My Short History with the Kamloops Spirit Square....

I'm really glad the Kamloops Spirit Square (corner of MacKenzie and Yew) is finally open for the community.

This little community square project has seen quite a few twists and turns since City Hall first started working on it in early 2007. As a member of Council at the time of the planning,I was fortunate to have a pretty good seat in the proceedings.

The essential impetus behind building the square was the the BC Government was willing to match city funds dollar for dollar, up to $500 000.

In Early 2007, when a Kamloops Spirit Square started being discussed in the community, there was significant backlash to the concept. Since there was two streams to the provincial  funding applications, or so we thought, the decision of Council was to apply for funds to conduct community consultation and planning. Even then, Kamloops This Week editor Chris Foulds took me to task for supporting $25 000 for such an effort.    

For most of 2007, we heard nothing from the Province about our community consulation funding application. In October 2007, Joe Leong, Tina Lange, and I met with then BC Community Services Minister Ida Chong at the Union of BC Municipalities convention. The Minister and her staff seemed to have discontinued the community consultation money, and told us they were very anxious for us to get building. It was kind of surreal really.

Community concern over the expenditure never really re-surfaced to a great degree.

Ok. So then the big question became building at what location and with what theme. Mayor Terry Lake was warm to the idea of a ice hockey theme. Other Council members initially favoured one shore of the river over another.

The question of south shore or north shore was a biggie. I remember attending an "emergency meeting" of the North Shore planning public members called out of concern council was showing bias towards the south shore.

In fact, when the outside planning company contracted to do identify initial locations presented to council, their list of criteria did not score north shore locations high on the list. Council added the criteria of "revitalization" and the north shore locations scored quite a bit higher.

Once we had unanimously settled on MacKenzie and Yew, there was the issue of more detailed planning and building. There was some considerable back and forth with Victoria and the plans and a desire to wait a while for the economy to cool down so we could get more competitive bids for the construction.

Comments

[Christopher Foulds]

Actually, Arjun, I was merely pointing out what I saw as a contradiction in your comments at council back in January 2007. When council voted to spend an initial $25,000 to draw up plans for a Spirit Square, the decision came immediately after you, quite properly, pointed out the fiscal constraints under which the city sat.
“We really have to look at the value of our taxpayers’ dollars,” you said. “My view is that we are in a budget crunch now, and we’re going to be in a budget crunch going forward.”
And I, through my column, was simply arguing that spending tens of thousands of dollars on a Sprit Square, when the city was (and remains) in heavy debt, was hardly prudent.
I stand by that opinion.
But complicating the issue was the fact the parallel People's Fountain issue was getting mixed up with the Spirit Square initiative, with nobody really knowing where one began and the other ended.
Yes, the Spirit Square in North Kamloops is nice, but is it necessary?