"Prince George's downtown is undergoing a multi-year period of civic and private sector development unlike anything it has seen in decades," a City of Prince George press release breathlessly proclaimed Friday.
The list seems impressive, from the housing development project across from city hall to the Marriott, the pool, the Wood Innovation Research Lab building and the nearby park.
Mayor Lyn Hall should be happy with what he has accomplished in his first term, with the support of an agreeable city council, but he shouldn't be too proud, either.
Except for the proposed new hotel on Sixth Avenue, every single one of the items on Hall's list was or is being built, in whole or part, with significant government investment. The Marriott might still be a gaping hole in the ground beside the library and the housing development space might never have gone ahead without public dollars on the table.
That's in stark contrast to the significant development happening outside of downtown, which is being driven exclusively by the private sector.
Everything from the Brown's Social House at Pine Centre to the Pomeroy Hotel on Highway 16 and the Best Western on the city's southwest outskirts are going up without government fanfare because the government isn't paying (or helping to pay) for it.
Furthermore, Hall and city council are either cleaning up the downtown mess left for them by previous mayors and councils (the Marriott, the lack of a proper front entrance to the library more than 35 years after the building opened) or responsibly replacing and/or renovating aging city infrastructure (Four Season's Pool, the fire hall) or a bit of both, depending on one's view.
This is good and important work but that's the job of any mayor and council. While this city council may have more of a long overdue focus on downtown than past municipal government politicians, previous mayors and councils shepherded the construction of the courthouse, the Stantec Centre on Seventh Avenue (which was first built as a bingo hall) and various supportive housing projects.
And Hall definitely shouldn't be singing the praises of the Smart Growth on the Ground concept put forward for downtown 10 years ago.
While there were some great ideas in that plan (some of which were immediately implemented, such as an expanded riverside trail system), it also had some weird, impractical and horribly expensive suggestions, such as building townhouses on top of the downtown parkades and digging a canal from the Fraser River to what is now Canada Games Plaza.
That last one reads more like an April Fool's joke.
There's no questions things are looking up downtown but it's still too early to be celebrating.
Until the private sector is leading the way when it comes to investment in new development downtown, "the changing face of Prince George's downtown," as Friday's announcement was billed, is simply more of the same.
The face may be changing but for now the money's still coming out of the same old taxpayer wallet.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
