Last January the PG Hotel along with the liquor store located inside was permanently shuttered as a result of the sale to the Commonwealth Group.
A month later, RCMP Superintendent Brenda Butterworth-Carr made good on her promise to create a Downtown Enforcement Unit (DEU) with a zero tolerance policy on crime, petty and otherwise.
The impact on the downtown was immediate, positive and lasting.
In the months following crime rates dropped by 50 per cent, to the point where some of the DEU members have been freed up to join the war on drugs and gangs in Prince George.
Stores and restaurants have opened, and merchants who were seriously contemplating leaving the downtown have begun to invest in their properties.
Best of all shoppers have started to return to George Street.
Many longtime observers grown cynical of the endless stream of reports and studies and talk on revitalizing downtown have commented that more has happened in the past year than the previous twenty.
Curious then in light of this good news that city Council voted 7 to 2 to allow the opening of a liquor store downtown.
Despite alarms raised by the Nezul Be Hunuyek Child and Family Services Society, the PG Library, the Downtown Business Improvement Association, and without the knowledge of Chief Superintendent Butterworth-Carr, Council turned a deaf ear.
While the applicant Coast Inn promised the store would only serve "higher end expensive brands" and it would improve security and lighting, the reality is Council has no way of ensuring that any of that happens.
At the same time the BC Liquor Control and Licensing Branch in an unusual decision for an agency known to be all about the rules, broke its own.
While the regulation states the liquor store must be one kilometer away from the next closest one, The Coast store was barely 700 metres, yet it was still approved.
Granted the Liquor Board has the authority to make an exception under certain circumstances, but questions remain as to whether or not those circumstances even existed in this case.
For the rest of us, we can only hope that The Coast lives up to its reputation as a good corporate citizen and the promises made in obtaining the license, otherwise the gong show that was George Street will move uptown to what is arguably the cultural centre of PG, namely Civic Square, the Art Gallery, the library and the Coliseum.
Meanwhile, both our councillors and officials from BC Liquor - in the words of Ricky Ricardo - "have some splaining to do."
