City council approved the downtown plan on Tuesday during its regular meeting (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

DOWNTOWN PLAN

Council approves downtown plan in principle, staff feel key projects could spur on growth

Dec 17, 2019 | 4:22 PM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops envisions extensive growth in the downtown core over the next two decades. It includes mixed residential and commercial development on private sites like Kamloops Square and the former Value Village on Seymour Street.

The city’s community planning and sustainability manager Jason Locke feels that development will happen in time with initiatives like turning Seymour and Landsdowne into two-way streets among other things.

“Making Seymour Street back to two-way is slowing traffic down, making it more pedestrian-friendly,” said Locke. “There’s also an argument that can be made that allowing traffic on both sides of the street does add to the business vitality.”

Councillor Denis Walsh, also a downtown business owner, agrees with the idea of reverting Seymour and Landsdowne back to two-way traffic.

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“I think we’ve choked our downtown off by only having Victoria Street [as a two-way],” he said. “A retail business, they generally fail on a one-way street. The speed is too high, there’s not enough pedestrians. People don’t like walking on one-way streets that are high-speed.”

On Tuesday, city council unanimously passed the downtown plan in concept. The plan also includes transforming Fourth Avenue into a permanent pedestrian plaza after a pilot project last summer.

“Right now, we’re doing a costing study to determine how much it’s going to cost to design and build the plaza,” said Locke. “We’re going back to council with a recommendation based on a funding strategy, and at that point in the new year council would decide whether to proceed or not with the plan.”

The city says if both those projects, as well as the performing arts centre, go ahead, it could lead to more development downtown.

“If those projects are built, they do help spur on other associated businesses,” noted Locke. “They add value to the destination as a downtown, so our hope is that these projects will serve as attractants for people to move downtown.”