Piccadilly Circus in London. (Image Credit: Mel Rothenburger)

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER – If you were king or queen of Kamloops, what would you do?

Feb 22, 2020 | 6:50 AM

THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING BETTER to spend money on than what it’s actually being spent on.

Each and every day, somebody is demanding that more money be spent on something important to them. We like to say you can’t fix anything by throwing money at it but the fact is, yes you can.

Most of the world’s miseries could be solved if we could print enough money. Sadly, we can’t.

Always, of course, there’s the question of priorities. What needs to be fixed first? The answer to that question is as varied as there are needs.

It’s important to remember that the health of a society depends on more than finding a cure for cancer or poverty. We need to nurture our physical and mental health, our sense of wellness and engagement.

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It’s hard to find room on our agendas for what we tend to consider the non-essentials, but those non-essentials are crucial to life.

Each year when the City starts putting its budget together it asks the public to come to a meeting or two and tell council and staff what they think the priorities should be. That’s where ideas such as selling off the Tournament Capital Centre and building a pedestrian overpass across the Summit connector are broached.

Good things can happen when we think small, but it’s the big things that inspire us and drive us forward.

If you were king or queen of Kamloops, what would you do with the city? I don’t mean fix potholes and make the buses run on time, I mean big bricks and mortar stuff. Assume poverty and drug addictions and crime are already being looked after.

Years ago, I hosted a public-input weekend called KamTalk. It attracted hundreds of people with hundreds of ideas, a good many of which made their way into a City planning document.

A young Arjun Singh was there, before he decided to become a civic politician. He proposed that a canal be dug across the North Shore to attract tourists. I like to remind him of that every once in a while — he was thinking big.

If I was in charge and had unlimited resources, I would tear down the Henry Grube Centre and build a performing arts centre there with plenty of parking. And name it the Henry Grube Memorial Centre for the Arts. I would scrap plans to turn Stuart Wood School into an indigenous cultural museum and instead use it for a new City Hall, with an architecturally appropriate annex on each side, and parking and gardens on the playground.

I would revive the Singh Street Bridge. There’s a reason for that hairpin turn on the Summit Connector — a street is supposed to head down toward Mission Flats and connect to a new bridge at Singh Street.

I’d forget about thoughts of a pedestrian plaza downtown and would build a Piccadilly Circus-style public space at Fourth and Victoria instead.

Before quitting for the day, I’d make parking at the hospital free for everyone, except the dolts who use the parkade but work downtown. I’d hire a force of parking police to keep them out of there.

Speaking of parking, I’d consign all the kiosks to the landfill and bring in technology that automatically deducts parking fees from drivers’ bank accounts as soon as they pull into a spot. (Yes, the technology does exist.)

That’s just for starters, but don’t let me hog the microphone. What would you do?

Build a Kamloops version of the CN Tower or the Seattle Space Needle? Move the rail tracks out of the downtown core? Run a hop on-hop off cable car down Victoria Street and Tranquille Road?

Those things aren’t as outlandish as you might think. Today’s urban issues require big ideas and solutions. A lot of cities are coming up with them, though it’s not easy to find examples that go beyond the usual stuff about sustainability and technology parks and urban renewal.

In Tokyo, as Japan prepares for the Summer Olympics, 45 new high-rises are being built along with a unique pedestrian walkway that features shops and green spaces. It’s called the Shibuya Stream.

Calgary is investing $1.5 billion on a Cultural and Entertainment District that could generate $300 million in economic activity annually.

In Medellin in Colombia, the mayor and council built cable cars to connect hillside residential areas to bus and train stations, totally changing the economic landscape by connecting poorer areas to the rest of the city.

In Mecca in Saudi Arabia, instead of using garbage trucks, 600 tons of trash daily is sucked into pneumatic tubes and taken at high speed for landfill disposal.

Not all big ideas have to cost millions or billions, though. Cities have been busy removing seating from their public spaces to discourage loitering but Brooklyn reversed the trend by turning used wooden pallets into Adirondack chairs and spreading them throughout the city.

In Vancouver, a project called More Awesome Now is turning alleyways into public gathering places with basketball courts, coffee shops and other amenities. In San Francisco, fitness stations are being erected for those who want a quick workout on their way from one place to another.

Kamloops is capable of thinking big. It did when the council of the day turned an old sawmill site into Riverside Park. And when the Rivers Trail was built, and the Sandman Centre, and Tournament Capital Centre.

Sometimes big ideas aren’t practical but, if we don’t dream, we never get anywhere.

The current City council gets a look at the final numbers for its newest budget on Tuesday. What fresh new thinking will dwell within its pages?

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He writes five commentaries a week for CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.