Welcome to Your Kamloops!

A New Daycare Downtown?

In the very near future, your Council will decide on a rezoning application to allow a 28 space daycare near the corner of 6th ave and St Paul. The board and staff at the Children's Circle Daycare Society have been working overtime in a search for a new location. It has been a long, and sometime frustrating, search. The funding sources may soon dry up.

Interestingly, there has been pushback to the proposal. My friend and Council colleague, Tina Lange, for example, has expressed concerns about losing residences in primarily residential areas and increasing parking and noise issues.

I support the concept of accessible child care. And that generally would mean daycares situated in residential areas. My responsibility, under legislation, is to maintain an open mind. So, I look forward to hearing from people at the upcoming pubic hearing on the rezone application, before I make my mind up.

Bank of Montreal move revisited

Just below this post, in my open letter to the Bank of Montreal, I argue that they should stay downtown. I just want to clarify that I do not mean that they should stay in the high rise - there are certainly other locations downtown that might be a better fit for the BMO.

An Open letter to the Bank of Montreal

Dear Bank of Montreal,

Now, I imagine your must have some very seasoned professionals in your real estate department, but I think they may have made a huge blunder in Kamloops over the past months. Your decision to leave our downtown without a Bank of Montreal branch mystifies me. I know the dollar and cents, bottom line data -they add up. You may not have many customers downtown, for example. The big high rise you currently anchor might have become too large to moor in the harbour of profitability.

What was not factored into your move was the feelings of many passionate Kamloopsians who believe downtown is the only place for a main branch, who believe that downtown is the signature area of our city. When you leave downtown, you hurt these people.

Of course, the level of hurt is relative. And your forthcoming move will hurt you much more, in my view. Downtown is thriving right now. People will find other banks to patronize that do have downtown branches - even people who live and work in the South West Sector of the city, the very area to which you are moving.

And a renowned local developer has now bought your high rise. If anybody can succeed with the building, where you struggled, it is going to be Jim Thompson with his team at Plainsman construction.

Bank of Montreal, I am trying to advise you in your own  best interest, reconsider a branch downtown.

very best
Arjun Singh

Ambassador Patrol Downtown Survey

Each summer, the Kamloops Central BIA (KCBIA) sponsors a team of university students who act as downtown ambassadors and patrollers. This year, the central ambassador patrol conducted a survey of people living, working, and visiting downtown. The survey happened the week of August 9th to 15th. 72 females and 74 males were surveyed.

Here are some highlights from the survey:

• Restaurants and pubs are the most patronized businesses downtown
• 34% of the people surveyed said they would be willing to walk 3 to 5 blocks from their parking spot to their downtown destination. 40% said they would walk from anywhere downtown.
• 79% of the people surveyed feel safe or very safe when they come downtown.

For full survey results, you can contact me or the KCBIA office (372-3242).

An Agonizing Vote on the Old Courthouse Purchase

I agonized over my vote on the purchase of the Old Courthouse.

Having participated in hours of meetings, having had tours of this wonderful building, having been approached by people asking about what was happening - I knew this was something many people in  Kamloops wanted us to look at carefully.

In the end, I was worried about the potential for construction and cost overruns that might present themselves in the renovation of the building. We are in a booming construction market and we all know prices are escalating rapidly. And with heritage buildings, we have had cost overrun surprises in the recent past - such as with the Old Cigar Factory building the city now owns across from city hall.

So, today, I found myself being given a thorn by armchair Mayor Mel Rothenburger for not supporting the purchase when we voted.

But, the way I voted is old news.  In case people are interested, and people have already asked me, I offered the above comments.

City Council, as a group, decided to purchase the old Courthouse. There are exciting plans to make it into a thriving centre of the arts in Kamloops. We have had the engineers and experts through the building more than once assessing the health of the structure and what renovations are needed.

I am now a supporter of Council's decision.

There is going to be a healthy and spirited debate about how the old Courthouse will now be run. At this point, I think its going to be very important, quite quickly, to put together a citizen led society to manage the building, much like what exists at St Andrews in the Square. That way, the building is not just a Big C City Building, but a true small c city building. I have also advocated doing a fundraising campaign in the community - to help spread the costs of the buildng, but also to give a broader feeling of ownership of what I am confident will be a great community resource.

City Centre Proposed Plan on City Web Site

Thanks to John Popoff, planner at the City, who pointed me to a downloadable version of the City Centre Plan on the City web site. You will need the free Adobe Reader to view it. You may already have it on your computer. If not, you can download it here.

Even though I have got Adobe Reader, I still can't seem to get the plan to open on my computer. Would appreciate a heads up if anyone else is having the same issue.

New City Centre Plan - Final Public Hearing

Would like to invite you all to City Council chambers on Tuesday, November 29th at 7pm for the final Public Hearing for the new Kamloops City Centre Plan. The draft document is available from City Hall. I am going to ask them to make it available on the City web site. Or I will make it available here in the next few days. That's a committment you can hold me to.

If you happened to be at the public information meeting on the plan in early October, this summary talks about how city staff and the consultants dealt with all the questions raised.

Kamloops Addiction Issues

Too many people in our community live with severe addiction issues and these people cause a lot of problems for themselves and for their fellow citizens. I have had many conversations with people over the past few months and I have seen some pretty awful things with my own eyes. There are lot of opposing views about how to deal with the problem. I feel we need to reconcile these views if we are ever to be truly successful. This past week, I had the amazing opportunity to attend a forum on Harm Reduction. Harm reductions, in the context of drugs and in my understanding, is the practice of offering people clean, safe, friendly methods and places to use the drugs to which they are addicted . That sounds strange even as I write it here, but it can be very successful in reducing the risks of drug uses to drugs users and the entire community - and it may be build trustworthy spaces where people can decide to get clean and sober.

The RCMP tells me that 90% of the property crime in Kamloops is related to drug addiction. Pretty clear that if we can help people get clean or. at least, more clean, that helps the entire community.

The question is how.

Many ideas were offered at the Harm Reduction forum - longer detox programs, better job and life skills training, more transistional  housing, more affordable housing,  much better school  educational programs about drugs and addictions.

My contribution (hopefully a contribution) to the discussion is the idea that we need to get groups and people onside who would not normally get involved on this issue - business people, communities suffering from drug trade getting into their neighborhoods, etc. And business people and affected communities also need to put their concerns on the agenda. We need a holsitic approach from a very broad and complete range of interests. That is going to be difficult but, ultimately, I believe, a strategy that has wide community buy in will lead to solid and lasting success.

Attending Frank Bava's Office Opening...

 
Photos taken with my Cell phone. Sorry for the quality!

Here is Frank Bava, cutting the cake last week, at the opening of his financial services company offices on Seymour Street. I want to thank Frank for the invitation to attend his opening. I was really lucky to meet a lot of great people, many in business and the professions. Frank and his team have done a spectacular renovation on the space. Dark hardwood floors, great finishes on the walls, windows, and doors. You can tell they took a lot of pride in what they did. This is downtown revitalization on the front lines.

If you call Kim Fontaine at Frank's office, 851 8888, or drop by at 330 Seymour Street, I am sure she would love to arrange a tour.

Public Meeting on Downtown Plan...

Last Monday, about 40 or so people attended the public meeting for the City Centre / Downtown Plan the City has been working on. There were a lot of very interesting ideas exchanged. Here is a little sample:

• encouraging productive use of rooftops for gardens, recreation facilities
• better linking Victoria Street east of 5th Ave with the more active areas around 3th and 4th Ave.
• building a downtown theatre / performing arts centre.

My contribution to the discussion was to ask the City and Consultant Planners from Urban Systems to put of all the ideas on a web site and indicate the action (if any) planned on each one. Obviously, not all ideas can be acted upon, but it would be wonderful for those attending to see that they actually had some influence on the process. I talked to John Popoff at the City and he told me the ideas and any follow up should be posted online soon.