Letter to the editor: Downtown needs fixing

I am wondering why we spent so much for a fancy pool downtown. We need a bigger or newer or a second hospital. We are all aging, so l think attention needs to be focused on better health facilities in PG.

As for the new pool, I feel that it should have been incorporated with a shopping mall with grocery store and pharmacy, a casual restaurant, walk-in clinic, etc. We need to focus on sending our tax dollars on more realistic projects. Many of the citizens in PG will not venture downtown due to the lack of any appealing scenery, lack of shopping facilities and a vagrancy issue on the streets. Since the pool is right downtown, l doubt many would let their child use it without supervision. Downtown has deteriorated to such a degree that people avoid the area altogether.

I was born and raised here and at one time downtown had plenty of shops and businesses. We had the Bay, Zellers, Northern Hardware etc. The Northern was everyone's go-to store if one could not find something. We could always count on the Northern to have the products. Sadly, they closed and that was the nail in the coffin for downtown. I feel the efforts through the years of all these downtown revitalization projects were just a means of using our tax dollars for other agendas because the monies were obviously not spent on revitalizing downtown.

We have a bad situation that needs attention. Surely there are brilliant young people with wonderful ideas about what can be done to encourage business downtown and bring life back into our town. It was awful that we lost the Pastry Chef bakery. l always supported them every week. Best bread and pastry ever and they really made all their products from scratch. We are regressing not progressing where our downtown is concerned it has become a ghetto. Best of luck to the few businesses that are struggling to make a living in that area. Our city council needs to step up and fix the mess. We owe it to these hard-working people that struggle each day to maintain their businesses. Come on, PG, we can do better for these people. We need a census of ideas to deal with this issue.

Marie Caron

Prince George