Monday’s council meeting brought forward the new and updated Downtown Strategy document - a cohesive capital P plan (or capital S strategy) that revealed their newest, freshest take on PG’s downtown.
It joins our Official Community Plan and our Downtown District Plan as another voracious document that describes our downtown’s aspirations.
This document is one arm of the work done alongside Crestview Strategy - an Ottawa-based consulting firm that the City hired for an RFP maximum of $110,000.00 last year.
Being completely candid, and if you’ve followed this newsletter for any amount of time, you can probably predict how I feel about this. It’s a nice wish list of a downtown we’ve heard described by numerous other documents in both past and present.
But we don’t need another Darrin-rants-about-Plans newsletter, do we? That exists. And pretty similar to my ranting in that newsletter, these 6 pillars, the “vision” - I don’t think you’ll find much in THIS document that isn’t already written in our old OCP, our proposed OCP, the DDP, the SGotG, etc, etc.
Cautious optimism?
So with that said, if I can take a moment to express cautious optimism, it’s that this document came forward to council (and has been presented as) very much a “Phase 1” which indicates there are other phases awaiting - Cori Ramsay, City Councillor, in her reddit post, alluded to a “team” being ready to action.
I don’t FULLY know what that means but let’s put on our imagining hats for a bit.
I think the other part of Cori’s comment is mostly spot-on here. In a world where we’ve just seen a 7% tax increase just to largely keep the lights on (and hire some new RCMP officers), it’s hard to see how something like this appears with only public dollars on the table.
I really don’t see an obvious path where we are able to do any of this work (on a meaningful scale) without EVEN MORE egregious tax increases - something that I really don’t think the A) the citizens have an appetite for and B) council is eager to put on to the table right now.
So what CAN happen here?
The City of Vancouver, Washington (not to be confused with the City of Vancouver, BC only a few hundred kms up the road) recently announced a $1.5B investment of private funds into developing its waterfront with the City committing an additional $75M to the project.
With injections coming from massive hospitality groups, private real estate boards, and other big industry players, you can start to understand how developing a previously bleh area of a very major, up-and-coming city might have huge cash payoffs in the long run for these investors.
This is a wild example and certainly on a scale that PG, in my own dreams, is likely not set up to take on BUT there are decades of templates for private investors providing capital to develop downtowns and, if I’m putting my realist hat on, is probably the only way a plan like this comes anywhere close to fruition without the whole town arriving at City Hall with pitch forks for a (hypothetical ballpark) 18% tax increase next year.
Maybe a bit closer to home is one of my favorite feel-good stories to come out of Northern BC - the Shames Mountain Co-Op where the residents of Terrace bought the ski-hill which was threatening closing its doors via a Co-Op called Friends of Shames.
Cautious realism?
Will a wealthy group of A-Tier private investment groups and corporations pool their money together to fund bike trails and walking paths across downtown or help develop 1st Ave. into a beautiful walkable brewery and cafe lane? I’m really not sure but there would have to be a lot of other massive macroeconomic forces that shift focus to the North for that to happen.
Will the 1%ers of PG pool their extra nickels and dimes together in to a co-op to help fund a fresh downtown? Probably not while most are very angry that they’re paying taxes at the second highest rate (per capita) in the province.
All of this is to say that I don’t always want to be that guy who yells into his newsletter whenever the City tries to say something about downtown because that becomes a pretty annoying and pedantic way to live my life.
I want to believe there’s paths forward out of this - I just hope to see Plans become Policies become Tasks become Benches-That-I-Can-Sit-On because it really feels like we’re constantly gridlocked on step 1.
So I’m not holding my breath on this one but there’s a lot more progressive rumbling about downtown than I’ve seen in recent years - and I really want to believe the VIC taking up residence in the Civic Center, and with a lot of development happening around that area of downtown, this document might actually represent more than a piece of paper that gets filed to the back of the cabinet with the other capital P plans.
That’s it for this week!
I’ve got one heck of a recommendation for you all this week and I recognize this isn’t a new thing but something I was reminded of when I had dinner there last week and I want to remind you all of.
The House of Ancestors has bannock donuts and they’re the best treat available downtown (and I don’t even think it’s close).
Are they healthy? Will they help your heart health and New Years Resolution? No. But you will feel joy and happiness like nothing you’ve ever experienced and, from me to you, YOU DESERVE THAT. Go get yourself a bannock donut and do it now.
PG needs bold mixed-used zoning bylaw to maximize density, amenities, community, accessibility, and land management. Ideally, 6 stories+. This will also generate property tax for the city, re-circulate investment in the local economy, and create a thriving downtown.
I moved here in 1986 and participated in many plans for downtown development. Smart Growth on the ground was the most extensive one if I remember correctly. How many consultants have got rich from PG plans over the years. Why were they not implemented? City councils just don't have the guts to follow through? Very frustrating!