP Todd. This is the multi-family-single-home fad with lots of stairs and you can listen to the neighbour snore at night. IMO it is completely ignorant of the changing demographics in this city. Everywhere we hear the mill worker average age is just about in a wheelchair, same with trades, and thus the demographics paint a picture of people looking to off load their stair based homes for homes of the rancher variety that enable elderly and the disable to find affordable homes that can accommodate their needs. PG as usual is ignorant of the needs of their neediest when planning for future development. We are going to get the PG sidewalk kind of neighbourhood up on the hill based on the pie in the sky planners wet dream that all development will be high-end exclusive type buyers that want mansions four stories high accessed by four lane highways with one car priority lights over dozens of heavily laden transport trucks. I think a large percentage of these homes should be required at minimum to be rancher style ground level entry homes to adjust for the PG imbalance that discriminates, through lack of planning, against our elderly and disabled, who will surely like to have homes designed for their needs as well.

Considering our council I expect them to address non issues as concerns to be easily remedied and then gush at how accommodating these private planners are with a tip of the hat in favour of a go ahead as is. PG will feel good in the short term and the planners will continue to fund their election campaigns, but in the long run when demographic catch up with this city we will all be the loser with less as a result of the decisions made today.

Time Will Tell

"At a minimum, quality viewcapes should be part of apartment complexes that cater to university students and new arrivals to the city; but to limit their utility to the entire community by making them exclusive domains of private single family homes is a shameful short sighted waste IMO."

I agree fully with this statement. There are amny viewscapes opening up as we move up the hills, and they are becomn apparent as the trees get removed and roads built. It is nce to have them as drives, but also should not be wasted on the few but given to the many.

"his plan is all about the small lot big house, like the Hayer Hills across from DP Todd. This is the multi-family-single-home fad with lots of stairs and you can listen to the neighbour snore at night."

Bang on again. This is taken out of planning books from 40 and 50 years ago. It is the retroplanning that for some reason or other is being sold as "smart growth". Nothing about this plan is smart. It is dumb growth. There are tons of examples of quality planning and building designs. The trend is compact growth in other communities. None of that here. This plan does not even catch up to the Kekowna souyth developments of 10 years ago which are still going strong. A very nice mix of housng densities from hihg rise condos ot low rise condos and townhousing anchored with neighbourhood shopping and office complexes.

Of course, this city is forcing all offices, supposedly, downtown and all retail into suburbia and all people somewhere in between for maximum travel distances.

"They should change the name of this town from Prince George to Hypertown"

If you had your way Palopu, they would call this town 'Downerville'. Rip up the concrete and bring back the wooden sidewalks. Close the airport, bring back the horse and buggy. Just don't let the horse crap in my back yard.

More like Hooterville , or maybe even Major Complexville. Call it whatever you want but at the end of the day all you have is a bunch of people who constantly have to have reassurance that this City is a great place to live.

You get constant hype about everything that happens, and you can rest assured that if the horse crapped in your back yard it would be headline news in this town. Something like.

**Local resident finds horsecrap in backyard, rumour has it, that some Texas Rancher hopes to locate a 100,000 acre horse ranch in the greater Prince George area, horses could be shipped all over the world by Container and if you are in a hurry to get your horse then you could load it on Wide Body Cargo Jet and have it shipped out to China immediately** The bi products of the horses can be converted into fertilizer
that can be used to fertilize the 50,000 acre root vegetable farms that rumour has it will be established in the Mud River, and Vanderhoof area. Root Vegetables will be sent all over the world by Containers, and if you are in a hurry
for your vggies you can ship them out in Wide Body Cargo jets anywhere in the world and have them available for eating the next day.

My point is that Local Papers and Politicians have a responsibility to give out all the information on a project and not just the hype that sells papers, or gets votes. It has nothing to do with being negative. There are two sides to every story, and it seems in this town we only get one side.

The Airport Expansion is a prime example of one dimensional reporting and political vote buying. We have never seen the business plan to support the spending of $33 Million dollars on this expansion. We have been told that we are endeavouring to get 12% of the smaller cargo jets that now land in Anchorage, however when pressed to give some examples we are told that their are negotiations in progress so no information can be given out. We are told that we have an advantage over Anchorage because we have a railroad and a couple of Highways,however they fail to mention that Anchorage has a year round seaport, and population of 500,000 people and an Airport that has been handling these Cargo Jets for the past 30 years. Alaska has more Military basis and military personal, etc that the whole of Canada. Alaska is also on the **Great Circle Route** and is already established with huge sorting warehouses etc; Huge facilities for Pilots living quarters etc; You need all these things to run an Internatinal Airport. When these planes land in Anchorage on their way to China quite often they switch pilots. So there is much more to being an International Air Cargo Facility than extending an Airport Runway.

We are now told that the local refinery does not produce Jet Fuel. This was acutally pointed out 2 years ago but ignored. We now say that we will source our jet fuel from somewhere in North America, either by truck or rail or both. Maybe from Edmonton Alta.

You explain to me how you are going to be competative with Anchorage or any other Airport when you dont even know where you are going to get your jet fuel from. How do you do your costing. The single most costly part of this proposal after the cost of the runway, would be the cost of fuel, and the landing and take off fees. Can we compete with the Americans.

Well for one thing Anchorage has two sources in the state of Alaska that supplies them with Jet Fuel, and they also ship it in from Seattle. So in effect they have 3 sources already established and they fuel 700 Wide Body Cargo Jets a week. This is an astronomical amount of Jet Fuel, and if we look on the consumption on the basis of **economys of scale** then I would suggest that they can get their fuel much cheaper than us, or at least compete with us.

There are other issues,however my point is you will never get any of this information from any source in this town. You either have to go looking for it, or buy into the hype and beleive what you read.

Have a nice day.