I was listening to the radio the other day and an interview about the performing arts centre came up again.
In this case, it was tied to a council decision regarding funding but the general theme of the interview was that a performing arts centre was the magic bullet to save downtown Prince George.
Yup, a performing arts centre will be the ticket. It is the thing that we have been missing. It is the piece that will finally see downtown Prince George jump back into the land of the living.
Excuse my tongue-in-cheek. I know that I have only lived in Prince George for 20 years, so I am still something of a newcomer, but during that time it seems that the revitalization of downtown has always been top of the agenda.
And yet, here we are 20 years later and nothing much has changed. We are still talking about it.
Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In this case, it is not that we are doing the same thing over and over so much as trying one magic bullet after another and hoping for different results.
Switching the traffic pattern on Third Avenue - surely that will do it. Except it didn't.
Building the Civic Centre was supposed to produce a flow of people for events into downtown and revitalize the place. That doesn't seem to have panned out.
Putting the Two Rivers Art Gallery downtown was intended to lead to a cultural centre for the city and while I would argue the Two Rivers Art Gallery has been a great addition to the city, I would not suggest it has revived downtown.
Neither has the courthouse, nor removing the covered walkways on the streets nor bringing in a farmers' market, nor attracting call centres, nor any of a number of other initiatives that were intended to give us back a vibrant, vigorous downtown core.
Further, talking to various people around town about what is needed and what is the problem leads to just about as many different viewpoints as people.
It is the needle exchange that killed downtown, I was told. Having junkies on the streets drives people away. Seriously?
Or it is the homeless that accost people passing by. I have never been accosted in Prince George although I don't walk around downtown that much.
Or it is the parking. When there were parking meters, it certainly made for an easy excuse as to why I wouldn't want to shop downtown. After all, parking at the malls is free. Why pay when you don't have to?
Or it is that there is nothing to do downtown. All of the clubs and hang outs are gone. The city rolls up the streets at 6 p.m. and everyone goes home.
Or it is downtown? It isn't convenient. It doesn't have the stores that people want. It has too many vacancies. It has too many social service agencies. It has too many pawn shops.
The list of reasons why our downtown is ailing go on and on. Everyone, it seems, has a reason to not spend time downtown outside of their work context. Any and all of them may or may not be valid.
But it isn't something that is unique to Prince George. I lived in Calgary in the late '80s and after 4:30 p.m. downtown Calgary could have been used as the set for any number of post-apocalyptic thrillers. Empty streets with neither cars nor people - just the occasional newspaper fluttering in the wind.
Yet, a few blocks south Eleventh Avenue was one rolling party pretty much every summer night.
I studied in Victoria and it was a town which really did seem to roll up the streets at 6 p.m. Everyone scattered to their respective suburb and the downtown core emptied out with the exception of a few hot spots.
Downtowns are increasingly under pressure. They need to be places where people want to live. They require nightclubs and restaurants, yes, but also parks and bookstores. They need to have buildings but maintain a sense of the human scale.
None of these are going to be filled by simply putting in a performing arts centre or even the presence of the Wood Innovation and Design Centre. There is no magic bullet.
For me, the Canadian city that I have been in with the most interesting downtown was Kingston, Ont. People still walk the streets. People live above the shops. And the farmers' market every Saturday attracts a standing-room-only type crowd.
Perhaps the most important thing I found about their downtown, though, is that it is a human space. Maybe that is the magic bullet that will fix ours downtown.
But I doubt it.
