The vision making portion of the State of the City Presentation had the Mayor updating residents on a range of proposed developments for the community.
While Mayor Brain made note of the larger financial limitations that the City faces for all of its infrastructure as part of the event, something we reviewed as part of our Overview of the mayor's presentation.
The night also featured the vision making of the last few years from the Mayor, wth Mr. Brain updating residents as to the progress for many of those elements for what he calls incubation projects.
The appearance of the Downtown Core and what steps the City has taken and will continue forward with, formed part of the narrative on the night as part of the revitalization of the central area of the community.
"So the next thing I want to talk about, and I know you're going to love this part, is the physical revitalization.
We've got derelict buildings, we've got derelict vehicles, we've got residential properties that are dumps, we've got garbage, we've got all that stuff.
And we have a plan now to address that.
In fact we have sent dozens and dozens of remediation orders, wreck and removal orders, we are 100 percent moving forward on enforcement now.
We've given carrots, we've given opportunities and now it's time for people to start moving forward on their properties.
The Mayor did outline some of the challenges faced by the city to take action on many of the properties that are brought to their attention.
"Now just on a note on that, cause people come up to me all the time you know and what about these properties, you know we gotta tear ... ?
There's legal issues, you know we just can't walk in there and say do that.
You know, we have to go through a process and that process takes resources from us, it. takes time from us, it takes getting involved with Judges. Because people think we're targeting them, and that we're treating them unfairly.
I mean we've spent 70,000 dollars before on just one case, from one person, on one issue which we ended up resolving; but do you feel like that's what we as City should be doing is spending that kind of taxpayer dollar just fighting people? Not really, right?
So we have to go through a process to allow us to get to the point where we can do the enforcement.
We're there now, you have to send a certain amount of letters, you have to give a certain amount of notice, you have do all those things to get someone to actually comply.
And if they don't comply we do have the right to go on their property and tear their building down, but you have to realize that's a hostile move right ... yeah, I guess that's clap-able ... Get em!
So just understand from our perspective then, you know we try to give everybody a reasonable opportunity to get there, there are building owners who are not compliant and they will be compliant shortly I can guarantee you that"
Mayor Brain's notes on on the some planned road changes in the downtown core was for the most part all rather new information, of note on the missing information side, no further mention of any round a bout plans for McBride and Second, which had been part of previous narratives on downtown road themes.
The first of the potential redesigns was focused on Third Avenue and some proposed changes to increase parking options along that civic roadway.
"Let's take look at the new street scapes, the first one, Third Avenue.
So we have a parking problem downtown, because people don't want to walk one block to their location ... sorry, I just had to say that. In Vancouver you got to walk ten blocks but here ....
But we do have a parking problem, in all seriousness.
So, first things first, we are doing a parking plan, we are looking at doing a parking lot, a big parking lot in the Midtown, in the New downtown and the Marina District, so creating three new parking areas.
But also we're looking at reorienting the streetscapes, so this is what so far is a concept plan, concept plan for Third Avenue.
So you're coming down this way you would have angle parking on one side of the street, we'd increase parking by thirty, potentially forty percent of parking on Third Avenue.
You would put bull-outs on all the corners to create smaller crosswalks, including with accessibility in mind for folks with mobility issues and things like that.
So the strategy, because as you heard from the challenges, we don't got the cash to do that.
The strategy is to work in partnership and develop one intersection at a time, working from the Gateway project all the way down, right.
So one year hopefully we do one section, another section and it's going to take until 2030, that's why 2030 and over time we can rebuild the streetscapes.
Unless like again, we have that magic oney bag that just falls down on the ground, we can do it all once, but that might be a challenge, so this is what we're thinking about Third Avenue."
The Mayor also has some plans for Second Avenue, once the heavy truck traffic destined for the Port has been removed from the downtown core.
"So, this next part is new information, and we're going to reveal here today.
Second Avenue. So, here's the opportunity for Second Avenue.
We have a connector road that is being built from the Port Authority, that where all the container traffic is going to go through Ridley Island, they won't be coming into the downtown anymore.
We've been in discussions, heavy discussions right now, with Highways.
In fact Highways is looking to do some investments in this community, and I can't speak to those yet, but they are going to be exciting.
But, once those truck traffic is gone, they have tentatively have said; look you don't need to have a four lane highway, in fact we will potentially allow you, as a city to control, have access and have some level of control over Second Avenue. Which would be huge opportunity for us.
Because what we want to do with Second Avenue is, make it of more of a two lane opportunity now. So this is outside of the Ocean Centre Mall, that's the MLA's office right there.
Who, by the way Jen, I'm so sorry, she is a very big supporter of us. She works really hard with us, works with our staff. I know I crapped on the caps, she's very much helping with the caps, disclaimer.
Ok, cause yeah I would feel awkward if I was sitting in a presentation. And, just so you know she's actually helping us with that and she has her challenges in her own government and stuff.
Anyways, so you would have a Bollard kind of bus stop area for this, angle parking, this would be one road, that would be one road, a boulevard down the middle of Second avenue, regular parking there basically and then a bike lane that would like go through the entire town basically.
And considering doing that on Third Avenue was well.
Now one of the opportunities, how we can get this funded is that the province is really moving forward on active transportation, they really want, they are really investing in active transportation.
So part of us getting money for this is applying for grants, which we've done, to get the cash to be able to do this kind of work.
This would be exciting, because this finally gives us the chance to make the town look and feel a certain way. And if we focus the development around Gateway to the start, maybe moving up to Chevron, you'll see nice trees on the boulevard, we want to change all the sidewalks scapes there, the new bollards, make it safe, make it bikeable.
I think Complete Streets for Prince Rupert's in the audience, I hope you're liking this, you can give me a critique in the Q and A.
So, we're presenting this to the Highways in July, this has not been approved, but this is what we're moving forward to do.
So new streetscapes, new incubation projects in every part of the town already moving forward, it's exciting stuff"
The road changes and other transportation themes on roads from the presentation can be viewed from the City's Video replay of the Sate of the City Presentation.
The review of the Roads elements starts at the one hour, fourteen minute mark
Some of our past items of note to the theme have been included as part of our Vision Tracker archive, as well as our Council Discusison archive
How the province has viewed transportation in the Northwest can be reviewed here.
With the Vision themes coming out of the 2030 Vision plan, you can go back and review notes from that presentation from 2019 here.
Our Full overview of the State of the City Presentation can be reviewed here.
We also have created an archive of the elements from it, that compilation is available here.
( some of the above images come from screenshots of the video presentation)
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