Prince George City Council finally approved a direction for the Civic Core Plan at its final meeting of 2024, but Mayor Simon Yu doesn’t think it shows enough faith in the city’s future.
At the Dec. 16 meeting, council heard about three proposals for the Civic Core District, which includes the Civic Centre, the library, the former site of the Four Seasons Leisure Pool, the Two Rivers Art Gallery, Canada Games Plaza, Kopar Memorial Arena, City Hall, the former Fire Hall No. 1 site, the Knights Inn, Canfor Leisure Pool and Veterans Plaza.
Two of those plans developed by city staff were similar in layout while the third, developed by Yu himself, was extremely ambitious.
Administration’s proposals included a new Performing Arts Centre, a new 4,500-seat arena to replace the aging Kopar Memorial Arena, a mixed-use hotel and a mixed-use residential development.
Yu’s vision included not just a performing arts centre and 5,000-seat arena, but an expanded convention centre connected to a high-rise hotel and a high-rise apartment building, a new plaza behind the Civic Centre and a rapid transit line. On Connaught Hill, a new amphitheatre would be built along with either a new orchestra hall or IMAX theatre.
Ultimately, council chose one of city staff’s proposals.
Sitting down with the Citizen on Dec. 20 to reflect on 2024 and to look ahead to 2025, Yu said he started to develop his own vision for the core after seeing some of the comments being made during the city’s development process.
“I’ve done just as much research,” Yu said. “I’ve been there to listen to the people, their criteria, what they want to do. I met with user groups before I became mayor.”
He added that he observed the results of a resident-led study on user groups’ needs for the redevelopment of the core, of which Citizen owner Cameron Stolz was a part.
As both mayor and an engineer by trade, Yu said he sees the possibilities for the Civic Core District and the pathway to get the project complete.
Looking at what city staff produced, the mayor was blunt. He said it was plain and that they played it too safe.
“What they drew up on that piece of paper, any kids can do that,” he said.
Fundamentally, because Prince George is a hockey town, Yu said a new arena must be part of a redesign of the core. Without it, he said people won’t accept a new performing arts centre because they’ll ask why Vanier Hall, Theatre Northwest and UNBC don’t already meet those needs.
He argued that the way to get the redevelopment moving forward is to tie-in a development that will drive economic activity. For that reason, the mayor said expanding the convention centre is the most important part of redeveloping the Civic Core District.
When the Civic Centre hosts a convention currently, Yu said, there’s not enough room to host activities, meetings, displays and meal space. While there are hotel-based receptions, he said attendance is sporadic.
Another issue with the Civic Centre, he said, is that it’s not built to handle certain cultural groups. For instance, Yu said the local Punjabi community has complained to him that they couldn’t rent out the facility for a wedding because they wouldn’t be allowed to cook their own food.
Because of Prince George’s location, the mayor said he envisions the city as being a gateway to the Arctic and serving as a conference space for people in the territories where they don’t have suitable locations.
If an expanded convention hall is built, he said it would be “relatively easy” to get a private investor to come in and build a hotel.
A purpose-built symphony hall and performing arts centre are necessary to compete with the Vancouver area, he said. He asked why someone from Prince Rupert or Fort St. John would travel to Prince George when they could travel to the Lower Mainland and the world class facilities located there.
The mayor said there’s a need to develop Prince George because people have lost confidence in the city. If he were to bring back every person who’s made money in the city and then left with their family, Yu said we would have a population of 300,000 people.
Unlike Greater Vancouver, the mayor said Prince George still has lots of room to grow. He said
To finance his vision for the city, Yu’s plan said that plenty of private investment is required. When city council discussed his proposal, other councillors cast doubt on how likely that was.
Yu said he believes that the city must project self-confidence and a vision not only to show private investors that they mean business, but higher levels of government as well.
Despite council going with another vision, Yu said he’s not giving up because he made a commitment when running for office that he would develop a multi-generational plan to turn Prince George into a world-class city.
In December, The Citizen reported that the CEO of Tidewater Renewables believes his company’s renewable diesel refinery in Prince George could shut down by March if the issue of U.S.-based producers being able to get subsidies for their products in both their country and Canada is not resolved.
If that happens, the CEO said it would stop his company from being able to build a renewable aviation fuel facility in Prince George in the future.
Yu said he plans on meeting with other mayors during the upcoming BC Natural Resources Forum in Prince George to discuss the energy picture in Northern BC, including the Tidewater situation.
Getting an aviation fuel facility, he said, could tie-in nicely with Prince George having one of the longest runways in Canada at its airport. However, Yu noted that runway needs to be resurfaced in the next four years and Prince George needs to prove that it is both used and a generator of economic activity to get funding from higher levels of government.
The mayor said he also wants to raise the issue with Premier David Eby when he’s town for the forum as well as what can be done to support the local forestry industry.
The BC Government’s recent approval of a wind power project co-owned by Lheidli T’enneh First Nation and Spanish company Ecoener is both an important part of the area’s energy future and a pathway towards equality between First Nations and the rest of Canada, Yu said.
On a chair in his office, the mayor laid out pages from the 2023 and 2024 Prince George capital budgets as well as the draft capital budget for 2025, which is set to be deliberated in January.
Charts from those budgets show the progression of debts, grants and reserve funding for capital projects over the previous decade.
Yu pointed to 2018, where reserves were funded to their highest extent between in recent memory according to the charts, exceeding $45 million.
“This is where the cookie jar got really full,” the mayor said. “That’s where the city decided to spend a lot of public money to fund the (George Street) parkade, Fire Hall #1, all those capital programs.”
The charts then show the amount of reserve funding reaching a 10-year low in 2021 and debt funding reaching its second-highest point, before reserve funding started to climb again and debt started to lower in 2022.
Then, in 2023, the charts show debt funding dropping once again in 2023 and reserve funding crossing the $35 million threshold.
“This is the election year coming up in 2022,” he said. “They finally stopped the bleeding … you can see that over the last two years, we have been really careful about taxpayers’ money, making sure that whatever little is leftover we put in the reserve and build it up. But this is not enough.”
Prince George City Council’s first regular meeting of 2025 will be held on Jan. 13 at 6 p.m. This will be followed up by two budget meetings starting at 1 p.m. on both Jan. 20 and Jan. 22.
