Local Johnson Street Bridge discussion heats up
I’ve been busy over at JohnsonStreetBridge DOT org, the website created by Mat Wright, Ross Crockford, and me. My contributions have run mainly to writing some blog posts and brainstorming with Mat and Ross. The latter produced a brilliant letter, delivered to Mayor and Council on Tuesday. It’s four pages long and asks all the right questions – I encourage interested Victoria-area stakeholders to read it (available as PDF, too).
Mat is brilliantly pulling everything together in his role as webmaster and social media engineer. As a result, the site is looking pretty damn good, if I say so myself. We have links to the blog, to a poll, to subscription to a newsletter, to a photo page, to a culture page, to a history page, a video page, and tons of external links to help people get informed.
There’s now also a link to download PDFs of a beautiful color poster (or, alternately, the same poster in greyscale). The photo is by the talented Benjamin Maddison of Victoria Daily Photo. Thanks, Benjamin!
In the mid 1980s Toronto-based developer Cadillac-Fairview announced it was going to build a new shopping centre to replace the old Eaton’s building in downtown Victoria.
The developers were warned that unless they considered the concerns of residents their plans would generate massive opposition.
They ended up hiring Victoria based Desmond Connor to lead a major public consultation. As a result, many of the original buildings were preserved instead of being demolished.
The goal of his proposal to Cadillac Fairview was to provide opportunities for the people of Victoria to obtain information about the proposed development and contribute their comments and suggestions so that the final proposal would be technically sound, economically attractive, generally understood and accepted by most of those affected and thus be politically viable.
A write up of the Victoria Eaton’s Centre is here: http://www.connor.bc.ca/eaton.html
In the Johnson Street Bridge situation, the city has adopted a far different approach – one I would characterize as Decide – Announce – Defend. It doesn’t work nearly as well.
I heard Ross Crockford on CFAX this morning. The information he provided, the info on the JSB site, and in your blog posts, present a very compelling argument for sitting back and taking a sober second look.
Comment by Cindy Stephenson — August 6, 2009 #
Thanks for the comment, Cindy. That’s how we feel too – step back & think about this. You should also take a look at Bernard von Schulmann’s post from today. It’s further ammunition that the City’s whole process with regard to the JSB is beyond redemption. Scrap it, start over.
Comment by Yule — August 6, 2009 #
As I think I mentioned on a previous post, I wrote to James Moore. The other day I received a perfectly mystifying response which I quote here:
(emphasis added).
Comment by melanie — August 7, 2009 #
wtf? That’s just incredible, Melanie. Protection of private properties???
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I can’t say this inspires me with confidence about our governmental leaders.
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Well, at least you heard back. I wrote a long letter to Bill Bennett, currently the BC Minister for Community and Rural Development – even though his webpage still says that he’s the Minister for Tourism, Sport, and the Arts (yes, in BC ‘Sport’ takes the spot of ‘Culture’). Turns out that this provincial minister is the key decision maker as to how the federal monies are dispersed within the province. The Feds just give the Province a lump sum, and the Province channels the money to the municipalities – in Canada, cities are the creature of the provinces. I haven’t heard anything back. Admittedly, I wrote some time after you wrote to the Federal minister. (Thanks again for doing that, by the way!).
Comment by Yule — August 7, 2009 #